It takes a fair amount of skill, and, I’m sure, planning, to write a multi-timeline book telling the stories of two characters 40 years apart. Add to that they’re both embarking on a deep space mission to Proxima Centauri, one before and one after a devastating alien attack on Earth’s Mars colony, and things get very complicated.
Ross Garner handles it with aplomb in his debut novel, Centauri’s Shadow. While it might sound like a setup for a spaceships and lasers funfest, it’s actually a very human story about how our personalities and lives are formed by trauma.
Cole Anderson (no relation) loses his family to tragedy as a young man, and is left both physically and mentally disfigured by the experience. His story is one of being ‘othered’ by his peers and growing resentful, even misanthropic as a result. He makes bad decisions, and maybe does some morally questionable things as his story progresses to adulthood and his reluctant journey.
Kyoko Ishihara grows up under the constant threat of imminent war (Hi, Gen X!), with human ingenuity turned wholly to defence against another alien attack. Detached from her own life, she is a willing volunteer for a likely suicide mission to save the planet.
As I said, two timelines can be tricky to handle, but Garner does it masterfully, switching between them in ways that hint at secrets and lies, teasing and then only revealing them when the time is right. This drives the plot and has you questioning how reliable the characters are and what they’re maybe not telling you.
But plot isn’t the real meat of the story here, it’s people, in all their flawed, damaged, destructive glory. It’s both of them stumbling toward their destiny, where their stories eventually intertwine to deliver the story’s climax. Questions are asked about what we do out of fear, what we assume about others and what it means about our very nature.
As I neared the end, I genuinely wasn’t sure which way it was going to go, and while either would have been utterly suitable endings, such was the complexity with which Garner had woven the story, the actual ending felt exactly right. In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed this deeply human tale set against an expansive backdrop of humanity on the verge of alien contact.
Justin
The Write Advice 