Book Review: Shades of Timeless Love: Anthology
Shades of Timeless Love: Anthology. Write Volumes, Jhoselin (Jojo) Dominguez, RR Canyas, Karen Brailsford, G.T. Naya, Annette Cyr, and Randall Jon Van Vynckt, February 12, 2022, eBook, 200 pages.
Reviewed by Katherine Tozer.
Shades of Timeless Love is a collection of genre-bending romances by Write Volumes. Write Volumes is a group of writers, and this is the sixth book in their Shades of Anthology series. The six authors of this anthology include artists, scientists, and journalists who interrogate how love can be timeless in diverse, imaginative ways. What would you leave behind for love? Can it last longer than a lifetime? Could you find it outside of yours?
The anthology begins with a poetic meditation on love and time, proceeds to New York City, where a lovesick protagonist fiddles intentionally with his own timeline, then introduces an unsuspecting protagonist in LA whose distant past catches up to her in more ways than one. In the next three stories, time jolts characters physically from recognizable today to a transcendental future, a pre-Columbian past, and a not-so-distant, closeted history we may wish were further behind us.
The twists will keep you guessing. You can expect some happy endings, but no simple ones. Romance's question–whether they find love–is complicated by science fiction's: what is possible? In "Maths and Magicks," "ICYMI: In Case You Missed It," and "On the Brink," protagonists find their person, but not necessarily their place. And the women in "ICYMI" and "On the Brink" aren't looking for love, so finding it in an unfamiliar time adds another wrinkle to the resolution. In "Trading Places," movie star Kris Weston can't have his person and also gets lurched out of place, but he is one of the few who ends up happy. Romance seems inevitable in "Ever After," where Brice and Bria know each other across centuries. Even Donny, a rival for Bria's love, can't threaten their connection. But science fiction and fate together can't conquer the familiar, systemic forces that have also mutated across centuries in this powerful story–at least not in this incarnation.
Brailsford's "Ever After" reminds me of Wild Seed, the first book in Octavia Butler's Patternist series, which also situates superhuman characters in highly realistic settings across long stretches of time. This enables the writers to juxtapose racism's past with its present against the backdrop of an unchanged cast. For example, Brice remembers, "These men and women possessed the same vacant look he had witnessed in the runaway slaves he encountered in forests as he stole away." The characters feel familiar and true from the outset, yet they are also complex and augmented.
Fans of Louise Erdrich's Future Home of the Living God will appreciate how Naya's "ICYMI" uses a fast pace, heightened sensory descriptions, and high drama to tell a story about conceiving a child in a suddenly unrecognizable world. Naya earns credibility to venture into the spectacular by capturing everyday details convincingly, like "Even at the bar where she is standing, her heartbeat already matches the sound waves" and "Zanah's enthusiasm is dropping like the temperature."
I would also recommend picking up this anthology if you liked This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. Timelines and characters blend in "Maths and Magicks" and "Trading Places" as protagonists chase lovers they know to be dead. Cyr's characters remain unnamed and largely unable to communicate but still emerge distinctive, intertwined, and lovable. Zanah's path across the dance floor in "ICYMI" has all the drama of a world-crossing even before she and Hamou do just about that.
Shades of Timeless Love is a fun read with plots that will spark your imagination and characters that will move you.