Book Review: The 48 by Donna Hosie

I've recently been interested in the history of the Tudors and the wives of Henry VIII, so when I saw The 48, I was excited to read more.  I was not disappointed.

Time-traveling twins, Charles and Alexander, are sent to England when Henry VIII was married to Anne Boleyn but has designs on Jane Seymour. The twins are part of a secret network, The 48, and have trained for this assignment their entire life.  The 48 is run by a group of people who want to change history, in this case, they want to make sure Henry doesn't marry Jane. The goal is to rid the world of religion.

First of all, that's a very different type of time travel than most stories.  Usually, it is all about never doing anything that will change the future.  And I thought it was strange that they didn't worry about the other changes that such drastic actions might cause. The "butterfly effect" was never mentioned.

This is Charles' and Alexander's first mission and it goes off the rails immediately.  In many ways.  Something is up with The 48, so they aren't getting the support they need. Someone wants at least one of them dead.  One of the narrators is Lady Margaret, one of Queen Anne's ladies, and she wants to marry Alex. Cromwell is up to no good, as you know if you are aware of anything about this time period. For some reason, Alice, one of the time travelers who is still in training, ends up with them, having been pushed through time by one of the other 48.

Once things get going, the tension builds nicely.  Everyone is in fear for their lives, and some characters come very close to losing theirs. It does take a bit to get going, and some of the characters make stupid decisions -- but when don't they. I didn't get much history that I wasn't already familiar with, but the atmosphere of the time period was very well done.

Just FYI, the book that got this started was Fatal Throne, which I loved.  So read that one first, and then The 48 is a great follow-up.

I would recommend this to time-travel fans first.  The historical elements are there, but not as strong as the time travel elements. Fans of Tudor England will be entertained by the potential upheaval this time travel may cause.

Published by Holiday House, September 4, 2018
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
384 pages

Rating: 4/5

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Book Review: Invictus, by Ryan Graudin @ryangraudin

Yes, Graudin can write science fiction! And Invictus was as enjoyable as all her other novels.

Farway's mother was jumping through time when he was born, so he literally has no birthday.  In this future, you can train to be a recorder of history by visiting the actual time period. Farway wants nothing more than to follow in his mother's footsteps and become a historian. He would also like to find his mother, who disappeared somewhere in the past when Far was a young boy.

Farway bombs his final exam and instead of recording history he ends up traveling in time for the black market that deals with bringing valuable items from the past to the present before they are lost.  For example, you could go to the Titanic and steal all the valuable jewels right before it sinks. And this is the type of stuff that Far does with his crew that is made up of his cousin, his girlfriend, and a very good friend.  When their mission is thwarted by Eliot, a time-traveler of a different sort, everything changes and becomes very deadly for the crew of the Invictus.

Graudin's rules for time travel make Invictus pretty easy to follow (unlike some time travel books I've read where things just don't make sense.)  Some of Eliot's tricks (like her magical bag) do stretch the imagination a bit, though.  We get a glimpse into several different historical time periods which is enjoyable.

The action is fast-paced and riveting. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about Invictus (which is always a good sign.) The ending is a bit complicated, but Graudin manages to pull it off. If there's one small complaint it would be the romance.  There wasn't much build up.  All of a sudden you realize, "Oh, they are a couple!" Not a big deal, but I thought there could have been a bit more earlier in the book.

Invictus seems like it could be a stand-alone,  but I would love for the story to continue. This one is going to get pushed to my teen readers.  I think they will love it.

Published by Little, Brown, BFYR, September 26, 2017
eARC obtained from NetGalley
464 pages

Rating: 4.5/5

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Book Review: The Door to January by Gillian French

The Door to January did not give me the thrills I was hoping for.

Natalie has nightmares about a traumatic event that happened two years ago. The nightmares aren't only about this event -- they are pulling her towards an old abandoned house in the town where she used to live. She feels compelled to go back to her old town for the summer and face her fears.  She is staying with her aunt and her cousin, Teddy.  Teddy is the only one who knows the real reason Natalie has returned.

Natalie and Teddy visit the old house and set up a recorder.  Weird things begin to happen.  There are really three POVs in The Door to January.  We get Natalie's normal POV but also her dreams (which are in italics) and then she goes back in time for another POV.  These sections from the past, where she is seeing the old inhabitants of the house, were not formatted correctly in the eARC.  I'm sure that will be better in the final copy. The story lines all mesh together -- the past, the dreams, and the present -- to an exciting conclusion.

It's hard to put my finger on why The Door to January just didn't do it for me.  I never felt much suspense or many thrills.  I liked the premise and the way things from the past were slowly revealed.  But it just wasn't believable to me. I think maybe the story needed more depth.  It is very short, and things happened quickly.  In this case, maybe a little too quickly. Natalie seemed to take things very much in stride. She should have been freaking out! That's what I mean by depth. We needed to get more time for reactions to each new revelation before the next one came along.

I'm being somewhat picky.  I think for the intended audience, The Door to January would be appealing. And, like I said, it's a quick read and really moves.  So this may be a good choice for reluctant readers.

Published by Islandport, September 5, 2017
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
200 pages

Rating: 3/5

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Book Review: Wayfarer, by Alexandra Bracken

Wayfarer is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read when it comes to the time travel aspects, but I wish it would have been a bit shorter. Wayfarer is the sequel to Passenger, and if you check out that review, you will see the first paragraph says almost exactly the same thing.

I think Wayfarer starts shortly after Passenger ends.  But my first issue with the book is that it didn't give me enough reminders about what happened in Passenger.  I read it a year ago, and the details are fuzzy.  I know there's a fine line when it comes to recaps.  I certainly don't what a review of the entire story, but some authors do a better job of just dropping reminders every once in a while.  I was lost at times,  especially trying to remember all the names and relationships.

We switch POVs (and times) between Etta and Nicolas as they try to find each other as well as the astrolabe. They encounter several people who help them and several that are trying to stop them. Almost everyone is lying about something. During the first half of the book, they are mostly jumping from time to time, building relationships and investigating, but they aren't getting any closer to each other or to the astrolabe.  It just goes on and on. The book turned out to be over 500 pages long, so there isn't a need to pad the story.  Once we get to the second half, the pace ramps up a bit and you can feel the tension mounting as we reach the stunning conclusion.

It isn't that the writing is bad.  The descriptions are beautiful.  The setting and characterizations are vivid.  There's just too much setup before we get to the action.

I really enjoyed the end.  It was unexpected and intriguing. It is refreshing to have a two-book series for a change. I will recommend Wayfarer to my time travel fans for sure.

Published by Disney-Hyperion, January 3, 2017
Review copy obtained from the publisher
532 pages

Rating: 3/5

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Book Review: Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor @Janet_B_Taylor

Maybe I was just in the mood for a time travel book, but Into the Dim just pushed all the right buttons for me.

Hope's life has been turned upside down since her mother was killed in an earthquake overseas and now her father has a new girlfriend. So when he asks Hope to spend the summer in Scotland with her aunt, she doesn't want to go, but doesn't really have a choice.

Once she gets there, what she finds out changes everything. It turns out her mother belonged to a group of time-travelers and she didn't die, she's trapped in the 12th century. Hope begins her training to be part of the mission to go rescue her mother. And there is a group of "bad" time travelers trying to stop them.

The challenges she faces in the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine make for quite a nonstop, life-threatening adventure. The good guys and bad guys aren't always clear. Hope learns additional startling secrets about her family, and the addition of a forbidden romance is icing on the cake. Hope has an eidetic memory which is very interesting, but also makes it pretty easy to get out of some serious jams. She is also claustrophobic but that aspect is sort of an add-on. It's mentioned when she has difficulty getting on an airplane and then at the end when she has to squeeze through a tight space. I just didn't see the point, but maybe it will be more fully realized in future books.

Speaking of future books, Into the Dim is a complete story (yea!) But I'm hoping there are going to be more adventures for these time travelers that I've become attached to, and according to the author's website, there are! Definitely one to add to your time travel collection for teens and an easy one to recommend.

Published by HMH BFYR, March 1, 2016
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
432 pages

Rating: 4/5

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Book Review: Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

While I enjoyed the premise of Passenger, this book really dragged for me.

Etta wakes up in an unfamiliar place after witnessing the murder of her teacher and friend. It turns out Etta can travel through time and she didn't know it. She and her companion, Sophia, are in the middle of the ocean on a ship that's just been taken over by pirates. The new captain of the ship is Nicholas. He's also a time traveler. He's been commissioned to bring Etta to New York to meet the head of the family, Ironwood.

Etta is very confused, of course, but soon begins to figure out some of what is going on. Her only goal is to return to her original time and save her teacher's life.

Ironwood has other plans. He's in search of a device that can help control time travel. Etta's mother has hidden this device in an unknown time and place. Etta must find this device and return it to Ironwood to save her mother's life. But in doing so, she gives Ironwood power to change the course of history. Nicholas ends up accompanying Etta on her journeys to protect her and also protect Ironwood's interests. Etta realizes that her mother has been giving Etta clues for this journey for her entire life.

The story is a bit jumpy at the beginning (time travel and all) so it took a while to settle in. I felt Passenger to be very repetitive. Too much lamenting by Nicholas about how his brother died and Nicholas feels responsible. Or by Etta about how she is going to save her mother and also keep the device from Ironwood. Or about how their romance is doomed. Over and over, the same soliloquies. It took me forever to read this book because I had trouble wanting to go back to it.

What I would have liked more of is world building. Nicholas and Etta travel to several exotic, beautiful, and dangerous places. I would have loved to be able to feel those places. Their trips in and out of these times/places were too short. Then back to the complaining and lamenting....

The ending was exciting, if a bit incomplete. Huge cliffhanger here; nothing is resolved. (Another of my pet peeves.) I did like the premise. The time traveling was explained well and the tension certainly (finally) built up. I think the execution could have been improved.

Published by Disney-Hyperion, January 5, 2016
eARC obtained from NetGalley
496 pages

Rating: 3/5

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Book Review: Ten Thousand Skies Above You, by Claudia Gray @claudiagray

Wow. Talk about world building. My favorite thing about Ten Thousand Skies Above You is discovering what Gray has come up with for each dimension that the characters visit.

Marguerite has resisted working for Wyatt Conley, because she knows he's trying to take over all the dimensions. But when Wyatt "splinters" Paul, Marguerite must jump from dimension to dimension collecting his parts while doing some of Wyatt's dirty work. Theo goes with her.

I'm not going to describe the different worlds they encounter, because that's the most fun. How does Gray come up with this? I'm impressed.

I was sucked into Ten Thousand Skies Above You from the very beginning. It's full of action and danger. And the overarching plot moves along as Marguerite discovers more and more with each dimension she visits.

There is a pretty brutal cliffhanger, which I tend to hate, but at least Ten Thousand Skies Above You had a natural stopping point and an end to this part of the story. This one was better than the first, A Thousand Pieces of You, and I think the challenges in the third book will be even more substantial. I, for one, can't wait.

Published by HarperTeen, November 3, 2015
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
432 pages

Rating: 5/5

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Audio Book Review: Visitors by Orson Scott Card - DNF

I've never not finished an audiobook before. I'm usually much more patient with that version. And even more surprising, this is the third book in the series, and I enjoyed the first two.

Visitors continues the story of Rigg, Ram Odin, Loaf, Umbo, and Param. They are kind of all going their separate ways for different reasons. Oh, and there's a new character, a duplicate of Rigg, who calls himself Noxon.

Their goal is to keep a spaceship from Earth from coming and destroying Garden. They've been into the future, so they know this is going to happen and are trying to figure out how to prevent it.

Rigg is visiting every one of the wallfolds. It's probably the most boring part. Maybe there will end up being a purpose, but it just seems like a bunch of side stories. With each miniscule step forward, we are subjected to every nuance of thought and debate about how this will work, will it change the past, will it create multiple copies of things, and how are they going to learn to do all the things they  need to do time travel-wise. This goes on and on ad nauseam, even more so than in the first two books. Then we get about a paragraph of actual action, and then back to the debate.

I'm to the point (after 5 of 14 discs) that I couldn't care less about the outcome. The narrators are excellent, as they were in the first two books in the series, but I'm moving on to something else.

If you are a time travel fanatic and enjoy thinking about all the complications it would entail, then you would enjoy this book (and the series.)  The first two books are Pathfinder and Ruins and you must read them in order.

Published by Simon Pulse, 2014, Brilliance Audio
Audiobook obtained from the library
5 of 14 discs (36%), 217 of 608 pages

Rating: DNF

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Book Review: A Thousand Pieces of You, by Claudia Gray @claudiagray

A Thousand Pieces of You has one of the most unique time travel scenarios I've ever read. Well, it's really not time travel. It's "place travel." Maybe that is why I found it so interesting.

Marguerite, her sister, and her mother are mourning the death of her father.Both her father and her mother are scientists who have been working on a very unique project called the Firebird. Her father has been murdered and  one of his assistants, Paul, has been accused. Paul has deleted all of the pertinent data for the project and has taken the Firebird and disappeared. Both Paul and another assistant, Theo, have been like brothers to Marguerite.

The Firebird is a device that allows a person to travel to another parallel universe. The theory is that there are an infinite number of these dimensions that accounts for every possible outcome of every event. So when you jump to another universe, you take over your own body as it exists in that universe. If you don't have the Firebird to remind you, you can forget your real existence and actually become the person in that universe.

It turns out that Theo has two prototype Firebird devices that he has completed so that he and Marguerite can follow Paul and avenge her father's death. As they travel to the different universes, they encounter many different situations, but always manage to find each other, although sometimes it is difficult.

Marguerite finds out things are not as they seemed. There is also a bit of a romance, and what makes it interesting is that Marguerite must determine if she's in love with the person in just one universe, or does she love that person in her own universe as well.

I really enjoyed the premise of the different universes. It it an interesting topic to think about, and Gray handles it well. The characters were interesting, but really Marguerite is the only one fully developed. I wanted her to succeed but didn't really feel the emotion of the story. There were some conveniences in the plot to help everything move along, but these were few and unremarkable.

A Thousand Pieces of You is the first in a series but this episode thankfully has a conclusion. I am looking forward to another story about this world. I think many teens will enjoy this one too.

Published by HarperTeen, November 4, 2104
eARC obtained from Edelweiss
368 pages

Rating: 4/5

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Book Review: The Devil's Intern, by Donna Hosie

To be honest, I really didn't like The Devil's Intern at first, but once the book got going and the setting changed, I enjoyed it much more.

Mitchell has spent the last four years in Hell. He died at the age of 17 when he got hit by a bus. Mitchell cannot accept his death, and when he finds out his boss, Septimus, has access to the Viciseometer he plots to steal it. You see, the devise is a time machine and Mitchell wants to go back and change his life so that he doesn't die.

Mitchell takes three friends along, who have died at various times, so they can change their outcomes also. Alfarin is a Viking prince, Elinor is an English peasant from the 17th century, and Medusa is a child of the 1960s. Medusa is the romantic interest. They visit each of the periods of their deaths, and....well...I'm not going to tell you what happens.

The beginning of the book really annoyed me.  Mitchell describes a very weird version of Hell. Hosie tries to make humorous references and analogies, and most of it just made me roll my eyes. It was too over the top and much too prolific. Hell is depicted as a fairly normal place where you go to work, eat, and even go to dances. I think Hell would have been more entertaining if it were a bit darker, and more as we traditionally think of it. I had a hard time not skimming and potentially DNFing.  But, I persevered.

I enjoyed the story much more after they began time travelling. It was more exciting, and not so light-hearted. The entire tone of the book changed. Time travel is always tricky, so it's best not to analyze the scientific principles too much. Some of it didn't make sense to me, but it can make your head spin if you try to sort it out.  I just went along with it and was very satisfied.

I also wish we got to know the characters a bit better before the time travelling. I didn't understand their connection and got their backgrounds confused at first. I didn't feel attached to them until they started on their adventure, then the attachment slowly grew.

Also, they make some stupid decisions. If you want to change the outcome of an event using time travel, wouldn't you plan to arrive some period BEFORE that event? And, if you are going to order McDonalds in the current time period, would you send the Viking prince to the counter to do so? This was used as comic relief, I think, but wasn't placed well. I guess you can see, I just didn't mesh with the "comedy" in The Devil's Intern.

The resolution is probably my favorite part. I found it creative and appropriate.

For time-travel fans, or those who like their depictions of the afterlife a bit lighthearted, The Devil's Intern might be appealing.

Published by Holiday House, August 1, 2014
ARC obtained from Library Media Connection Magazine
229 pages (Qualifies for my Books You Can Read in a Day Challenge!)

Rating: 2.5/5

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