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The Other Valley

Scott Alexander Howard

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What Members Thought

Sep 24, 2024 John Warner rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, coming-of-age, literary-fiction, speculative-fiction, time-travel, dystopia

This literary fiction novel blurs the boundaries between reality and the surreal. The story is set in a unnamed lakeside community surrounded by woods and mountains. This community is sandwiched between two other identical communities, one to the west that is 20 years in the past and one to the east that is 20 years in the future. Between the three communities are fences, watchtowers, and patrolling guards to prevent residents from one community to travel to another. Anyone who wants to travel t ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Aug 10, 2024 Flo rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi, 4-star, literary-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 4.5 stars!

Well, this would probably have gotten 5 stars, or at least 4.75 (idk, I'm bad at making decisions) if the author hadn't decided to not use quotation marks for no discernible reason. I was still able to follow the story and all that, but it was a weird and (imo) unnecessary choice that made things harder, because I did have to reread a bit here and there when I didn't realize that someone had said something. Stylistically, it just seemed really weird overall.

Otherwise, I loved the sto 4.5 stars!

Well, this would probably have gotten 5 stars, or at least 4.75 (idk, I'm bad at making decisions) if the author hadn't decided to not use quotation marks for no discernible reason. I was still able to follow the story and all that, but it was a weird and (imo) unnecessary choice that made things harder, because I did have to reread a bit here and there when I didn't realize that someone had said something. Stylistically, it just seemed really weird overall.

Otherwise, I loved the story and characters as well as the questions that it brought up about fate and choices. I found the concept super original and different from other time traveling books that I've read, and while we don't really know why the world is how it is with the time traveling, that never mattered to me, it was just accepted as "this is how the world is," and I think the skill of the author never made me need more worldbuilding as I occasionally need in other books. The pacing of the book was a bit off; I raced through the first half of the book, but the second half of the book was a bit slower and took a while to fully pay off. When it did pay off though, it was huge, and I wasn't ever actually bored in the second half, so that was also okay with me.

The main character was fascinating as well despite her occasional terrible choices in life. I appreciated her practicality in the second half (view spoiler) because so many characters are too heroic and end up doing dumb shit. Of course, Odile's life still sort of went to shit for a bit because of the choices that she made - which begs the question of whether it was fate and if she ever really had a choice, given the future her that she saw in the East.

Something that really stood out to me was when Odile ended up ultimately going back to save Edme in the past, but realized that it wasn't even really about saving him, but saving herself from her future fate. This wasn't a book about teenage romance, but able taking fate into your own hands when given the chance. (I saved you was such a powerful line.) I wanted the book to continue because I wanted to find out what would happen to Odile down the line, since future (past???) Odile changed her entire future in a way that meant that future Odile would never exist to go back and change the future again (...if that makes sense), but I really liked that the author ended it there and left it to the readers' imaginations. The book did end a bit abruptly, so I wish the ending had been a little more smooth, but otherwise, it was a great ending.

This was a book that really made me think about fate and choices, like I mentioned earlier, and books that make me think beyond the story itself always rate highly with me. This is a perfect book (except for the quotation marks issue) and I hope there's no sequel, because it works so well as a stand-alone. ...more

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