Review: Torn - Margaret Peterson Haddix

Synopsis: Jonah and Katherine have barely had a chance to recover from the traumatic events of Roanoke in 1600 when they are hurtled through time again, to 1611, moments before a mutiny on the Discovery, Henry Hudson's ship in the icy waters of James Bay. As they struggle to survive the frozen seas and brutal conditions aboard the ship, Jonah and Katherine begin to realize that something is very wrong. The history they remember is drastically different from what they're experiencing. Will this new version of history replace the real past? Jonah and Katherine struggle to unravel the mysteries of 1611 and the Hudson Passage before the only future they've ever known is lost forever.

Review: Margaret Peterson Haddix cranks up the action in this, the fourth installment in The Missing series, bringing in greater risks and fascinating alternatives to history. Any historian - professional or amateur - will enjoy how she spins her new plotline around the story of Henry Hudson's fatal voyage on the Discovery. This particular installment felt a lot less predictable than the previous three, and while I wish she had kept up the suspense to the very end, I was not disappointed with how things concluded. It offers a breather for the Readers - and no doubt the Author - while we wait for the fifth to be written and then released. Katherine was a bit annoying, but her role in events actually became quite prominent, which finally ended my wondering, Why is she even tagging along? What does she contribute?

All in all, I was impressed with Torn. It reengaged my interest, which had begun to wane a bit by the third book. I had taken this series off of my To Buy list, but I have now re-added it. Fans and semi-fans will not be disappointed with this book, and I hope the next one is every bit as good.

Overall Rating: {{{{

Others in The Missing Series:

1)Found
2)Sent
3)Sabotaged
4)Torn
5)Caught

Review: Timeless - Alexandra Monir

Synopsis: When tragedy strikes Michele Windsor's family, she is forced to move from Los Angeles to New York City to live with the wealthy, aristocratic grandparents she has never met. In their historic Fifth Avenue mansion, filled with a century's worth of family secrets, Michele discovers the biggest family secret of all - an ancestor's diary that, amazingly, has the power to send her back in time to 1910, the year it was written. There, at a glamorous high-society masquerade ball, Michele meets the young man with striking blue eyes who has haunted her dreams all her life. And she finds herself falling for him, and into an otherworldly romance.

Soon Michele is leading a double life, struggling to balance her contemporary high school world with her escapes into the past. But when she stumbles upon a terrible discovery, she is propelled on a race through history to save the boy she loves - and to complete a quest that will determine their fate.

Review: There is not much to be said about this book, negative or positive. The writing is pretty, Michele is actually a fairly likable girl who isn't entirely scornful of history and the fancy life, Philip is a decent young man who did somehow manage to get on my nerves nonetheless after a time, the time traveling lends an interesting and mysterious element to the otherwise invisible storyline, and there is no inappropriate content beyond lots of kissing. For a "paranormal" or "otherworldy" romance story, Timeless isn't too bad. It did not make me scream and I was not inclined to vomit every five seconds, though I confess that after a while, it really started to get a Twilightish feel to it, and by the time I was done reading it, I wanted to watch a really bloody movie. However, because of the history aspect - which really was quite interesting - and the fact that there were no vampires, no werewolves, and Michele is way more tolerable than Bella, and Philip far, far easier to put up with than either Jacob or Edward (glare at me if you wish, Twihards; I'm being very gentle when it comes to addressing the horrors of Twilight), it wasn't nearly as difficult to stomach as that particular series, which I refuse to read entirely.

Timeless promises a sequel, which I am not particularly pleased about. It doesn't need a sequel. Why the Author could not just end it, I don't know, and unless she intends on stepping the storyline up (i.e. bringing it beyond the mushy-mushies and actually having some things happen), I can see the sequel being a disaster. I hope that it is not, but that is how I see things going.

Still, I enjoyed Timeless as much as I can enjoy a "otherworldly romance" book. The characters are, for the most part, likable, and the writing style is pleasing. Just don't expect too much to happen.

Overall Rating: KK

Others in This Series:
1)Timeless
2)Timekeeper

Review: Ruby Red - Kerstin Gier

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Gwen lives with her extended - and rather eccentric - family in an exclusive London neighborhood. In spite of her ancestors' peculiar history, she'd had a relatively normal life so far. The time traveling gene that runs like a secret thread through the female half of the family is supposed to have skipped over Gwen, so she hasn't been introduced to "the mysteries," and can spend her time hanging out with her best friend, Lesley, watching movies and talking about boys. It comes as an unwelcome surprise then when she starts taking sudden, uncontrolled leaps into the past. She's completely unprepared for time travel, not to mention all that comes with it: fancy clothes, archaic manners, a mysterious secret society, and Gideon, her time-traveling counterpart. He's obnoxious, a know-it-all, and possibly the best-looking guy she's seen in any century . . .

Review: When I read that last part of the synopsis, my hopes for Ruby Red completely crumbled. It'll be one of those books, I thought, as I placed it back on the shelf, automatically deciding that it wouldn't go on my To Read list. However, I ended up checking it out from the library later because it was a new book, and while I was certain I knew what sort it would be, I decided that it would at least give me some laughs and groans.

Well, it certainly made me laugh, but not because it was a bad book. Quite the opposite, in fact - I was very pleasantly surprised when I finished it today. The entire time I was reading it, I kept thinking, Just wait until Gideon is introduced, but my dread was never realized. Contrary to the book's synopsis and the exert that's included on the back, Ruby Red isn't one of those terribly annoying, I'm-going-to-act-like-I-hate-you-because-I-really-like-you teen stories. It's quite an intriguing - and yes, weird - time-travel book, and the characters, for the most part, are likable. Especially the ghost James, who I took an immediate liking to.

Gideon isn't properly described in the synopsis. He is rather a know-it-all and according to Gwyneth (who narrates the story), quite attractive, but he's not obnoxious in the usual sense of adolescent males - actually, I didn't find him obnoxious at all, - and his know-it-allism isn't as snotty and arrogantly presented as one might think. At first, Gideon is a bit of a jerk, but given the circumstances, one can understand his frustration - and he also happens to be more or less correct about Gwyneth. But Gideon quickly improves his attitude, and is really quite nice, and not the horrendously aggravating flirt that I was expecting.

Gwyneth makes for an amusing narrator, she handles her panic well, and really does try her best when thrust into these unforeseen circumstances, completely unprepared. At times I thought she overreacted to Gideon's teasing, but I excused her on the grounds that she was in shock and some of the time Gideon really was a little mean. She doesn't fawn over Gideon's good looks too much, but instead laments the fact that such an attractive young man is so uppity, and leaves it at that. Her friend Lesley wasn't as bad as I anticipated, either. Her "modern" personality was aggravating at times, but I would not have changed it, because it really made her character.

The writing itself was nothing glamorous, nor was it bad. It was pleasing, the only real complaint being that some of the dialogue - especially during stand-offs - was rather cliched and sounded as if it belonged in a movie, rather than a real historical setting. Nothing truly atrocious stood out, and I would say that the Author's writing is good for the sort of genre she's writing.

While certainly strange, the plotline is interesting and manages to be fairly original from all of the other time-travel books. I really do look forward to reading the next two installments.

Overall Rating: JJJ

Others in This Trilogy:
1)Ruby Red
2)Sapphire Blue

Review: Steel - Carrie Vaughn

Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade - a real sword. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure. The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life if bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home - one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.

Review: I had complete misgivings even before I started reading this book, and my misgivings only proved to be correct - not in all instances, mind you, but in many of them. In the Afterward, the Author claims that she did a lot of research regarding historical piracy. I have to question how much research she thought "a lot" was, because hardly any of it made itself known in the story. To be fair, she also admitted that she ignored some of what she researched because clearly she wanted her pirates to be heroic and moral.

Um, well, there is her first mistake. Pirates were - and still are - criminals; no better than today's street gangs. There was no pirate code or pirate's honor (true, captains made rules according to their individual standards. There was no specific code, like the Articles of War, that all pirates followed), their voting system was anything but fair or civil (again, look at today's street gangs and how they replace leaders; it was no different then), and pirates were, in fact, known to be terrible seamen. While the Author does mention in her Afterward that pirates who captured slave ships would sell the slaves for profit, it just illustrates further her poor attempt to make heroes out of villains when her pirates free the slaves they capture. So what is it exactly that makes them pirates?

Ah, yes, and female captains . . . Now, I can understand why the Author made the "good" pirate captain - Margery Cooper - a female. If she hadn't, then it would have been a prime setup for bad, but accurate, things to happen to Jill among "rogue and tumble" men who certainly had no regard for a woman's virtue. And Captain Cooper could have been extremely unbearable as most female pirate characters are in stories, but I still protest at how unlikely it would be in real life for Cooper to become - and then maintain - her position as captain. There is a reason that history only knows of two famous female pirates (not counting the few in the Orient; Chinese piracy was an entirely different kettle of carnivorous eels); women were considered bad luck.

To top this off, there's the name of the "bad" pirate captain. I don't know what made the Author think that Blane was a threatening name. I kept picturing a Californian surfer Ken-doll whenever I read his name. He made Captain Shakespeare from Stardust seem threatening. But then it all made sense, when it was revealed that the whole premise of the story was, in fact, much like a Barbie-and-Ken relationship. I'm afraid that I am not joking. Blane was the only unforgettable character simply because of his unbelievable name. Jill was not too annoying (she whined a bit much), but many times I mistook her for an inanimate object, she was so lacking in personality, and for someone who had just been launched from the 21st century into the early 1700s among a bunch of murderous criminals, she takes to it all very well - indeed, she takes to it so well and thinks so little about her family, that it actually bothered me. I hate it when characters take forever to come to terms with their situation, but she is too okay with it. And the romance between her and Henry (who was also another inanimate object) was so gradual that it came as a shock to me when they started expressing feelings for one another.

But all of this I could have handled fairly well (perhaps, even Blane's name) if there hadn't been the terrible fact that the Author made the worst mistake that so many modern sea-faring writers make: she didn't research her sailing terms and the workings of a ship in general, and she never actually went to sea on a tallship. In the Afterward, she says that she consulted someone on these things. Either she completely disregarded his information or he knew just as little as she did - or a combination of both. I have an actual tallship sailor living in my house to confirm any flaws the Author made - i.e. my sister -, and goodness, were there many. First rule for all people who want to write a sea-faring story: research, research, research! You have to immerse yourself in it; read books that historical sailors actually used, history, technical books - indeed, you need to make yourself seasick on it. There is nothing more painful, more horrid, than authors who insist on writing sea-faring stories and don't do proper sailing research. If an author is not willing to do this, then either find a different genre, or write the story in first-person; from the perspective of a character who knows absolutely nothing - and learns absolutely nothing - about sailing.

Steel by Carrie Vaughn was torturous. I didn't think I would get through it, honestly (had it resembled Pirates of the Caribbean any more - and thankfully it really didn't that much, to give the Author some credit - I would not have). Pirates simply cannot be cast as moral, heroic people. They simply can't. If they're moral, they're not pirates.

Overall Rating: N

Review: Sabotaged - Margaret Peterson Haddix

Synopsis: After helping Chip and Alex survive fifteenth-century London with no preparation at all, Jonah and Katherine think that their next job will be a snap. Their mission: to help return Andrea - who is really Virginia Dare - back to the lost colony of Roanoke in the sixteenth century. They'll help her restore the balance of history, and then they can all go home.

Sounds simple, easy, and safe. But right away things start to go wrong. They lose the Elucidator and aren't sure where in time they've landed. As Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea struggle to survive without food, water, supplies, or a way to contact anyone for rescue, they try to piece together the mysterious history of Roanoke. What happened to the missing colonists? Does it have anything to do with their current predicament? And how can they help Andrea restore history if they don't even know what century they're in? The more Jonah and Katherine look for answers, the more questions they have.

Review: Like the other two, Sabotaged is weird, but interesting. I was pleased that Chip wasn't in this one; Katherine did not irritate me nearly as much because of it. And Ms. Haddix manages to make the plotline develop by immediately throwing in a twist, with plenty of others following close at its heels. The end will definitely leave you wanting to read the sequel (due to come out in a few months!).

Despite the plot-twists, I cannot say that Sabotaged was my favorite. When Ms. Haddix starts to touch on the Indians and colonist situation(s), it begins to feel very bogged down with the Author's personal opinions. In short, very preachy. And it gets in the way of the story, like really, really sticky, irritating mud impeding your walking forward. And the new villain, Second, wasn't nearly as intimidating as I was hoping. I can't say that I disliked him - he is a fairly good villain, but there seemed something not quite right with his character. Like something was missing.

Despite those complaints, Sabotaged is a good installment. Fans of JB (like me) will be especially pleased.

Overall Rating: JJJ

Others in The Missing Series:

1)Found
2)Sent
3)Sabotaged
4)Torn
5)Caught

Review: Sent - Margaret Peterson Haddix

Synopsis: Thirteen-year-olds Jonah and Chip are reeling from the news that they're both missing children from history, kidnapped from their proper time period. Before they can fully absorb this revelation, a time purist named JB sends Chip and another boy, Alex, back to the fifteenth century, where they supposedly belong. Jonah and his sister, Katherine, grab Chip's arm just as he's being sent away. The result? Jonah and Katherine also end up in the fifteenth century, where they decidedly do not belong.

Chip's true identity is Edward V, king of England, and Alex is his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. But Chip is convinced that his uncle, Richard of Gloucester, plans to kill them and seize the throne for himself.

JB promises that if the kids can "fix time," he will allow them to return to the present day. But how can they possibly return home safely when history claims that Chip and Alex were murdered?

Review: As with Found, saying that I liked Sent is not entirely the right way of putting it. It was interesting, exciting, clever, and easy to follow. There was nothing I disliked, but like just isn't the word, which is the case with most time-travel stories.

It helps to have a knowledge of history when reading this simply because it helps the Reader appreciate the way Margaret Peterson Haddix puts the story of Edward V and his brother, Richard, together. Every fan of history's mysteries (such as the odd "disappearance" of the two royal boys) loves to read a new take on what really happened. Haddix's very premise of The Missing series has set up an ideal way for her to introduce interesting theories concerning cases like the Duchess Anastasia and others like her, who seem to have just disappeared from time itself. I absolutely love time-travel books for this very reason: it presents the "what ifs" of history; a tiny glimpse at what could have happened. And every historian - amateur or professional - loves to explore that.

The characters improved in Sent. Alex is a wonderful addition to the group, but Katherine gets increasingly annoying. I still imaged her older than Jonah, even though she is supposed to be about two years younger than him and Chip. But she's a pretty easy fifth wheel to ignore. One thing that does get very irritating is how the kids never let JB explain anything. They always cut him off right when he's about to offer something potentially helpful - and all because they think that he doesn't care whether or not Chip and Alex die. Urgh! It drove me up a wall!! I never felt sorry for Jonah, Chip, Alex, and Katherine when a situation got sticky because they never gave JB enough time to explain what to do. That's a pet peeve of mine.

However, Sent is a worthwhile read. It is better than Found, and I believe that Sabotaged is going to be even better.

Overall Rating: JJJ

Others in The Missing Series:

1)Found
2)Sent
3)Sabotaged
4)Torn
5)Caught

Review: Found - Margaret Peterson Haddix

Synopsis: When Jonah and his best friend, Chip, start receiving threatening notes in the mail, they are plunged headfirst into a mystery. With the help of Jonah's sister, Katherine, they discover that the notes may be connected to the shady circumstances surrounding Jonah's and Chip's adoptions. When they begin to investigate, they find a vast conspiracy that reaches from the far past to the distant future - one that will take them hurtling through time. They don't know who to trust, or which shadowy faction to believe. Can Jonah and Chip discover the secrets of their pasts before the conspiracy catches up to them?

Review: One word: Strange. There is no other way to describe this series of books. However, that is not a criticism. Though I have just finished Book One, I am unwilling to say that I dislike the series, but "like" is also not the word that I would use. Will it end up on my shelf? Yes - it's one I would like to read over again, but saying that I like it just isn't the word that I would use. It is rather like the Gideon Trilogy, or The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade. I would definitely read them over again and I intend to buy them, but to say that one likes them . . . I find them interesting, I find them intriguing and engaging reads, and the characters are brilliant. And yet, like is not the word.

But I've gone on about that enough. On to the story itself. Well, it is certainly engaging and it definitely keeps the Reader turning the pages. I am anxious to read Book Two - Sent - because now they are getting into the really good events. When I first picked up the book, I wasn't sure if I would be able to look past the names of the main characters. Jonah I can put up with, but Chip is just downright annoying. And the first two chapters didn't promise very thrilling characteristics in them. Katherine was extremely annoying and Chip threatened to have a crush on her - ugh. Even after finishing Found, Katherine got on my nerves, and though she is supposed to be younger than Jonah, I kept thinking that she was older. But Jonah is an okay "hero;" I may end up ranking him as a well-liked character. Chip isn't horrid, either, though I discovered that I often tuned him out. I got tired of his negativeness.

Still, the events of the book itself will more than likely have the Reader ignoring the annoying attributes of all the characters. Found begins weird and it gets progressively weirder. But a good kind of weird! If it didn't have the storyline that it does, I wouldn't read it, because it is a modern-based book with adolescent boys and I cannot stand those; they turn into coming-of-age stories - how dull! No one who has lived through puberty and has had to deal with three brothers when they went through adolescence wants to read about it. But Margaret Peterson Haddix offers up a wonderfully weird, intriguing, and Gideon Trilogy-like story that saps all the 21st-century bore right out of it!

Can't wait for Sent to come in!

Overall Rating: JJJ

Others in The Missing Series:
1)Found
2)Sent
3)Sabotaged
4)Torn

5)Caught