Some novels definitely feel as terribly accurate to the times, a wake-up call that leaves us with much to think about, and Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends is one of those. An ambitious sapphic, climate-fiction speculative thriller that also puts the effort of becoming a character study over grief and self-destruction, a plot that keeps us asking questions about the central mystery, and a terribly accurate book for our times.

At the center of the plot, we have Dr. Cassandra Barlowe, just after finding her ex-lover and leader researcher on deleria (a drug that allows to see alternative futures), Dr. Yana Gusniv, has died in mysterious circumstances. A moment that starts a journey for Cass, while she's being investigated as a suspect for it, to discover the truth behind Yana's death, using the own drug to try to find what happened, while self-torturing herself with visions of herself and Yana in other timelines where they might would have been happy together.

Cass is a marvelously complex character, and we get to know her very intimately, especially as past, present and future become intertwined in the narration; she's suffering a lot, emotionally destroyed with Yana's death even if six years have passed since they took different ways. A person that is at the absolute bottom, almost self-destroying herself using the deleria, trying to find what could have happened, but also reviving and experiencing really painful moments, false hope that also feels like not being able to let Yana go.

However, even when this book is a really well-executed character study, I found the ideas behind it extremely compelling (but also a bit scary). The way deleria is eating the funds for any kind of investigation, just aiming to find that perfect solution in the alternative futures; the thing is, sometimes you might need to compromise with a less than perfect solution, a temporal help that might allow to alleviate the problem, even when it's not the perfect answer (and it also feels as a parallel to how LLMs are trying to cannibalize science promising those unachievable goals while at the same time they are the ones contributing to burn the planet). The climate collapse that is described is not a far-fetched future, and again, it's still possible to reverse it; there's hope, but we need to acknowledge the problem and stop shrugging our heads because "this is not a definitive solution".

Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends is a brilliant novel, a piece that invites the reader to think about its themes while following the deconstruction of Cass looking for a clue about Yana's death. Another book that puts A.D. Sui on my auto-buy list!