Review by s_books - Our Infinite Fates

s_books 's review for:

Our Infinite Fates by Laura Steven

3.25

The concept for this book is quite intriguing, perhaps a bit too intriguing for the final execution of the idea. At some point, I found myself just going along with the idea that Evelyn and Arden love and always have loved each other, even if the glimpses into their past lives didn’t fully convince me of that love

to the point that their final deal with the Mother, to give up their love to her and be free in the next life didn’t seem like that hard of a decision to make — the great suffering they’ve caused and felt for each other seemed equal, if not greater than the amount of love they’ve supposedly felt for each other over the lifetimes

. Interestingly, while I loved Arden, I struggled to feel an equal amount of affection towards Evelyn, even though she is the main character and narrator. There are a couple of deep philosophical questions just lightly touched on in this book that I wish we had had more time to delve into though I understand that they were not the main point of the book.

I also wish we could have seen more of the past lives and I’m a little confused by how some of them ended — if the “rule” is that one of them has to kill the other before they turn eighteen and killing themselves don’t count, there are a couple of lives where I’m left wondering who could who and how — the asylum when Evelyn goes back (it seems them they both get tied up and drugged so who is killing who there), the sultan’s harem in Constantinople (he catches them together so again, who is killing who there — it seems more likely that one or both would have been put to death), and the first one we see after the first deal, in Northern Song when Evelyn takes Arden’s father’s punishment (presumably Arden at some point kills Evelyn but how, considering he’s still locked up and weaponless and Evelyn literally doesn’t remember anything from before at that moment so she would have no reason to try to kill him). Also, considering the explanation of the tether and why Arden can always find Evelyn but she can't always find Arden, why does killing Arden end both their lives the same as killing Evelyn does? It would seem, since the tether mostly works from bound to binder and not as much in the reverse order, that any of the lives where Evelyn killed Arden before he killed her, she would still get to live out the rest of her life.

Overall an enticing book but I was left just a tad disappointed by the explanation of the tether and how it all began.

Content Warnings