Review of Redundancies and Potentials by Dominque Dickey
Redundancies and Potentials by Dominque Dickey (Neon Hemlock, 2025) is a fantastically weird and weirdly touching novella about time travel and sisters.
Isadora and Aster are purpose-created sisters with the ability to travel through time. They’ve been told all their lives that they need to practice traveling so that someday they can fix a massive problem for the Agency that created them. One key downside to this practice, however, is that having more than one version of a person in time is prohibited, so they take turns jumping while the other one stays behind to kill the excess version of each of the sisters. But when Isadora makes a longer jump, Aster lets her duplicate live, which produces a new set of complications.
The story is told from Aster’s point of view, which gives her a bit more depth as a character, but the reader also gets a good sense of Isadora and even their mostly unseen “father.” The plot is fantastic, with plenty of twists and turns as are to be expected in a time travel story.
There’s a fair amount of gore in parts, related to the need to kill the duplicates, but it didn’t feel excessive to me. However, it is worth noting for the purposes of potential content some reader might want to avoid. If you like new takes on time travel and a weirdly touching story about siblings of a sort, check out Redundancies and Potentials!
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