One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky

​     I don’t necessarily believe in third time is the charm approach and after the first two reads by this author I had all but written him of, but then you stick an allosaur on the cover and I’m all like, sure, why not, let’s try this.
    And sure enough…awesome. This was actually awesome. I would have never guessed it was the same author. The wit, the charm, the humorous turns of this book…where was this in Walking to Aldebaran or Firewalkers? Or is it that the rule is to just avoid the author’s books that have walk in the title? Either way, this was lovely.
     I don’t have the easiest of relationships with time travel stories, though I do try. This one was randomly enough read immediately following another time traveling novella, but this one definitely blew Time Was out of the water. Though to be fair, apples and oranges.
     In fact, this may be the best time travel story I’ve ever read. For reals? For reals. Loved this one.
     And how can you not? Just listen…at the end of time there lives a man and his pet allosaur. The man is a self stylized farmer (albeit with plenty of robotic assistance) and a self appointed minder of time travel. Because time travel is dangerous and people have screwed with it enough, there was an entire war about it, The Causality War. The past got all sorts of messed up and one man has had enough. And so he waits for the intrepid souls who make it that far and then feeds them to his clawed and feathered friend.
     It sounds like a great plan. Mostly because it’s so functional and reasonable and practical. But then a wrench, a giant wrench, gets thrown into the works. A possibility our protagonist has been so steadfastly working to avoid has suddenly proven to be a potential reality. It’s something terrible, something unimaginable, it’s a…future.
     And there it is, a time traveling comedy of errors about best laid plans, casual murder and even romance. Turns out a perfect life can only exist in a vacuum, otherwise reality will always intervene. And then it’s all about rolling with the punches. And boy, is it fun to watch these guys roll.
     It’s all fun, really, so much fun, oodles of fun. I really enjoyed this book. So much so I now don’t know what to do about this author, how to rank him in my mental catalog, a man is either very diverse or prone to an occasional excellent surprise. Either way, though, this was a great read. Recommended.