Review: Alice Payne Arrives

Alice Payne Arrives by Kate Heartfield
My rating: 3.25 of 5 stars

3.25 Stars

Alice Payne Arrives is the first book in a new science fiction adventure series of novellas. The titular character Alice is a colorful character. She is a biracial young woman from a good family who has a side gig of being a highwayman (called the Holy Ghost) robbing men who are abusive of women. She also has (rather on the down-low) an engineer girlfriend named Jane who helps her cover her tracks. She uses an automaton, the creation of her girlfriend, named Laverna to assist her in her robberies. She lives in 1788.

In 1888 Prudence Zuniga, a time traveler from the future, tries again and again to change the events of the Mayerling Incident. (The murder suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera. For those who aren't history buffs, Rudolph's suicide changed the course of history by interrupting the Hapsburg dynastic line in in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in a way influenced the events that led to the First World War, aka The Great War in Europe.)

Crossing back and forth through time, from the 1700's to the 2100's, the stories of Alice and Prudence eventually connect with one another and they have a chance to change the draft of history.

I have honestly loved most all of the Tor.com novellas that have been released in recent years. This one however, felt uneven. I felt Prudence's chapters to be more gripping but still felt that I wasn't engaged emotionally with the outcomes. And the cutting back and forth through time, though a fabulous device, feels rushed here because of the constraints of the novella length. This is a story I honestly think would do better in novel length form, with more time to build out the characters and the world/times in which they live. I'll still pick up book 2, Alice Payne Rides but I hope Tor.com considers letting the author write longer works for these characters.

I received a Uncorrected Proof of this novella from Tor.com.

View all my reviews