You cannot change what has already happened, just as what will happen cannot be altered. Lies. Nothing but lies!

“Humankind is always doomed to fail. It has fallen many times before, and many times we have intervened to ensure it stays on the correct course. Earth is salvageable, but if you had continued along the path you were on, it would not have been. You have billions of years more to exist before your planet’s final destruction. We are only making certain it survives that long, and ensuring your survival until the ultimate end. At times you progress too fast, but such is humankind’s way. So we had to accelerate this current failure sooner in order to restart. As we have done before, a guide with a better objective and understanding of how to protect your world, will be inserted…”

But why did they care what humans did with their lives? They were aliens—beings from another dimension! Earth wasn’t their home.

Esme Serrano’s predestined encounter with the trans-dimensional anthropomorphic Aakehollats sends her on a multi-pathed journey spanning ten thousand years. A journey riddled with lies, manipulations and untold layers of deception. She guides Earth as the Sibyl, a powerful and mystical leader, and brings the dying world back from the brink of death. She helps the Aakehollats, and ensures that Earth survives until its ultimate destruction in the cosmos.

But her one true goal is, and always will be, to kill the Aakehollats.

This was one of the most ambitious sci-fi books I have read. It is complex, layered, and tackles many interconnected real-world problems head-on. There is a deep focus on impending environmental collapse, societal problems, ethical aspects of research and disclosure, and finally… a very distinct and memorable take on time travel.

We explore the story from three PoVs living in different eras. First is a young adult struggling to survive in a society that has started taking some rather drastic measures to prevent environmental collapse. Then we have a professional researcher uncovering secrets about a prophet who helped humanity navigate out of the dark ages—a research that hinges on uncovering the secrets in the prophet’s long-lost journal. Finally, we have a VR actress playing the role of the same researcher, in a show being broadcasted to an audience of billions, spread out in space in an era where humanity has expanded far beyond the confines of the planet. How are they connected? That is something for you to find out, but be assured that there is a very good reason.

The generational aspect of the story was what I loved the most. Revenge is a theme I have always loved in fiction. A coordinated revenge orchestrated over many generations is just wonderful. The primary characters have depth and are very realistically depicted. Loved all of them. The pacing is tight and keeps you turning the pages.

I also loved the focus on the ethics of discovery and conflicts of interest. How far would you go to ensure that your discoveries reach the public eye? How far would the leaders of the world go to protect their own asses if the revelation could upend the power structures in place?

Both the premise and presentation will appeal to lovers of dystopic fiction. The author doesn’t overfocus on gore and suffering, but does not flinch away from the darker side of humanity either. We see dying countrysides, civilization fraying in chaos, corpses piling up on the streets, settlements reduced to bare necessities of survival, and the myriad moral quandaries that follow.

There are also bits of philosophy and spirituality woven in. I wouldn’t comment on them because I’m admittedly “tone-deaf” in that regard, but perhaps those aspects will appeal to others.

I didn’t expect microbiology to play such a pivotal role in this story, but that was a welcome surprise. It is clear that this is the author’s area of expertise and that shines through.

Now, if we take out all of the above, what we are left with is…a bizarre race of time-travelling aliens. Time travel is a risky theme to build upon. If taken casually, it has the potential to turn every decision by every character into a plot hole, and that is why I consider it somewhat contagious. If you pick up time travel, soon your entire plot becomes all about time travel. Also, using time travel effectively requires constraints, otherwise it opens up so many possibilities that the plot devolves into madness. The author clearly understands all of that. The treatment here has received a lot of thought and planning, and there are constraints in place.

However, I struggled with the believability of those constraints in the context of the world as depicted. They did not seem to emerge naturally as a property of the wider world-building. The prologue/epilogue at the end only left me more baffled.

After finishing, I found myself thinking quite a bit about the premise of time travel here, but the more I think of it, the more I am inclined to believe that everything the plot wanted to accomplish, it could have, arguably better, without using time travel at all. It would have been a perfectly great story if we just had a race of technologically advanced aliens, who have been coexisting with humans in secrecy, grow increasingly concerned with the state of the environment, and then install a prophet of their choosing to direct civilization in a direction of their choosing. Longevity enabled through technology that is left out of reach from rest of humanity could have been adequate to drive the theme of the multi-generation revenge. Layering the circular and branching time-travel, making the aliens omniscient (but not quite) together muddied the plot in ways that did not elevate the experience.

Having said that, there are enough enjoyable aspects in the story that I’d still recommend picking it up and drawing your own conclusion.