The SpaceTime Pool by Catherine Asaro Book Review

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 The Spacetime Pool 

By Catherine Asaro 


NEBULA AWARD WINNER Novella 


Published Year: 2008

Page Count: 136 pages

Medium Used: Kindle Scribe 

Genre : Multiverse, Time Travel, Fantasy, Magic, 2025-read. 

Rating : 3.75/5 




I thought her prose is good. It is easy to understand and flowing to keep me riveted. But she took some logical leniencies with the plot and didn't tie all the loose ends for me. I had many questions that had no answer and I felt a bit dissatisfied as a result. This book has two short stories/one novella and another short story - The Spacetime Pool and Light and Shadow .. both with elements of Science Fiction and the first with Fantasy, Magic too. 


The novella The Spacetime Pool is really good .. I wished she expanded more on the story. A woman who is kidnapped by accident by a man from another universe finds that she is part of a 40 year old prophecy and that she can never make it back to her world alive. She becomes the object of quarrel and fight between two brothers who also happen to be warring for the Othman empire throne. After a series of events, she chooses the kinder one of the two and since she has no one to call her family in her original world, settles down in this alternate universe. I wanted to know what happens to her next. What is the big thing that is set to happen in fifty years? How do the brothers fare and who eventually inherits the throne? See, all unanswered questions. I even checked if perhaps my copy doesn't have torn pages where I am missing the story. It is a brilliant tale. The world building is great - it felt like inhabiting a world that hasn't progressed much since the 16th century but nevertheless has ample magic and universe trotting devices. It is also a place where women are not given power, they do what the men want them to. One of the brothers is so kind and gentle while the other equally brutal and harsh. Yet they both have same drive and bloodline passing through them. Amazing. 


The second story Light and Shadow is ok .. a man depressed enough to not care for his life takes off into space in a spacecraft fitted with a spaceship drive and finds something remarkable in his testing process. The sacrifice made by the computer interface is touching and would have made me tear up if it is not entirely non living. :)




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