Anachrony by Susana Imaginario

 

ANACHRONY 

BY 

SUSANA IMAGINÁRIO

Arianh had one wish.

Yewlow made it real.

And Time turned it into a regret.

Anachrony takes you on a journey to the bleak future of Aegea and the darkest places of the mind.

Can fate be avoided, or is the future just someone else's past?

With Anachrony, Susana Imaginário proves my suspicion that there is some kind of magic afoot with each new installment of the Timelessness series.

As the series has progressed, and with each new installment, Susana Imaginário has managed to knock me sideways with the brilliance of each new book, and I usually spend at least five minutes stunned over what I have read.

And this short little story did that again!

If you read the epilogue of Nephilim’s Hex and wondered “What’s that all about then?”, Anachrony fills in those gaps and answers those questions. It tells the story of what Arianh did next, a kind of Ariamh through the looking glass.

I have to say that Anachrony was not what I expected at all (which I should have expected, but there you go). The story takes place in Niflheim, but a different Niflheim than we are used to as things are not quite the same. In Anachrony, the story centres solely on Arianh and the subsequent events of what happens when she steps through the Chronodendron. This gives the novella a different feel to the rest of the series. With the focus being on one character the story is more linear in its execution, which works superbly in this instance and gives us a vivid picture of what Arianh is experiencing as she travels the world in which she finds herself.

In Anachrony, Susana Imaginário changes the perspective of the narrative, and my goodness is this effective for this story. It feels like we are experiencing the things that Arianh is experiencing, not only in terms of events, but also in relation to the emotions that she is experiencing, which makes the end of the story that little bit more emotive. It brings us closer to the feelings of disorientation that Arianh experiences as she journeys through Niflheim with only the Chronodendron for company.

I must apologise if I am being a little vague, but I want to stay away from the plot altogether as I think that the way to gain complete enjoyment from this book is to enter it blindly and let the story take you to where it is going without any pre-emptive knowledge of what lies inside the pages. However, what I can say is that Susana Imaginário handles the world building with her usual aplomb and style, and her characters remain vivid and evocative.

I have loved this series and I marvel at how Susana Imaginário continually wrong foots me with the shifting sands of her plot at each given moment. Just when I think I have an angle on the series and think that I have things pegged out in my head, she manages to pull the rug out from under my feet and introduce a new twist that sends all my counters flying in the air. Furthermore, I adore the ambiguity of it all, I mean, even the title of the book is ambiguous, and I am not sure whether the events in the book take place in the future or the past, similarly with the actual title of the series itself, which is kind of brought into sharp focus with the events in this story. I may be looking too deep into it, but this story has grabbed me, and I want to know more, whether it be about the mythology that she introduces and how that interweaves with the story or certain words that have been used and how they affect the story.

At the end of most of my reviews, I tend to say that if you haven’t read the Timelessness series you should go and check it out, and I am not going to fail you on this occasion either. Unfortunately, I will have to wait till next year until the story concludes, but I am so looking forward to seeing how Susana Imaginário will surprise me with that!