Sisters Hannah and Melanie are from a small town, and it’s Hannah who moves to the big city. They share secret superpowers, from time travel to manipulating electricity. Melanie is determined to have her own ultimate destruction, but Hannah attempts to stop her over and over again.
Combined with beautiful prose, A Fist of Permutations in Lightening and Wildflowers embraces anger and frustration and love and desperate loneliness. I love that the gigantic destructive powers one sister exerts are counteracted with reality resets through time travel. I love that maybe none of it’s real, and all the time travel is Hannah’s internal mental state while dealing with her sister’s tragedy. The multiple timelines and ambiguity of plot are handled well throughout most of the story, but the confusion that does emerge distances the reader from the necessary emotional connection.
A quick read recommended for fans of emotionally-charged scifi and fantasy!
“Melanie was better at everything than I was, the stormy bit and the talking bit both. She could split the horizon in two if she wanted, opening it at the seams as deftly as a tailor, and make the lightning curl catlike at her wrist and purr for her. She could do that with people too; Mel glowed, soft, luminescent. It was hard to look away from her, and so easy to disappear into her shadow.”