Book Review: City Beyond Time by John C. Wright

City Beyond Time: Tales of the Fall of Metachronopolis by John C. Wright

Nothing lasts forever, even if you have the ability to travel through time and try to make it stay. John C. Wright’s collection of short stories tell various significant and insignificant events near the end of the city of Metachronopolis, where time travelers called “Time Wardens” live and gather various items and people from history for their own amusement. With great power comes great corruption, but not everyone embraces the decadence and manipulations of the Time Wardens.

The stories have somewhat complicated plots that require the reader to pay attention to details, which is something that I like about time travel stories. The city is an interesting place with lots of nooks and crannies where unusual but plausible (granting the possibility of time travel) events take place. Murder mysteries, paranoid thrillers, and romantic dalliances are mixed in different levels in every story, providing dramatic tension. I especially enjoyed “Slayer of Souls” in which a man trys to run away from a horror that can read his mind. The sense of paranoia is strong but it is also well thought out and comes to a very satisfying conclusion.

This collection of stories is intelligent and entertaining and I look forward to revisiting it when my memories have faded a bit (nothing lasts forever!) and it reads like new.