Scott Alexander Howard: The Other Valleys

Scott Alexander Howard has published a brilliant time travel novel that feels deeply human and is rooted in a small French community which comes vividly to life.

Many time travel stories get fixated on the mechanics of the universe (or multiverse) to the point of losing focus on the human element. This book sidesteps all that by dropping you into a world where time travel is simply a fact of life—and more specifically, of geography. It's a science fiction mechanic but without science getting in the way.

The unique and thought-provoking premise had me engaged with the philosophical quandaries that these children face growing up. This community by necessity lives under essentially martial law, where the guards patrolling the borders are responsible for protecting the very timeline that you live in and all the lives that are intertwined. You feel the brutality of their control and corruption, but also in ways you can understand the necessity of it.

The last few chapters were absolutely thrilling and hard to put down as I rooted for the main character to make real changes in the trajectory of her life. The novel keeps you fully engaged with questions of whether free will can exist, or if we're always fated to make the same choices.

It was a great start to my book reading journey in 2025, and I recommend it to anyone interested in novels that successfully marry high-concept ideas with a high-stakes emotional journey.