One Day All This Will Be Yours

Terrible Worlds: Destinations

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The bold new work from award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky  - a smart, funny tale of time-travel and paradox

Welcome to the end of time. It’s a perfect day.

Nobody remembers how the Causality War started. Really, there’s no-one to remember, and nothing for them to remember if there were; that’s sort of the point. We were time warriors, and we broke time.

I was the one who ended it. Ended the fighting, tidied up the damage as much as I could.

Then I came here, to the end of it all, and gave myself a mission: to never let it happen again.

Genres: Science Fiction, Time Travel, Fiction, Novella, Fantasy, Audiobook, Humor

144 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2021

About the author

ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY was born in Lincolnshire and studied zoology and psychology at Reading, before practising law in Leeds. He is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor and is trained in stage-fighting. His literary influences include Gene Wolfe, Mervyn Peake, China Miéville, Mary Gently, Steven Erikson, Naomi Novak, Scott Lynch and Alan Campbell.

Reviews

[carol. · Rating 5 out of 5]

All you need to understand is that this was published March 2021, which means it was written end of 2020. Yes, that 2020. You know, the one we began with baking bread together, creating song reels, and planting gardens, and ended up fighting about absolutely everything? By the time the book ends, you too will understand.

It begins sweetly enough, with a pastoral life any introvert would love: a 19th century French farmhouse, a paddock of sheep, a field of cabbages.

"How I love the rugged outdoors life! Living out here with nothing but the fields and the animals and literally the best technological support that anyone ever invented."

The reader quickly understands that the narrator is a time-traveler survivor, and there has been devastation upon devastation upon the timeline. Worn out by never-ending war, he has escaped and sought peace in the only way he understands: by managing time.

"Language just isn’t precise and all-encompassing enough. So we all kept meddling, changing things, changing them back—though not back exactly, just to something closer to the way we thought we remembered it. We kept yanking time about until it broke."

This seems almost logical, practically sane, and if Miffly is perhaps an less-sane tool to achieve those ends, well, at least she's cute and feathery tool, right?

The tone is nonchalant, perfect for the breezy attitude the narrator brings to his problem-solving. It also allows for a healthy helping of humor, both of the darker sort and the absolutely silly kind: 

"'We’re getting along platonically just exactly fine.' Meaning we spent all afternoon throwing things at Plato and it was hilarious."

And then, just like in Walking to Aldebaran, Tchaikovsky leads us off the effing rails. Genius.

Now, I can be philosophical. Everyone dies, after all; every good time ends. Time itself ended.

By turns darkly funny and a deep commentary on society, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at the ending. I have trouble managing my transitions, particularly after a story like that. What do you do, go back to normal life and pretend you don't hate people just a little bit?

So I went and played a game where I managed a fish aquarium and all was good.

"It’s a calling. Or, if it’s not a calling, then at least it’s a vocation. Or, failing that, you have to have a hobby, don’t you?"

[Nataliya · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We were the time warriors, and we killed time.”

Somewhere, no - somewhen, at the edge of Time (or whatever is left of it after the time-shredding Causality War) is a peaceful idyllic farm where the last survivor of the time war spends his days tending the crops, restoring old Soviet tractors, feeding his pet allosaurus — and murdering any remaining time travelers that come to his “when”, a bottleneck in Time. This is the only way he sees to prevent yet another Time War.

“They all end up here, because this is the end-time. This is all the time there is. This is the trailing edge of what comes later, after the breach in regular transmissions left by the war. A bottleneck, you understand. You want to fling yourself forwards past the badlands of the war, this is where you end up. And I’ll be waiting for you. Nobody gets by me. I have literally all the technology in the world, culled from every moment that anyone ever had a Big Idea, to make sure of exactly that. I am the ultimate surveillance state.”

Except for - of fragging course! - things will not go the way they are supposed to. Many many times. Because threats don’t only come from the shattered past. There will be tractors and dinosaurs and murders and statues and unpleasant visitors and even polite tea time, and bonding over mutual misanthropy and assassination attempts, and it all will be funny and twisted and darkly humorous.

“By setting up shop here where the regular passage of time recommences, and denying access to the future to all comers, I am saving the unseen future from interference. I am time’s gatekeeper, and without me the future would become the same ruin as the past.”

Adrian Tchaikovsky is a guy I’d love to hang out with and pick his brain and share a drink or two with. He’s obviously brilliant and wonderfully funny and can pull the rug out from under you with a few sentences that you need to reread a few times just to understand how throughly he just messed with your expectations. All while having a blast with the sardonic and misanthropic and yet objectively funny story that comes from dark places and leads to those even darker — but chuckling along the way. Oh, and you betcha there’s going to be a grandfather paradox — but presented Tchaikovsky-style, with a fresh irreverent take on it and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

“How I love the rugged outdoors life! Living out here with nothing but the fields and the animals and literally the best technological support that anyone ever invented.”

I start to think that there’s nothing in SFF that Tchaikovsky cannot do. He is yet to disappoint me. His books have all been solid for me, and if he doesn’t eventually become one of SFF acknowledged classics, I will be quite baffled.

And if you don’t feel a shiver of dread at hearing the word “twee” after finishing this book, then you, my friend, will need to give that last page or two another read.

4 stars. 5 stars as of 2022. It was darkly delightful and went to places I forgot about on the reread. Tchaikovsky is a genius.

“We’ll detonate it and turn their entire postepochalyptic utopia into a wasteland of nothing, and then we’ll go build a new farm on the new broken edge of history, whenever that turns out to be, and settle down to murder time travellers and troll historical figures again. Everyone should have a retirement plan.”

—————

Thanks to NetGalley and Solaris for the ARC.

——————

Also posted on my blog.

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘I am time's gatekeeper, and without me the future would become the same ruin as the past.’

While time travel is a fascinating and fun concept, let’s be honest: we would use it as a weapon and it would end poorly for everyone. Which is exactly what has happened in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s darkly comedic One Day All This Will Be Yours, which reads like a snarky companion to books like This Is How You Lose the Time War because there’s plenty of mind-bending multiverse action and a spy vs spy type element where weeks of trying to murder the other in order to stop the future blossoms into a loving friendship or possibly more. As will happen. Tchaikovsky’s books are always a big, charming brain at work and he writes with such wit and whimsy that makes him irresistible, but it’s the humor that really does it for me. It’s a well-needed laugh of often gallows humor to stave off the fear and trembling of Tchaikovsky’s biting look at a future where war has destroyed time. Quite literally. So buckle up, time travelers, because this is a sharp book that will have you rolling as it confronts humanity in all it’s dark, destructive tendencies.

‘I am saving the unseen future from interference,’ the narrator tells us from his peaceful farm at the end of time enjoying retirement from the military. ‘We were the time warriors, and we killed time,’ and so our narrator has taken it upon himself to dispose of any other time travelers and ensure the future is as human-less and pristine as possible. By that I mean he literally murders anyone who tries to use time travel (he’s parked himself at the end of time as a sort of trap for them) and then goes back in time and murders their grandparents or some other disaster to ensure time travel won’t be invented in their timeline.

‘They all end up here, because this is the end-time. This is all the time there is. This is the trailing edge of what comes later, after the breach in regular transmissions left by the war. A bottleneck, you understand. You want to fling yourself forwards past the badlands of the war, this is where you end up. And I’ll be waiting for you. Nobody gets by me.’

Oh and by “murders them” I mean he feeds them to his pet dinosaur, because if the whole of history is your playground why wouldn’t you tame an Allosaurus for home security? ‘She might be several tons of ravaging therapod dinosaur, but the old girl is also just a big softy; feed her and rub her tummy and she's yours forever.’ So this is all fine and dandy until one day someone shows up and informs him he is their long past ancestor… And their future society is twee bullshit that he must destroy.

‘I am the full stop to the sentence that is human history. That's the point.’

This book is honestly such a joy and nobody can do it quite like Tchaikovsky. You can feel his intelligence permeate every book but he never comes across as trying too hard or showing off but simply excited to tell you some shit that will blow your mind. And I am here for the mind blowing. He’s also just hysterical. I read this in a single sitting and was dying laughing. There’s so many fun opportunities for jokes here. I mean, he can go anywhere so why not party with some French students right before their big revolution:

‘I teach them the rousing songs from the relevant musical and we bellow it out at the army camped out there, and at the uncaring populace of Paris. And they actually do Hear The People Sing and next morning the entire city's up in arms and I've screwed over history again.’

There are some great lines and references that just kill, and just amazing scenarios using historical figures in weird ways including ‘ a rather baffled-looking Tomas de Torquemada, because even the Spanish Inquisition didn't expect this.’ And if fucking around with history is fun solo, imagine how much fun it can be with a friend. Well, if that friend isn’t someone who is just as efficient as murdering and dodging traps as he is and doesn’t get him first. Because this is a race to end the future of mankind and neither side wants to see anyone live, because the people who want humanity to live on turn out to be horribly annoying and live in a utopia that is just as awful as the dystopia of time war.

‘And I feel my heart grow three sizes, because she’s a bitter sociopath, but she’s my bitter sociopath.’

While this is technically the second book in a series (Terrible Worlds: Destinations) it can be read totally independent of the others and is more just a thematic look at terrible places on can end up where we realize the scariest thing in the universe is *shocker* humans! And while, sure, this all seems pretty bleak, these books are just so funny and charming you won’t care. One Day All This Will Be Yours is a thrill-ride of dark joy and time traveling murder and Adrian Tchaikovsky is an absolute GEM of a speculative fiction writer. You should definitely drop everything and read at least one.

5/5

‘yes, there's a Sphinx out there with my face. I am not proud. It was an infantile thing, to spend eight years pretending to be Osiris by way of high-tech trickery in order to get them to build it that way. I have regrets. I don't go and see that one.’

[Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ · Rating 5 out of 5]

How I Learned to Love the Time Travel Bomb

4.5 stars. Full review, first posted on FantasyLiterature.com:

What’s a grumpy, misanthropic time traveling warrior to do? Governments and factions have misused time travel machines, each using their time machines to remake the past in the way they want it to be, over and over again. Time travel machines really are the ultimate weapon: if you go back far enough you can change history enough that your enemy never has a chance. Except that your enemy’s time traveling agents are cut off from those changes, so they’re still around to try to change history in a different way that favors them. And then there are Causality Bombs, “[f]or when regular time travel just can’t mess up continuity enough.” Now the past is irretrievably broken into shards and splinters.

So our surly main character, the last survivor of the time soldiers, has set himself up as a gatekeeper in a distant future to make sure it never happens again past his point in time. His tech allows him to pull all time travelers heading to the far future to stop in his particular place and time, where he can make sure they never go any further. And when that involves murdering said time travelers — he keeps guns, poisons and a feathery Allosaurus named Miffly just for this purpose (“she is ridiculously adorable when she’s not actually eating people”) — well, that’s just the way it goes. Until one day, when he gets an unpleasant surprise … from his future. Maybe, though, with the help of Miffly, he can solve this latest problem too.

One Day All This Will Be Yours, a new SF novella by Adrian Tchaikovsky, is wildly intelligent and imaginative, narrated by the main character with lots of irreverent and extremely black humor. You have to be able to enjoy a protagonist who, with no discernable regret, offs any number of innocent people in pursuit of what he views as the greater cause. One of the highlights is when he and a time-traveling antagonist engage in a battle in which each of them has pulled together an army of the worst villains they can find throughout human history: Stalin, multiple versions of Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Báthory, Vlad the Impaler, Ching Shih, and many, many more.

In the end there is only one of them left, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s Hitler. Basically because he’s been hiding in a bunker all this time. He pokes his head up, and I set Miffly on him. … It’s very therapeutic. And the thing about allosaurs is they can run really quite fast, and the thing about Hitlers is that they can’t, not really, or not for very long.

Tchaikovsky’s concept of time and causality being broken is uniquely executed here in One Day All This Will Be Yours. Our main character makes the most of his access to the past, both for pleasure and to enforce his idea of keeping the far future pristine. Of course, time travel fiction is replete with paradoxes, and everything here isn’t entirely logical — at least, my brain couldn’t quite wrap itself fully around this novella’s concept of time — but Tchaikovsky commits to it completely and pulls you along with him, immersing you in this fascinating and slightly loopy world until you really don’t care any more if it doesn’t altogether make sense.

My only qualm with One Day All This Will Be Yours is that its ending is remarkably abrupt, with reams of hanging threads and no real attempt at a wrap-up. I don’t think I fully get what Tchaikovsky was going for with that ending, other than that it certainly gives a “well, here we go again” type of impression, but even after a couple of rereads I’m still not a fan of it. As a whole, though, this novella is so very funny, creative and intelligent that I have to give it my strongest recommendation … at least if you’re a fan of dark, flippant humor.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC!

[Blaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

That thing we did, that broke everything in the universe; which left all of history in a scatter of sharp-edged shards so that nothing led to anything—that war, that lunacy, that terrible, terrible time-to-end-all-times—must never come again. And to that end, I would set a trap. I would create a bottleneck here at the near end of the rest of time. I would ensure that anyone travelling into the future from that broken desert of glass would find only one thing: me. They would find me, and my alarms would go off, and I would find them. And then they would die, and I would go back and ensure that nobody else would ever venture onto the seas of time to wash up on my shore.

And beyond my postepochalyptic ranch, time could just stretch on forever, never to be troubled by any human presence. Never to be broken, maimed, mauled, mutilated or spindled. I was the great gatekeeper, and my watchword was You Shall Not Pass.

Thanks to NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for sending me an ARC of One Day All This Will Be Yours in exchange for an honest review.

One Day All This Will Be Yours is a fairly original time travel story. In the aftermath of the Causality War—when humanity tried to use time-travel as a weapon against each other and instead wrecked our shared history—our unnamed narrator lies in wait at a quaint farm at a far distant time. Whenever some remaining time traveler arrives, he kills them and then goes back and grandfathers out of existence their culture’s very ability to time travel. Until one day, when a new group of time travelers arrive and upset his understanding of the effect of his actions. Soon, he’s engaged in a Spy v. Spy battle with Zoe, a time traveler who just might be his homicidal equal, before things get even stranger ....

The plot takes a little while to get going, but once it does, the rest of the book flies. The narrator is so funny and sarcastic that you can forget for stretches that he’s responsible for an unknowable number of genocides. The plot is largely unpredictable and the story is very inventive—I can think of no other book that combines Soviet-era tractors and a pet Allosaurus. One Day All This Will Be Yours is one of those very rare books that could have been enjoyably longer. A quick, fun read. Recommended.

3/2/2021 update: reposting my review to celebrate that today is publication day!

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, when you just HAVE to have a really messed up, misanthropic, let's-kill-all-the-universe-right-now kind of story, this one is always available.

Because, let's face it, we all sometimes need a fantastically misanthropic tale to get us through the day.

Of course, if you wanted a novella that reminds you quite a bit of This Is How You Lose the Time War with the love, the constant Princess Bride feel, the murderous intent, PLUS a bunch of time-hopping that isn't quite as poetical but is still definitely delicious, then this is ALSO a go-to story.

And, let's also face it, it's a Tchaikovsky SF and I'm absolutely sure from here on out that I'll never read one of his SFs that I'll ever dislike. It just can't happen, now.

[Beverly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tiny book with a massive psychological hook which pulls you in and won't let go. A misanthrope living by himself at the end of time, makes sure there is no one else to bother him or continue to mess about with the already destroyed world. He is gleefully happy in his nirvana until a couple of idiots show up. This is told in a stream of consciousness style which is perfect for the self-centered character. Funny and strewn with outrageous bits (evil men and women from the past are summoned to fight a Grand Guignol battle) One Day All This Will Be Yours is almost perfect.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
eventually I ended up in a staff meeting where seventy-five per cent of the people were actually me, from various points in my career. (c)

First of all, I'm so very-darn-awful mad on behalf of Miffly. One day they give you the nice 'I had a blast at Pompeii' necklace and the next they murder you with the Causality Bomb. I'd eat them all on her behalf!

On that note, I think I've just found my soulmate in Adrian Tschaikovsky! The guy who wrote this gem is definitely worthy of reading, just in case he produces any more gems like this one!

Hilarious take on the familial ties: your distant twee descendants who behave like a reverse Auntie 'who wants you to get it on, finally’ and chases you around the shores of distant time(s) with flipcharts…. I think Smantha and Weldon are my new fav characters for worlds to come!

The MCs are so WONDERFULLY obstinate and endearingly sociopathic that I love them (even though they don’t make sense about 77% of the end of time).

I am not so fond of the ending, I rarely enjoy open endings. But, I think I’ll let it slide considering how dynamic everything is, ultimately.

I have always been wary of the time travel books. I read them, enjoy them, love them but am wary of them for some unfathomable reason. Maybe because I really, really, really strongly empathise that poor butterfly that gets squashed all the time (or just that one time in the past). And then you come back and suddenly you live in a very different place that doesn’t work anymore for you. Makes one weary: how to you really make sure you don’t change any (scratch those insects, microworld also matters) photons in the past? Yes, photons, I love how AT refers them as well! Looks like a very horrible things are afoot with time travel, so it’s not very conductive to relaxing.

This novel, I think, has healed my tender sensibilities on time travel via making all this stuff so very tongue in cheek and lighthearted and hilarious. I love this concept and totally enjoyed the antihero battle with the final Miffly’s snack, the trolling of everyone, Caligula included, and the rest of sheer awesomeness AT has whipped up for us! Tweeeeeeeee!!!!!

Q:
desperation stains the soul if you stew in it long enough. You can tell someone who literally has nowhere in all of time and space they call home, orphaned from all of causation, and these two aren’t it. They’re far too comfortable and cheery. I recognise people with a solid When behind them, the products of a logical sequence of consecutive events. (c)
Q:
I am my own paradox. (c)
Q:
It’s not often one finds one can save the world by sheer indolence. (c)
Q:
I kick off my spring break by falling in with Odysseus just as he’s about to leave the smoking ruins of Troy. I mean, if you’re looking for a pointlessly complicated journey with lots of waiting around, you honestly can’t beat an angry Greek man spending far too long trying to get across one of the smallest seas in the world. (c)
Q:
Everyone dies, after all; every good time ends. Time itself ended. They are doomed, but in their doomed moment they live forever, and at least they had a good time for one night. Sometimes that’s all that counts. (c)
Q:
I am genuinely mad, bad and dangerous to know, and in at least three versions of events that’s something Lord Byron ends up saying about me. (c)
Q:
And I’m sure you’re a very nice girl and everything, but I really need to murder you now. Look, can you just drink the wine? (c)
Q:
They are the most malign animals I ever saw. Their eyes don’t actually glow red like the pits of Hades but they might as well, and if I were to look close enough I reckon even their fleas have eyepatches and carry flick-knives. (c)
Q:
As such, the prenuptial present of some rabid carnivores is perplexing, to say the least. I feel a great need to quiz her about it ... (c)
Q:
“She doesn’t want to. And I don’t want to. We’re getting along platonically just exactly fine.” Meaning we spent all afternoon throwing things at Plato and it was hilarious. (c)

[Phrynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This author writes some really good books and this is one of them.

One Day All This Will Be Yours is an original take on time travel with some clever and often very funny journeys into the past. At some point the MC has even travelled back far enough to fetch himself an Allosaurus to keep as a pet.

The story is based on the fact that at some point in history time travel became generally used and eventually abused as a method for fighting wars. An easy way to solve today's problems was to travel back in time and remove the cause of the problem from existence. By the time this book begins we have one man left, living at the end of time and preventing humanity from going into the future.

I loved the author's ingenuity and his dry humour. He creates some marvellous characters, all of them basically evil and totally devoid of compassion, but still blackly humorous. If you have ever spent a moment pondering the laws of time travel you must read this one!

[Jamie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tchaikovsky always demonstrates a flair for infusing, sparingly but deftly, some deliciously humorous elements in his writings, but with One Day All This Will Be Yours he takes it to a whole new level.

This is a story of a war gone wrong - very, very wrong - after the introduction of time travel. And one man's mad quest to ensure it won't ever happen again, at any cost, morality be damned. Tchaikovsky proves, once and for all, the ultimate futility and devastation of a time war, especially once the Causality Bombs start flying and you've shattered time into a million broken shards. A war that leaves soldiers fighting for a side that no longer exists and likely never will again. Surprisingly (although really nothing should come as a surprise in this story) somewhere or when in there, at the very end of time itself, there's some incredibly sociopathic yet also really sweet, actual romance too.

Deeply sardonic, misanthropic and frequently ridiculous, this is a clear warning to you would-be time machine inventors that your technology will, despite all your benign intentions, inevitably be used for nefarious (and perhaps hilarious) purposes. It's clear Tchaikovsky really let loose and had a blast with this, as I did reading it!

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

True love is ... when you're trying to kill each other. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

It's the end of times. Because the invention of time travel caused humanity to break causality. Forever. Or so the last time soldier thought. Until "someone" shows up and shows him a terribly gushing Utopia in the future. So of course he no longer just has to guard the Here and Now against the past but also against the future. And how better to do that than by preventing himself from jumpstarting said future by killing his supposed love interest. The only problem is she has a problem with her "destiny", too, and figures it best to kill her intended and be done with it.
Hilarity ensues, not least thanks to their creative ways of trying to kill each other.

This was a fast and light read but sooooo much fun. And not just because there were dinosaurs as pets and lots of timey-wimey stuff and two deliciously murderous people that must be my spirit animals. :D
You see, there was also a bit of gravitas, which was highly appreciated as well.

Soooo good!

[K.J. Charles]

Delightful comic romance about a battle-demented mass murderer attempting to put an end to history. You don't get many of those.

Time travel shenanigans, a terrific premise, a really well done romance of the completely batshit variety, and bucketloads of snark. Just hugely enjoyable, slightly in the way Murderbot is enjoyable but without any morals at all. And there's a pet dinosaur! What's not to like?

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now that was the time-traveling misanthrope + fuzzy anthropophagous dinosaur book my shriveled heart didn't know it needed. I adored its campy sociopathy, casual poisoning attempts, chin-scratch-loving allosaur, and our unnamed narrator's aversion to tweeness. All of that, juxtaposed against the distant horrors of the great Causality War which reduced humanity to just one man. (Okay, admittedly, he helped with the reduction part.)

And we'd been pulling bricks out and shoving new bricks in, one after the other, and the tower had teetered and tottered but not fallen over, and we told ourselves that was becaused silly little time warriors like us couldn't possibly have an effect on something as big as causality.

It's a lot like when we screwed the climate, to be honest. You never think you're going to affect something as big as that. I mean, I'm just burning a little coal here, right? The planet's very big, this piece of coal or cup of oil or forest of trees, it can't be important in the grand scheme of things. A weird blind spot for a species all too happy to consider itself the centre of the universe in every other way.

Fair. But ouch.

I mostly read this because Hirondelle's excellent review said it was like a misanthropic response to the soppily romantic This is How You Lose the Time War, which, to no one's surprise, I was not able to finish because my eyes were rolling too hard. This is a perfect description. The humor in this one is dark (have I ever laughed at a Hitler reference before? I think not), the romance is non-existent, the historical and literary references are fun, and its sensibilities are just far more in line with my own. Also to no one's surprise, I am on Team Miffly all the way.

My first Tchaikovsky, and one I'd like to have in my personal library.

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

One Day All This Will Be Yours: Signed Limited Edition
by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Hardcover, 192 pages
Expected publication date: March 2nd 2021 by Solaris

This is a clever and witty look at time travel and a fellow that wants to be the last time traveler and last person on Earth. He has Miffly, his pet Allosaurus, who he feeds time travelers to. Our time traveler explains how too many travelers have broken time, fractured it beyond repair. To remedy some of the problems he picks off other travelers, goes back to their origin point and prevents time travel knowledge from developing. He also travels himself to find them.
He has his nice farm with robots to do all the work, sheep, and Miffly at the end of time and quite content with life until a young couple shows up. He is about to feed them to Miffly when they tell him their surprise for showing up. It changes his life! He gets really upset! The action really gets wild then!
This is a fun, crazy book with zany characters I fell in love with! I love Miffly! It's a fun romp through history, society, and what if's! A story of sci-fi time travel and paradox.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for the Arc. The review is voluntary and opinions are all my own!

[Mimi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book and I met
- at the right time (late summer, early fall)
- during the right mood (I was looking for a proactive post-world novel with some humor)
- under the right circumstances (it arrived in the mail and I had forgotten I pre-ordered it)

Also, there's a dinosaur on the cover.

All these elements came together effortlessly.

* * * * *

It's been several months yet I still think about this book from time to time because it made me ask a question I never thought I had to ask. How can something be cute but also genocidal at the same time? How, indeed. Therefore, 5 stars.

* * * * *

I've had a whole year to turn this book over and over in my head, and I've finally come to see why I enjoyed it so much. It's simple, really. It fills that bottomless hunger I have whenever I get that feeling that makes me want to nuke this planet into oblivion. It's usually a reaction to something or multiple things outside my influence, things I will never be able to change (for the better) (because they're institutional). This compact novella soothes that hungry, nuke-triggering feeling for awhile, and that's why I love it. Simple, really.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A tongue in cheek time travel story that goes from cute to pretty dark real fast.

2.5 stars. Gets too caught up in being funny and squanders a bunch of readerly goodwill on "safe" comedy that jibes poorly with the inventive stuff, but still great for a quick weekend read.

[Lukasz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. The story’s narrator, the sole survivor of the War To End All Wars, lives on a farm at the end of the world. He’s a time warrior and occasional murderer of errant time travellers. Whenever someone gets there, he makes sure they’ll finish their journey in the belly of his pet Allosaurus, Miffly. And after that, he makes a time-travel to destroy his unwanted guest’s culture ability for travelling in time.

He has good reasons to act this way, and he believes he’s doing it to save the future. But it’s also possible he’s just a misanthropic bastard who enjoys being the last surviving human being and has no intention to share the rest of history with anyone.

I probably told you more about the plot than I should have, so I’ll stop right now. One Day All This Will Be Yours offers a wildly irreverent take on a time travel-gone-wrong trope. It turns the grandfather paradox inside out. It’s hilarious and clever, and Tchaikovsky’s thoughts about the destructive potential of time-travel made me rethink the coolness of the concept.

People have described a lot of things as an ultimate weapon, a doomsday measure, a holiday at the final resort. None of them were, not really. Even nukes are just a better way of killing people that leaves a longer-lasting stain on the carpet. City-devouring intercontinental missiles and orbital railgun strikes: these things are on a straight line of development from slings and thrown rocks. But time machines really are the ultimate sanction. And just like the nukes of an earlier era, by the time the war started, everyone had them, and everyone had signed a lot of important pieces of paper swearing they wouldn’t use them. Because we knew that as soon as anyone actually used a time machine with hostile intent, that would be it.

One Day All This Will Be Yours has a great pace, compelling (if deliberately overdrawn) characters, serious questions to ask, and tons of cynical humor that almost made me roll on the floor. It hides plenty of surprises, brilliant ideas, and quotable lines. Without spoiling much, I can mention for example that the narrator loves his farm and travels in time to pick up an older model of a tractor or, when in the right mood, to party with Jackie Onassis, Lord Byron, or Nero.

I expect KJ Parker’s fans will love the flippant tone of the book and the narrator. I planned to avoid comparisons, but kept this one. I feel One Day All This Will Be Yours will resonate with a much broader audience than most of Tchaikovsky’s books. It shares Parker’s acerbic (and delightful) wit and take of human nature, but it copies nothing. It simply shows how versatile Tchaikovsky is as a writer. And here he’s in the prime form.

I absolutely loved it. With its frenetic pacing, irreverent tone, and fresh ideas, it ensures a great reading experience. A true gem.

[Nils | nilsreviewsit · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is only my second time reading a story by Adrian Tchaikovsky but I’ve already begun to see how versatile, bizarre and wonderfully imaginative this author is. One Day All This Will Be Yours is a post-apocalyptic novella set in a time where a war, known as the Causality War has caused much devastation, to be more precise it has ended the world. No one can be sure who started the war but we do know that it began after the invention of time travel; Causality Bombs were unleashed, and time was broken into a million shards. Yet there is one man who did survive, a time warrior who now lives in his own self made Eden. A man who is now hell bent on making sure the war never has the chance to happen again.

So, how does one go about preventing a time war? Well, our unnamed narrator has the solution in hand, and that solution is to spend the rest of his existence travelling through time killing every single person who had either invented or even shown an inkling of being able to invent time travel. If you’re thinking that’s rather an extreme approach, then know one thing, our main protagonist is a homicidal sociopath. He’s the kind of guy who’ll invite you in for a cup of tea, feed you a hearty meal, exchange pleasantries like he longs for your companionship. and then kill you before you even suspect a thing. Now this all sounds really dark, and on a surface level it is, but what I found most surprising, and what I absolutely loved, was that this novella is delightfully hilarious.

“Because it’s horrible out there, in history. It always was, even before we shattered it to bits. It’s full of war and plague, starvation, intolerance and misery. But, but, but, I hear you say. But hope, but progress, but the glory of human achievement.
A candle, I tell you. And the rest of it is the hurricane.”

Told in first person, in a somewhat stream of consciousness, our main protagonist views life in a cynical and mocking way. Through sharp, witty prose, we see how ridiculous us human beings can be. The pointlessness of wars, the way we have done everything over the decades to ruin our own environment. Tchaikovsky may do this through a flippant narrator but he nonetheless makes you think a lot about how we ruin the world with our own ignorance. Perhaps our main protagonist’s goal to live a solitary existence by killing any who may destroy the idyllic world he has created, isn’t such a bad idea after all.

What makes this story truly special is its bizarreness - Tchaikovsky’s daring ability to let the narrative get… weird! For example there’s Miffly, our main protagonist’s pet Allosaurus, who for a gigantic prehistoric monster was actually quite adorable. Then, one of my favourite chapters which came towards the end of the book involved a confrontation with Hitler, Stalin and three Jack the Rippers! Because why the hell not?! The narrative is also full of pop culture references expanding the decades, some of which I delighted in recognising—You Shall Not Pass—and some of which I had to look up. I never expected this novella to pack such a fantastically darkly comical punch, but Tchaikovsky nailed it.

“I hadn’t intended them to meet Miffly, who’s jumped the fence again, bad girl. In fact meeting Miffly is generally the last stop in the whirlwind tour of the future I have planned for people.”

Throughout reading One Day All This Will Be Yours I had visions of Tchaikovsky manically laughing whilst writing certain scenes, I can see the author truly revelled in his quirky satirical style and I believe he rather enjoyed it. I never knew I needed a novella about a time travelling sociopath with a pet dinosaur in my life, but I’m damn glad Tchaikovsky provided one.

ARC provided by Rebellion Publishing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my mind, this novella has to be a kind of reaction to This Is How You Lose the Time War where he read that thought it was a bit, uh, twee (it was), and decided to do it his own way, much darker, saying something about time travel and causality wars and wars in general but yeah, a bit of romance with time travel causality wars. But without all the twee, sappy stuff but a lot of dark humor, and snark. And this was so much much fun and so much more to my taste than that other novella.

Warning - I am not sure what to call this narrative, first person with a lot of reader-insert second person paragraphs. Might not be everybody's cup of tea (I would not describe it as mine, but did not care... It worked here).

Warning 2 - It is basically about a misanthrope psychopath (though I can see what led to it, and he has reasons arguably). It is very funny but dark humor.

Basically this was just my cup of tea, lots of fun, some character development and explanations, a very cute pet (because yes, if you time travel, just do it). That indeed seems like the best reality TV format known to mankind. Great pacing.

I am loving novellas lately and I was thinking this was kind of perfect at its length (no filler! Except fun stuff) till about 90% through and then the ending too rushed and open ended and wait I want some more from the side characters. A sequel would do. Please...

Incidentally, I think the first chapter works really well as a short story on its own.

[Ian Payton · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a blast. An excellent story about the lone survivor of a time war that has shattered time across the universe. All he wants is to be left alone, protecting the future from anything similar ever happening again.

I loved this from start to finish. I love a time travel story, especially where the mechanisms and consequences of time travel are self consistent and interesting - and this is a treatment of time travel I’d never come across before. Tchaikovsky seems to excel at writing the kind of flippant first-person narrative that I really enjoy, and the whole story is peppered with funny, snarky, witty, pithy, outrageous and simply joyous little moments of fun and dark humour. And the storytelling is superb.

Six stars out of five, rounded down.

[Mel (Epic Reading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 100 pages Adrian Tchaikovsky sets up a complex time travelling universe where time is in fragments and no continuity exists. Within that he narrates (from his lead male characters POV?) about love, loss, existence, and evolution. It’s really quite an impressive feat for 100 pages.
The only downfall, for me, is that the leading lady he meets and hangs out with for a time is a bit blah. She’s interesting at first but quickly seems to just be along for the ride as a possible baby incubator. As though Tchaikovsky wishes he didn’t need her in order to keep his storyline of the possible outcomes of the future intact.
If not for this point, this could be a five star novella.
A wonderfully quick, science fiction, time travelling focused story. The perfect sort of teaser is you’re unsure about classic sci-fi approach. It has enough so you can get a sense of the genre; but not too much that most won’t get to the end and at least understand that most sci-fi is all about the ending. Especially in a universe where time is no longer linear, or even really continuous; it’s more of a moment that both exists and doesn’t exist all at once (yes that a Schrödinger’s cat reference as the icing of this little review. Lol.)

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

[Milda Page Runner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well.. this is a first. So far I loved everything I've read by Tchaikovsky, but I really couldn't connect with the gleefully murdering everything and everyone main character in this story. Also time travel makes everything so inconsequential.. tricky subject.

[Gabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second listen: July 2021 - after all the books I've read this year this one still is my favourite

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

A disillusioned soldier from the causality war (the war to end all wars) retired as hermit farmer at a place at the end of times. His sole goal in life is to make sure nobody is ever timetravelling again to prevent the possibility of more war. So any timetraveller arriving at the end of time is in for a very nasty surprise - involving one of the coolest pets ever.
Of course his contemplative life comes to an abrupt end when one day somebody arrives he can't get rid off so easily.

What a relief to read (listen to) a novella that does everything right!
Every word tells, the plot concentrates on ... the plot (something that unfortunately has to be emphasised with nowadays novellas that I've read), the structure is just right, the narrator's voice is snarky, self-deprecating and relatable, the story idea is deliciously weird, but never strays into the unbelievable (well ... that's of course a large stretch when the topic is time travel ... but I hope you know what I mean), and the audioversion, read by Adrian Tchaikovsky himself, is hands down perfect.

The topic is tackled with a witty prose, really good ideas and so many weird twists that it stands out among the usual travel-back-in-time-to-kill-your-own-grandfather tropes like a beacon.

Even readers who can't be bothered with the timetravel trope anymore should give this one a try. It is Tchaikovsky at his best - and that says it all.

[*Tau* · Rating 4 out of 5]

Humorous time traveling novella

I am the full stop to the sentence that is human history. That's the point.

We never get to know the name of the main character of this time traveling novella.
But as he slowly unfolds his story, more and more details are revealed both about his past and his present life.
Because he now lives alone at the end times, also known as the postepochalypse.
Well, not entirely alone …

She might be several tons of ravaging therapod dinosaur, but the old girl is also just a big softy; feed her and rub her tummy and she's yours forever.

His dinosaur pet Miffly keeps him company.
She's certainly one of the most original pets you'll encounter in a fantasy book.
Every scene with her in it will make you laugh. That's guaranteed!

By setting up shop here where the regular passage of time recommences, and denying access to the future to all comers, I am saving the unseen future from interference. I am time's gatekeeper, and without me the future would become the same ruin as the past.

Our storyteller doesn't want history to repeat itself and thus sees it as his vocation to stop humanity.
He'll be the last survivor.
At least, if he can stop all the time travellers who succeed to get to the point where he's now.
As he says himself:

I have come to value my solitude, here at the postepochalyptic end of time. I don't mind visitors, but I make sure they don't stay long and, simultaneously, never leave. And I make sure nobody can ever come looking for them.

In order to maintain his goal, he regularly goes back to the past to set things right.
Lots of interesting thoughts are discussed. The only downpoint is that some of those interludes felt a bit like page-filling with repetition of the same ideas over and over again.
Luckily there's always humour present which gives a certain lightness to the whole:

I do wonder whether the way things turned out after the Causality War was inevitable the moment someone invented the first time machine (and the problem with someone inventing the first time machine is that someone else immediately took a trip to ten years before and invented the first first time machine so they could grab the patent, and so on, and so on).

This book offers an excellent mix of serious subjects (like war), funny thoughts (delicously black humour), an uncommon romance (just read it for yourself to find out), …
For people who already know the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky, this book is apparently quite different in approach than his other books. But after all, isn't that one of the main qualities of this author?
If on the other hand this is your first acquaintance with him, it's without doubt a very nice introduction to a talented writer.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Solaris for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Marc Pastor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ara entenc les recomanacions entusiastes que em feien d’aquesta novel·la, perquè sembla que estigui escrita per a mi.
D’alguna manera, m’ha passat el mateix que amb la guia de l’autoestopista galàctic: a l’inici hi ha un enamorament bestial perquè m’agrada tot. Viatges en el temps, guerra de causalitat, paradoxes, mascotes dinosaure… i escrit amb gràcia i bon ritme. M’havia de para per tal de no llegir-ho massa ràpid. Volia que em durés.
Cap a la meitat, hi ha una decisió que no m’ha acabat de fer el pes. Un cop exposat tot el corpus teòric, i després d’uns passatges interessantíssims de viatges en el temps a l’Odissea o Els Miserables, la novel·la es converteix en un Benny Hill que no li està a l’alçada. El to és d’una lleugeresa que no em venia de gust. Entenc que tiri per la comèdia, i si ho hagués vist venir, ho hauria agraït, però l’inici és tan potent que apostar per aquest camí m’ha fet fer una ganyota. Per sort al final remunta i torna a oferir idees engrescadores.
Sembla que no m’hagi agradat i no és això. M’ha encantat. M’ho he passat molt i molt bé. Té conceptes nous que no havia imaginat abans i que em semblen fabulosos. No puc recomanar-la més!

[Justine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

Definitely not my favourite of Tchaikovsky's. Although I did like the story here better than Walking to Aldebaran, this one is written in pretty much the same voice, which I didn't care for in either case.

I know a lot of people love constant snark but it is not something I find at all appealing in large doses. Or even medium doses really. Honestly a few humorous statements sprinkled here and there are probably my limit.

Putting aside the voice, the idea behind the story was kind of interesting. However, any depth in examining the idea of trying to prevent any further time travel was sacrificed in favour of maintaining a constant air of irreverence.

So, a resounding meh from me, although I know I'm in the minority.

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time travel is fun because it makes your head hurt (especially if the author takes a loose approach to explaining how time travel works). Time travel is fun because of the nonlinear story possibilities. Time travel is fun because you can see what happens when you try to kill your own ancestors. This book has all of that plus dinosaurs and soviet-era tractors! Honestly, Tchaikovsky has written a really fun novella here, fun and action packed and filled throughout with some casual misanthropy and regret over the consequences of tribalism and war. An engaging, thoughtful read (even if I never totally understood how one could break the time line....).

**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Fiona Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have sat in the palaces of the Minoans before the Bronze Age Collapse. I have dined with the egalitarian philosophers of Harappa in the Indus Valley before the world turned and ground them to dust. I have taught whist to Archimedes shortly before a Roman soldier gutted him. Ahd yes, human achievement is a grand and splendid little candle in the great vast night of causality, but there's only so often you can watch it be snuffed out before it's easier to become the snuffer.

It's not an easy thing to be the only survivor of a time war, as our narrator will shortly tell you when reading this book; the novelty of jaunting about in time wears off quickly when all you can do is wait for someone to come along and blow everything up.

Misanthropic? Certainly, but he owns it, and there's a degree of humour that helps to reduce the sting. Miffly is the only exception to his strictly enforced no visitors policy; I can see why, she's instantly endearing. In fact, I liked her more than said narrator, truth be told, even if there's plenty of evidence that he's probably right about humanity. I just prefer a little more light in the dark, as objectively good as this was.

[Jemppu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where Tchaikovsky apparently plays a game of D&D by oneself. A delightful romp with an increasingly out of control cast of NPCs and a fascinating, The Forever War-ish / Looper-esque premise.

For my taste a bit too mixed blend to be a fully enjoyable cup, perhaps. Some muted aromatic flavors as there might've been included in the overspiced concoction.

3 and fractions of stars.

_____
Reading updates.

[Wulf Krueger · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a post-apocalyptic time and space, mankind is practically extinct due to a time war. At the end of time a sole survivor - a former soldier - sits and gleefully murders any stragglers. In order to remain alone and to prevent another rise of humanity and, thus, another war, he also travels back in time and happily commits genocide or whatever it takes to eradicate the survivors’ communities as well.

Yes, murder and genocide for good fun.

And as if that wasn’t enough in itself: I didn’t find it funny in the least. When this novella wasn’t about (mass) murder, it was about the cheapest kind of trolling.

One disgusted star out of five.


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