Necessary Evil

February 11, 2013
The satisfying third volume of Tregillis’s Milkwood Triptych successfully throws time travel into a mix that already included alternate history, spycraft, and mad science. Following the events of The Coldest War—with the other-dimensional demons called Eidolons, “the mortar between the bricks of the universe,” ready to destroy the world—sociopathic clairvoyant Gretel hatches a plan to send secret agent Raybould Marsh back in time to protect humankind. Landing in 1940, an older, scarred Marsh manipulates his younger self, his young wife, and novice wizard Will Beauclerk into courses of action that often parallel those of the first book. Naturally, complications ensue thanks to the new timeline’s own manipulative Gretel and Marsh’s younger self, just as stubborn as always. Tregillis neatly juggles two viewpoints from the same character (giving the future Marsh first-person narration), and plays with notions like free will and irony while wisely avoiding headache-inducing paradox discussions. He also keeps the tale grounded in its espionage roots, providing a thrilling spy novel as much as a science fiction story.

February 15, 2013
Independently intelligible final installment--Tregillis provides an ingenious summary while getting things under way--of the Milkweed Triptych (The Coldest War, 2012, etc.). In this bleak fantasy, World War II was fought between Nazis with devastating psychic powers and British warlocks employing Eidolons, irresistible demons beyond time and space--a struggle the British ultimately lost. In 1963, after the Soviets defeated the Nazis and took over their horrid experiments, Gretel, a psychic so powerful that she can not only view possible futures, but actually create them, escaped from Soviet captivity and fled to England. So terrified of the Eidolons was Gretel--they come to dominate and ultimately destroy reality--that she determined to create the only possible future free of the demons by conveying banged-up former spy chief Raybould Marsh back to an alternate 1940 where the war is in its infancy. Marsh, who fears the Eidolons more than he loathes the fiendish Gretel and doubts the possibility of outwitting her, cooperates while scheming to somehow defeat her and achieve his personal goals: to save his marriage and preserve the life of his infant daughter. Marsh, then, without revealing his identity, must guide his younger self and youthful colleagues along the necessary path. But can he resist the temptation of stealing his beloved wife away from--himself? This time, Tregillis gets many details of 1940s London wrong, though not fatally; what's more troubling is that one of the issues on which the plot depends probably doesn't work. Still, even this doesn't significantly detract from the intensity of the narrative, the torments of the protagonist or the deviously alluring storyline. Darkly fascinating, flaws and all: A thoroughly satisfying conclusion to an imaginative tour de force.

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