Time has stolen Earth’s ending—and Tobias has one hour to steal it back.
Time has committed a heist against itself.
For those in their prime, ageing stops. Natural death stalls. The world keeps moving—but without its ending, everything starts to warp, and the Universe begins calling its scattered pieces home.
Tobias hears that call like a tide under his ribs.
He’s a Birmingham academic on the cusp of a professorship, anchored to canal water and to Stuart—an A&E doctor whose steadiness has been forged in crowded wards and the aftermath of too many losses. Their life is ordinary in the way good lives are: teasing tenderness, small routines, a future they’re almost brave enough to name.
Then Time and Death recruit Tobias, and the familiar tilts.
An underground garden built for endings. A girl named Daisy, blank-minded and luminous, learning to hold starlight. Music in many forms—mischievous, unreliable, glittering with intent—pulling golden threads from a Phuket nightclub to an Andean summit. Tam, the bagpipe made (mostly) human, who knows how to find Time.
Eclipses gather. Supernovae press close. Eight hundred-plus golden timelines braid toward a single hour. And Tobias’s problem becomes brutally clear: the Universe wants him “home.” Only a risky alignment can keep him earthbound long enough to restore the bond between Earth and the Universe—without losing Daisy, without losing Stuart, without losing himself.
The Curse of Time is book 3 and the conclusion of The Tobias & Stuart Trilogy, best read in order.
Trigger Warnings:
- explicit consensual sex scenes
- a hospital assault resulting in injury
- medical trauma
- anxiety and panic
- frequent strong language
- apocalyptic themes
