Time's Oldest Daughter by Susan W. Lyons

I'm pleased to announce the release of Susan W. Lyons' debut novel, Time's Oldest Daughter, in both trade paperback and e-book editions. As the cosmic Big Bang propels Time, energy, and matter into motion, God and Satan squabble over their respective domains while Sin and her son Death stew in squalor and despair at the Gates of Hell. All she wants is to care for her child, who has an enormous appetite but nothing to eat in their dreary prison, other than herself, of course. But then Sin notices, far above the stink and squalor of Hell, the clean and sparkling garden of Eden, where Death’s apple-cheeked cousins Adam and Eve enjoy delightful childhoods and plenty of fresh, wholesome food in a setting where Death himself could thrive. So what’s a good mother to do?

Sarah Tolmie, author of the acclaimed novel Stone Boatmen and Two Travelers, writes:

“Time’s Oldest Daughter tells an impossible story of the world before the world, the time before time, when none of the categories we use to think with yet existed. Lyons spins out the intertwined beginnings of semiotics and physics, from the first separation of subject and object in language (Satan’s separation from God) to the necessary co-presence of matter and time in the universe (as Satan and his daughter Sin fall into the world of physical and temporal forces and order them through their experience). The primary agent who navigates the ongoing process of a creation that includes quarks and photons, bacteria and algae is female, and infinitely older than Eve: Sin, born in heaven before the fall, the shadow that fell as Satan stepped away from God. John Milton, Sylvia Plath, Stanley Fish and Julia Kristeva would all recognize themselves in this book, though none of them wrote it. Lyons did, and her remarkable rethink of Paradise Lost in the person of Sin, Satan’s daughter, struggling to find a place for her son, Death, in creation is wonderfully and determinedly original.”

Faren Miller, in Locus, notes, "Susan W. Lyons's lead quotes in Time's Oldest Daughter ignore the limits of fantasy, with a line from biblical ''Genesis,'' three from Paradise Lost, then Einstein at his most succinct: E=mc². The daughter (Sin) speaks in the first-person, addressing a Daddy who’s not Time (as the word always appears here, regardless of context) but Lucifer, Bringer of Light, AKA Satan.... Time's Oldest Daughter magnifies notions like winter-death to cosmic dimensions without excessive length, solemnity, or bombast. This Divine Comedy can be genuinely comic (raucous and vulgar, with a great cast of caricatures) yet manages to slip both wise and touching moments into its sly insights about life, the universe, et cetera.

You can purchase copies of Time's Oldest Daughter from Aqueduct here