Humorous time traveling novella

I am the full stop to the sentence that is human history. That's the point.

We never get to know the name of the main character of this time traveling novella.
But as he slowly unfolds his story, more and more details are revealed both about his past and his present life.
Because he now lives alone at the end times, also known as the postepochalypse.
Well, not entirely alone …

She might be several tons of ravaging therapod dinosaur, but the old girl is also just a big softy; feed her and rub her tummy and she's yours forever.

His dinosaur pet Miffly keeps him company.
She's certainly one of the most original pets you'll encounter in a fantasy book.
Every scene with her in it will make you laugh. That's guaranteed!

By setting up shop here where the regular passage of time recommences, and denying access to the future to all comers, I am saving the unseen future from interference. I am time's gatekeeper, and without me the future would become the same ruin as the past.

Our storyteller doesn't want history to repeat itself and thus sees it as his vocation to stop humanity.
He'll be the last survivor.
At least, if he can stop all the time travellers who succeed to get to the point where he's now.
As he says himself:

I have come to value my solitude, here at the postepochalyptic end of time. I don't mind visitors, but I make sure they don't stay long and, simultaneously, never leave. And I make sure nobody can ever come looking for them.

In order to maintain his goal, he regularly goes back to the past to set things right.
Lots of interesting thoughts are discussed. The only downpoint is that some of those interludes felt a bit like page-filling with repetition of the same ideas over and over again.
Luckily there's always humour present which gives a certain lightness to the whole:

I do wonder whether the way things turned out after the Causality War was inevitable the moment someone invented the first time machine (and the problem with someone inventing the first time machine is that someone else immediately took a trip to ten years before and invented the first first time machine so they could grab the patent, and so on, and so on).

This book offers an excellent mix of serious subjects (like war), funny thoughts (delicously black humour), an uncommon romance (just read it for yourself to find out), …
For people who already know the works of Adrian Tchaikovsky, this book is apparently quite different in approach than his other books. But after all, isn't that one of the main qualities of this author?
If on the other hand this is your first acquaintance with him, it's without doubt a very nice introduction to a talented writer.


*Thanks to NetGalley and Solaris for providing a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.