The Big Time
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This book offers a mind-bending exploration of time, war, and identity that challenges readers to question the nature of reality and the cost of power.
Edition details
Book Summary
In a cosmic war between Spiders and Snakes, soldiers and entertainers at a recuperation station outside time grapple with identity, trauma, and the meaning of existence. When a bomb threatens their sanctuary, they must confront their own motives and the possibility of forging a new future beyond the endless conflict.
The Big Time follows Greta Forzane, an Entertainer at a Place outside space and time where soldiers of the Change War recuperate. The story begins with the arrival of three hussars—Erich, Mark, and Bruce—and quickly escalates as Bruce delivers a tirade against the war's futility. A distress call brings Kaby, Illy, and Sevensee, who report a devastating Snake victory at Crete and the potential destruction of the Place. When the Maintainer goes missing, the group becomes Introverted, trapped in a static void. Bruce takes command, delivering passionate speeches about the cost of manipulating time and proposing peace. Lili Foster reveals her love for Bruce and suggests the group can create a new future, but Erich triggers a bomb, giving them 29 minutes to live. After a tense interrogation, Greta deduces that Lili hid the Maintainer inside a sculpture. Sid impersonates a Lord Spider to restore order, and Bruce disarms the bomb. The novel ends with Illy's philosophical vision of the Change War as an evolutionary process toward fourth-order beings called 'possibility-binders,' leaving the group to ponder their next steps.
Reading guide
Go deeper in The Big Time
Character guides, themes, chapter companions — plus Character Web, narrative arc, and theme heatmap teasers that unlock fully beside the text in BetterReads.
Narrative arc
Story tension across the book.
- Setup
- Escalation
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
- Closing
Unknown Narrator
She is the reader's cynical, tender guide through a closed cosmos of time soldiers, entertainers, and stranded aliens, forever translating other people's love affairs and mutinies into something survivable. Her private longing for a Door, a purpose, or just a decent night's sleep keeps the group's debates personal rather than abstract. When Lili preaches the sealed Place as paradise, the narrator's flash of hope and dread makes the story's central question intimate: can anyone live happily in a lost room at the end of time?
Bruce Marchant
He arrives furious at the Spiders and Snakes for rewriting history, waving a left-handed gauntlet as proof that even their gifts are botched. His romance with Lili curdles because she craves a home while he craves the open wound of time, and his drinking with Mark and Erich keeps the Place's mutinous currents warm. Bruce matters because his thwarted poetry and soldierly swagger embody the seduction and cost of never settling down.
Erich von Hohenwald
Erich needles Lili's earnest feminism, trades barbs with Bruce, and carries himself like a man who has already triggered a bomb and enjoyed the fallout. He prizes Kameradschaft shaped to his own specifications, which makes his loyalties both theatrical and unpredictable. His willingness to push the group into a crisis they must solve together gives the early arc its friction and its uneasy comedy.
Sidney Lessingham
He claims to have known Shakespeare, survived four monarchs, and worked as clerk, spy, bawd, and tract-peddler, and he uses every role to manage the room. His easy authority steadies the centrist party of two he forms with the narrator, even as his theatrical patter cannot hide how badly everyone is standing Introversion. Sid matters because his hospitality and showmanship make the sealed Place feel like a society, however frayed, rather than merely a trap.
Lili Foster
She quarrels nobly with Bruce, winds a gray bandeau around her bangs, and steps away from his arms to address the group as if the Place's future depends on her voice. Her speech about the balanced aquarium and the end of slavery to Spiders and Snakes is both genuinely hopeful and painfully self-dramatizing, and the narrator recognizes the love-business of trying to live someone else's message. Lili matters because her hunger for a nest forces everyone to decide whether the Place is a refuge or a coffin.
Beau Lassiter
He mixes drinks, reads faces, and takes the New Girl's arrival as a personal charge, though the two have not yet reached any agreement. His calm competence contrasts with the militarists' noise and gives the Place a working social fabric beneath the ideological scraps. Beau matters because his small, steady acts of care show what ordinary decency looks like when everyone is trapped together and no one knows the rules.
Change and Identity
The Change War constantly alters past and future, causing characters to question the stability of memory, personality, and reality itself, as seen in Greta's fears about her own mind and the 'Change Winds' that reshape existence.
War and Meaninglessness
The endless, cosmic-scale Change War is portrayed as a brutal, absurd conflict where soldiers fight for incomprehensible sides (Spiders vs. Snakes), leading to existential despair and a sense that all effort is futile.
Power and Knowledge
The ability to manipulate time grants Demons godlike power, described as 'sweeter than lust' and a 'glutting the sense of power,' but this knowledge also brings horror and the burden of reshaping reality at the cost of destroying history.
Love and Connection
Amidst chaos, characters seek intimacy and comfort through pairing up (e.g., Bruce and Lili, Greta and Illy), using relationships as a refuge from trauma, though these bonds are often fragile, jealous, or manipulated by the war.