I grabbed this book and was very excited by the blurbs and flaps. Science-fiction, love stories, short stories, and well awarded, it sounded just up my alley. This book is comprised of two connected short stories bookending a novella. 

I loved the short stories “I’m Waiting for You” and “On My Way to You”. They are the journal entries and messages between an engaged man and woman as they repeatedly miss each other through time. As they get delayed or re-routed they jump back on another lightspeed ship to jump ahead a few hundred or thousand years in weeks of earth time, waiting for the other, but over and over and over again. Witnessing natural disasters, the end of humans on earth, and the restoration of the planet, they frog-hop over each other through time. I loved these stories as they were creative and emotional, and something I’ve never read before. In the notes, the author tells how the man’s side, “I’m Waiting for You”, was actually written to be marriage vows, and I love that.

But for the novella, the “Prophet of Corruption”. I definitely didn’t get it. Its a story about a group of higher beings, all divided from one common being, who invented earth to learn life lessons and pass time. Each being who invents a new philosophy for living (like wealth accumulation, hedonism, poverty, etc), is called a Prophet and builds a school and educates other beings in that philosophy. They can craft their lives on earth to learn new lessons and try new philosophies, and when they die and return, learn from those lives. However, as all life and all beings are sourced from a common being, as soon as one starts to see themselves as unique or individual, they are deemed “corrupt” and quarantined before being re-absorbed into another being (are you following me? lol). We follow one being who is struggling with corruption and the corruption of others as they try to fix this higher place (I think). Generally though, the whole novella was lost on me. I didn’t get the plot, I wasn’t sure what was happening or why, or what the message or story was for. If you know, please tell me!

So generally I think this book was a little disappointing. I’ll probably do some reading about the Prophet of Corruption to better understand it but I don’t know if it will drastically change my mind to the story. If you can read the short stories, I’d recommend them!