Jasmin Kirkbride's debut novel, The Forest on the Edge of Time, is an urgent composition of climate crisis and immersive time travel. In a postapocalyptic future, Hazel Brandt forms a fractious alliance with an irritable artificial intelligence and a flock of nonverbal robots whom she christens "the Tinys." Her goal is to communicate through an interdimensional dreamscape with her sister, Echo, who has traveled to ancient Greece to seed new philosophical ideas in an attempt to avert climate change.
Kirkbride tantalizes readers with questions about the hidden trauma that fuels the sisters in their high-stakes endeavor. Her novel is told from three perspectives: Hazel at the mysterious Station C in the far future, Echo in the past, and a young girl named Anna in the present. The arcs of these narratives come together in an incredibly satisfying way, with a few astonishing "aha!" moments.
The time travelers arrive with a kind of amnesia. Their memories return in bits and flashes, feeding into the mechanics of the time travel for a fascinating and thoroughly imagined dynamic. Kirkbride leaves a trail of clues that leads readers back to the sisters' shared trauma and gradually doles out information about the curious relationships between the characters in different timelines. It ratchets up the tension to irresistible, compulsive-read intensity.
Kirkbride's gorgeous writing weaves heavy topics with glimmers of hope, creating a delicate balance that nods to her PhD thesis on radical hope in climate fiction. The Forest on the Edge of Time melds sci-fi and literary traditions and is surprising, thoughtful, and artfully crafted. --Carol Caley, writer