Back to the Future--Again! Sparks of Light by Janet B. Taylor

Bran and I shared a smile. A blaze of heat and tenderness and something else I couldn't yet name began to flood through me. What existed between us had survived through time and space. I thought ... maybe...we could become something legendary.

But the thing about legends is that they rarely have a happy ending.

And Hope and Bran have more than young love in common with those legendary lovers Romeo and Juliet. Hope is now a member of the Viators, a family dedicated to fighting the forces of the dark, usually in the form of the rival gang, the Timeslippers, traveling back in time to forestall events which could destroy the world of their own time. Bran is the estranged scion of the Timeslippers, controlled by his evil mother Celia. When, after a long absence, Bran appears at the Highland games, Hope knows that there is more than a manly Scots contest afoot, and she soon learns that Bran and the members of her Scots family have a new mission, to go back to 1895 and disable an "enhancement" invented by Nicola Tesla which would give the Timeslippers immense power over the past.

Time is short. There is no time for martial training, as there was before their earlier visit to rescue Hope's mother from captivity from the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, so with some frantic dressmaking and lessons in Victorian manners, the Viators descend to the subterranean tunnels beneath their manor to the magical point where the nexus where the magical ley lines intersect, forming their own "wrinkle in time," through which they must pass into the past.

I'd allowed myself to forget the part that comes just before the gray lassitude that whispered. "Give up, give in."

Wouldn't I give anything to avoid what came next: bone and nerve and flesh knit together by a force greater than any that had ever existed. Oh God, the pain...

But after the initial inconvenience of being chased by stampeding cattle into a Victorian abattoir, Hope finds the Gilded Age fascinating. Despite her constricting undergarments, the fashions are flattering, and she finds it easy to move through the upper crust of New York society--Vanderbilts, Astors, and all--as they search for a way to get close to the genius Tesla and his secret "enhancement" to destroy it before the Timeslippers capture Bran and gain the gadget for themselves.

It all comes down to a nip-and-tuck, slash-and-dash, shoot-and-scoot confrontation, chasing down subterranean tunnels and walking the plank between two Victorian edifices, despite the hazards of Victorian corsetry, along with the tragic death of the head of their family in the explosive destruction of Tesla's earth-shaking device.

In this sequel to her well-received first in series, Into the Dim (read my 2016 review here),  Janet B. Taylor's forthcoming Sparks of Light (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) offers romance and rip-roaring adventure in the dark and dim corridors of history. Fast-paced, in Taylor's sometimes rococo language, there's rarely a dull moment in this historical sci fi thriller, with side divergences into appalling aspects of the late 19th century such as Hope's confinement in a Victorian insane asylum for women and her discovery of the calculating bartering of rich young brides among the fabulously wealthy upper class. Still, through it all, there is the strong undercurrent of family loyalty and Hope and Bran's continuing love story.

Keep your Way-Back Machine warmed up. Occasional flashbacks to ancient times in which Hope and Bran bond as children foreshadow a third book which may tie up the loose ends to this page-turning, century-roaming series.

Would I Be Better Off If I Know? Black River Falls by Jeff Hirsch

It's funny how things get stuck in your head. Like the woman who gave me this notebook.She wasn't National Guard or CDC. The October Sixteenth Fund, maybe, or Remember Black River. The Remember People. All this woman had was notebooks.

"We though some of you might want one," she said. "So you can record things about yourself or your family, or what's happened since the quarantine. That way if you get, you know, infected, it could be like your memory."

Memory is Cardinal Cassidy's problem. When a strange illness hits the town of Black River Falls, the unknown virus wipes the memory of each infected person clean. They can remember some things--common knowledge like colors, numbers, song lyrics, how to read, but their personal identities, their families, their friends' names, the relationships they formed, all those are gone.  But Card is not infected and it seems he is alone in remembering everything. Seeking out his old house, Card finds it abandoned.

The National Guard rushes in to seal off the town to prevent spread of the virus to the rest of the country, and the government and private agencies provide supplies to support the infected, and slowly they begin to organize themselves into ad hoc arrangements. Strangers form couples, some take up life in abandoned houses, and children are sent to sometimes dangerous shelters where people, freed of old controls, prey upon them. Everything has changed. Overwhelmed by memories, Card meets up with his mother in the town.

It was Mom.

"Kid? Are you all right? You don't look all right."

"I'm fine," I said. I sat up slowly. My mask was beside me, but something stopped me from putting it on.

I'd spent three days after the outbreak searching for her. but this was the first time I'd actually seen her since that night. She was thinner, and her skin was deeper brown, as if she'd been spending a lot of time outside. I saw her wedding ring was gone.

"Well, if you're sure you're okay..." she said, turning away.

"My name's Cardinal, Cardinal Cassidy," I said.

"Nice to meet you.Cardinal, but I'd better get going." she said.

I called out to her again, but if she heard me, she didn't turn around.

Somehow Card had hoped that his mom might somehow know him, but he sees that to her he is just another stranger. Painfully, Card's memory of his family and town is intact. He remembers what the others do not, and one thing he remembers from that last day is a family quarrel in which his father had killed his brother, Cameron. Wearing a protective mask and gloves against the virus and driven by his memories and the chaos in the town, Card flees to a makeshift camp alone near the top of a local mountain, Lucy's Promise, and is gradually drawn into an impromptu "family" of children and young teenagers, shepherded by eighteen year-old Greer. Card remembers Greer as the cruel bully at the local high school, but sheared of all memory of his past identity, Greer is a different person and becomes Card's friend. Card is also drawn to a girl he rescues who chooses to be called Hannah,

Then the protective National Guard is suddenly withdrawn, replaced by a subcontractor, Martinson Vine, the "Marvins," clad in black riot gear, masks, and heavily armed, who begin a forced roundup, loading the infected into transport trucks to re-settle them in "safe" places. Greer and Hannah refuse to be taken, hoping to keep their close group of kids together, but Greer is killed in the struggle, and Hannah chooses to stay with the others. In despair, Card feels hopelessly alone and isolated from all those he has come to care about. Being uninfected seems the worst of the bad choices facing him. In a moment of reckless wishing to forget, he removes his mask and kisses Hannah.

But Card is immune to the virus, has been all along, and instead of forgetting, his memories are still there to taunt him with all that has been lost.

Sometimes it seems that all the good things and all the bad things are like vines growing up the side of a house. They are so many of them and they're all so tangled that it's impossible to tell one from the other. It's easy to think you have been saved when really you've been doomed all along.

Card comes close to suicide but is drawn back by the hope that his immunity may provide clues to helping the infected recover their memories, but as his mother confesses when next they meet...

"Would I be better off if I know?"

Jeff Hirsch's forthcoming psychological survival story, Black River Falls (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), deals with more than survival after a strange epidemic. At its core this novel deals with the source of personal identity, hidden deep in the ying-yang of nature vs. nurture, innate personality or those memories that shape a child into the person he or she becomes, the question of where we exist, within our in-born selves or inside our roles in social milieu in which we live.

Cardinal's uniqueness as a character lies at that choice point which few of us have as consciously as he. But growing to maturity is actually something like that, a kind of choosing what to keep from the past and what new life to pick to live, making this gripping internal coming-of-age story something of an outlier among the many dystopian science fiction novels out there. Although fans of super-hero comic sagas may be caught up in the complex parallel flashbacks to Card's father's graphic novel series, the Brotherhood of Wings, some readers may find they reinforce the theme that the outer world is something we create; others may merely see them as a dream-sequence metaphor to the otherwise fast-paced story. For the young adult reader, there is a lot to ponder in this novel of individual identity and community.

Apocalypse Now? Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane

Nita shivered. "A dream within a dream. How do you know the difference between the vision and reality?"

"Yes," said the Lone One "Such a common problem for people with a specialty like yours. They go wandering off among the paths of vision one time too many, and they never come out."

They walked along again quietly. Then, in an altered tone, the Lone One said, "What's the old saying-->that every wizard is the answer to a problem? And that every intervention, every wizardry, solves not only its own problem but others that you may not even know about?

"All is done for each," Nita said. It was a simple expression of a quantum reality, that all events in the universe were interconnected.

"Right," said the Lone One. "There probably ought to be some irony in the concept that while you're being the solution to someone else's problem, they're being the solution to yours."

Author Diane Duane spells out the premise of her tenth book in the Young Wizards series, Games Wizards Play (Young Wizards Series) Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016), set around the Invitational Wizard Games, occurring every eleven years, a sort of sorcerer's Trans-World Science Fair event with all the teen trappings of such competitions. When drafted to be mentors to a couple of the contestants, young wizards Nita and Dairine Callahan and Kit Rodriguez bemoan that they missed their chance to compete with the best young wizards, being too young for the last games and too old for this one, but they as they deal with their mentees, they see that their role is even more of a challenge than competing. Nita and Kit are assigned to oversee Penn Shao-Feng, brilliant but lazy, flirtatious and flamboyant, whose proposed spell immodestly promises nothing less than controlling the power of the sun and solar weather over the entire solar system.

Dairine's charge is the likewise brilliant but timid and sheltered Mehrnaz Farrahi, whose project is to use counter-tectonic forces to forestall catastrophic earthquakes and who is dominated and rendered nearly impotent by the labyrinthine rivalries within her family, a centuries-old family of venerable Iranian wizards.

Guiding subjects scarcely younger than they, the three young mentors have their own adolescent issues to deal with in addition to watching out for the workings of the universe. Nita and Kit in particular are in the first phase of their romantic feelings for each other, and Dairine has her own self-esteem problems while trying to help Mehrnaz find the strength to present before the august assembly. But as Penn and Mehrnaz pass their initial trials to compete in the finals, they seem to switch personalities, with Penn falling apart before each presentation, and Mehrnaz gaining a sense of herself as a more powerful wizard than any in her family.

It all comes down to Penn's final presentation, with those seemingly sloppy lacunae in his spell's structure turning out to be essential for the conclusion, one in which Nita's dream visions also prove crucial. Penn loses control in mid-spell, and as the sun begins to transform into a apocalyptic supernova, everyone, from young and senior wizards to the Planetaries and the Powers That Be, prove part of the resolution, just as Duane prefigured in Nita's dream sequence with the Lone One. This able author knits together the many threads of this and her earlier books in a conclusion that will be intensely satisfying to faithful followers of the series and bewitching but bewildering to those who unfamiliar with the earlier works.

Science, science fiction, and wizardly fantasy come together uniquely in this book that will challenge and charm Duane's long-time fans and those who cut their fantasy teeth on Harry Potter.

Be Careful What You Clone! Mad Scientist Academy: The Dinosaur Disaster by Matthew McElligott

ON A COOL SEPTEMBER MORNING, A GROUP OF STUDENTS ARRIVED FOR THE FIRST DAY OF THEIR NEW SCHOOL...

But are the students who straggle into this rather intimidating educational institution the usual fresh-faced, starched-and-combed kids? Not exactly. Matriculating at the Mad Scientist Academy, there's young Wolfgang Wolfman, little Scarlett Vampira, Frank N. Stein, Jr., Tad the Toadboy, Al, a green extraterrestrial--you know, the usual suspects.

And they are welcomed by their professor, appropriately dressed in white lab coat and--thoroughly tied up with plenty of rope.

"I AM DR. COSMIC. I WILL BE YOUR TEACHER THIS YEAR," HE EXPLAINS.

"WHY ARE YOU ALL TIED UP?" VENTURES SCARLETT.

And well may she inquire, because Dr. Cosmic explains that he was overpowered by the school pet Oscar, who just happens to be -- a dinosaur. And then the students are introduced to their paleontology instructor, a holographic skeletal authority appropriately named Dr. Tibia, who leads them into what the kids think is an exhibit of dino displays.

But the students soon discover that the exhibits are not clever models. They are robots, and it seems Dr. Cosmos' robot remote control has a few prehistoric bugs in the system. The system is on the fritz for sure, and the chase is on, with the students left to sort out the survivors on their own, in Matthew McElligott's unusual first day of school romp, Mad Scientist Academy: The Dinosaur Disaster (Crown Books, 2015). Cleverly disguised as a comic adventure, in this opening title, McElligott's premise is definitely educational, with a fine lesson on types of dinosaurs and how they rose and fell in their time. McElligott appends a dinosaur dictionary with thumbnail illustrations and facts about dinosaurs, including a perhaps surprising group, called "Dinosaurs That Survived!" (hint: they taste like chicken!) and adds a web link to more fun with dinosaur lore.

Kirkus Reviews reminds us of that earlier critical and popular success in science nonfiction for kids and comically quips, "Aside from being, you know, mad, Dr. Cosmic is plainly a colleague of Ms. Frizzle, and the mix of pithy banter, tumultuous field-trip mishaps, and science fact is as familiar as it is winning. Fans of the Frizz will be dino-delighted." If this series turns out to be half as informative and fun as The Magic School Bus series, the sound you will be hearing is much cheering from primary school science teachers (most of whom are NOT mad, at least not this early in the school year)--and their students.

And don't think that Ms. Frizzle has parked the Magic Bus in the junkyard and gone to some tropical retirement home. Joanna Cole's and Bruce Degen's latest fun field trip is The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge.

A Mole at the Automaton Inn: The Ire of Iron Claw (Gadgets and Gears) by Kersten Hamilton

In a flash, I knew two things without a doubt.

The Dusketeers had shown me his evil purpose. And Gizmo's garbled "Waaaamussssnoooootllllll...k-k-k--!" clearly meant, "Walter must not launch his kite!"

I wheeled, wagging frantically in an attempt to reach the roof before Wally set the kite aloft. But I was too late.

The kite was racing skyward as my paws touched down next to Wally. I heard a harsh metallic clang, followed too quickly by a deafening explosion as the shock knocked Wally from his feet and sent me tumbling to the base of Tesla's tower.

"I told you he was going to blow something up," Mrs. McDivit announced as concerned citizens rushed past her. "Mad Mars has returned! Flee for your lives."

Despite the best efforts of loyal automatons--housekeeper Gizmo and the house-cleaning troop of rabbity Dusketeers-- and the services of his loyal flying dachshund Noodles, some evil force has attempted yet again to destroy boy inventor Wally Kinnewickett and his mentor, scientist Nicola Testa, the Wizard of the West, along with his magnum opus, the towering Atmospheric Electron Collector which will be capable of using the earth's magnetic field to generate endless electricity. Tesla has many powerful enemies--Thomas Edison, whose dream is that his direct current will power the world, and his rival advocating alternating current, George Westinghouse. But it is clear to Wally and his parents Calypso and Oliver Kennewickett that the explosion proves that their Automaton Inn has a mole, a person spying for Mad Madini, the master of mesmerism, and his evil henchmen, the Mesmers.

Noodles, whose wings are powered purely by his wagging tale, knows that if the Mesmers can overcome the Kennewickett's staff of electrically charged and programmed automatons, his purely doggy powers will be needed, and sure enough, as the family sets forth to apprehend Madini in Italy in their steam-powered airship the Daedalus, the flight is uneventful only until they set out across the Atlantic. First they are pursued by pirates, in a coal-powered, paddle-powered airship that manages to fire upon the Daedelus and cause a slow leak that threatens to bring them before they reach the water's edge in France.

"Gizmo!" Oliver called. "Speed and distance calculations?"

"We will make it to shore, sir," the automaton said.

"But what then?" asked Melvin.

"One conundrum at a time, dear." said Calypso. "Prepare to disembark."

I whirled to find myself face-to-face with a nightmare. An enormous spider was stepping over the tree. Its shovel-like palpi were waving wildly.

"Bonjour!" it boomed cheerfully. "Do you require assistance?"

Although the Kennewicketts are rescued from the privateers of the skies by their fellow French scientist, their troubles continue when Monsieur Fevre's eight-legged, coal-burning Arachne transport arrives to ferry them over the Alps to their destination.

But Noodles cannot rest easy, especially when they disembark. The city streets are infused with the smell of popcorn and there are far too many pigeons about for Noodles' mind to be at ease, remembering vividly as he does their last encounter with Madini and his automaton pigeon Iron Claw. And when they meet up with cousin Melvin's Grand Touring parents, Wentworth and Mame, Wally's aunt and uncle seem somehow not themselves.

"Why don't you stay awhile?" Wentworth said. "We'll hop right over to see the mayor."

"Hop?" Melvin asked.

"Strut. I mean, stroll. Lovely day for a stroll." He tilted his head and watched a bug scurry across the sidewalk.

"Mother! Are you both... quite well?"

"Of course, dear," the materfamilias said. "We're both in fine feather. Er, fettle."

Suspicions confirmed, Noodles gets ready to wag up his wings. He knows that there is another climactic struggle with Madini and Iron Claw in the works, in The Ire of Iron Claw: Gadgets and Gears, Book 2 (Houghton Mifflin Clarion, 2015).

In the second book in her series, the author takes her early twentieth-century electronic wizards into another quirky steampunk adventure. A creative look at what were thought at the time to be mad scientists, Kersten Hamilton builds this tale around the real persona of Nicola Tesla, whose work met with great disbelief in his time, but which has powered modern science into new inventions and even has an electric car corporation now named in his honor. As narrator, the power-wagging flying dachshund Noodles serves as both comic superhero and lexicographer for middle readers offering definitions of the most arcane of early twentieth-century terms. Saved again by Noodles' quick-wagging tail and courage, it looks as if Wally Kennewickett, with his family and friends Teddy Roosevelt and Nicola Testa, will probably have young readers as guests at the Automaton Inn yet another time in this continuing series.

Kersten Hamiton's first book, also wittily illustrated by James Hamilton, was The Mesmer Menace (Gadgets and Gears) (see my review here.)

Exit Exam: Graduation Day by Joelle Charbonneau

Everyone here at the University was chosen to lead. But what I will need to know is that those on my team believe as I do that The Testing must be ended. That those who have worked for the rebellion, thinking they were bringing change, must be saved. That we need new leaders who will change the system to secure the futures of those younger than us who dream of someday being selected.

And if the people I decide to ask to participate in this terrible task are willing to fight for those things, there is still one question that must be answered.

Can they be trusted?

Tomas and I have only one choice. We will need to stage our own Testing.

"Trust no one," Valencia Vale's father had whispered to her as she left for her own Testing in Tosu City, the trial that would determine if she would be admitted to university studies. In the time after nuclear war and environmental collapse have made most of earth near uninhabitable, the leaders of the United Commonwealth have fashioned the Testing and university studies to select for those who are ruthless enough to kill to become part of the ruling oligarchy. Cia believes that failure leads to redirection, which means execution, rather than reassignment of remote colonies. But now she learns that perhaps an even worse fate follows redirection--being used as subjects of genetic studies on the results of the radiation and toxicity that followed the apocalyptic Seven Wars.

Cia had known that her older brother Zeen is one of the leaders of a rebellion planned to overthrow the ruling caste and longed to join with him, but now she also learns the Dr. Holt and Dr. Barnes, directors of The Testing, have spies among the rebels and plan to use their uprising as the premise to take over the government and oust the few leaders who oppose The Testing. And as her trusted intern, Cia was chosen by President Collindar to assassinate Dr. Barnes and seven other leaders who might thwart the ruling Chamber vote to end The Testing.

Now Cia must devise her own testing to make sure that the students she recruits to carry out the assassinations can be trusted to be with her to the death. And Cia knows that her final test will be when she has to face an unarmed Dr. Barnes and kill him in cold blood. Is there no way to avoid doing evil to do good?

But even as she makes that choice, Cia meets one last test when she faces Dr. Barnes.

I wrap my fingers around the gun. I could never have imagined that Dr. Barnes would stand quietly in front of me asking me to take his life.

Is he the monster I have always believed, or someone who is now making the ultimate sacrifice as a means of righting wrongs?

Everything depends on this moment. I need to fire.

I need to kill.

In a post-apocalyptic world in which a society is fighting an uphill battle to restore health and security to its citizens and its reclaimed lands, a benignly-intended but flawed government can easily become dystopian. To provide for survival of the many, some may die, and leaders must be selected who can make those hard choices. It is Lincoln ordering Sherman's March, Truman dispatching the Enola Gay to Hiroshima. Conventional morality and trust are often the first victims in human history, as in Joelle Charbonneau's final book in her trilogy, Graduation Day (The Testing) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014).

This series might facetiously be called Hunger Games for Dorks, a fierce life-or-death competition to determine future leaders through academic and intellectual competitions which test rational decision-making rather than gladiator-style combat. Even so, there is plenty of direct conflict in this series, along with intrigue, espionage, booby-trapped devices, and murder, institutional and personal, along the way to keep the pages turning. Charbonneau's gripping first-person narrative reveals Cia's inner coming-of-age as she deals with issues of ethics and the nature of leadership and governing, the big questions of human society. Wisely, the author's closing is no conclusion, as the task goes on. For young adult readers who think about these issues of civil society--equality and justice and the hard choices that governance requires--this series is not to be missed.

Earlier titles in this series are The Testing and Independent Study: The Testing, Book 2 (see reviews here).

Trust No One: Independent Study by Joelle Charbonneau

"It's such a waste. He could have been one of the stars of this class. There should be another way."

"Procedures are in place for a reason, MayLin."

My heart leaps into my throat. That voice belongs to Dr. Jedidiah Barnes. "The country can't afford to change course now. Not when we are finally beginning to make progress. You know what to do with him."

I peer around the corner of the building and my knees give way as I see two officials carrying Obadiah toward the skimmer. His head lolls back. His braids drag the ground. I look for the rise and fall of his chest, but there is none.

The female official who escorted Obadiah appears with a black bag and Obadiah's guitar. She throws them into the skimmer and it lifts off the ground and travels across the barren landscape.

Obadiah is gone. Redirected. Dead. If I am not careful, I will be, too.

Valencia Vale has survived her examinations and the life-or-death Testing in the unrevitalized lands, but as she and the other survivors of the Induction Ceremony prepare to begin their graduate studies in their assigned field, her fears lead her to follow one of the students who has failed, one who is said to be "redirected," presumably sent to one of the colonies to work. From a hidden vantage she discovers in horror that redirection means execution, that any failure on her part can mean, not being sent home to her Five Lake Colony to work with her father in botanical science, but a quick, anonymous death. Failed students are clearly disposable for the Commonwealth.

And as she begins her assignment to governmental studies, Cia realizes that students from the capital, sons and daughters of officials in Tosu City, are not redirected, and she realizes that the odds are against her and other colony students. Assigned nine courses for the first semester, Cia knows that she must excel just to survive.

And then she learns that there is a covert faction, working to overthrow the current government and return the Commonwealth to its mission of justice and redevelopment following the apocalypse that destroyed the United States and most of the world. When Cia receives one of the twelve coveted internships, working under the President of the Commonwealth herself, and is contacted by her brother Zeen, now one of the leaders of the rebels, he tells her that the president is planning to confront the other officials of the Commonwealth with the murder and injustice they use to keep the Tosu City faction in power, and if that initiative fails, a full-scale insurrection will begin.

Cia's father told her to "trust no one," and now she realizes that her fellow students, even Tomas, the one she loves, are capable of conspiring against her to help themselves, and Cia determines that she must escape from the city and join the resistance. But being a rebel means willfully choosing to kill. As she prepares to cross the bridge leading from her residence, Cia thinks about her bleak choices.

I close my eyes and see Rawson, Zandri, Malachi. My Testing roommate Ryme. Other faces I have no names for haunt my sleep. How many have killed without hesitation? How can I face my fellow students each day wondering what horrors they are capable of.

I grip the steel railing and let the chill of the metal fill me. How easy it would be to let the emptiness swallow me. To find release at the bottom. To be welcomed by those I have lost.

But I don't. I take my hand from the rail and step back. This is one choice I will never make.

I look at the University campus--a place built on hope and a promise that those who study here will make this world better. A promise I believe in and will find the strength and courage to fight for. I will do what it takes.

But Cia understands that choosing not to end her own life means that she will be asked to kill others if the insurrection begins. But there is one hope--that she can find physical proof of the cruel deaths officials have arranged for The Testing, evidence strong enough to persuade the Council to return the Commonwealth to justice without overthrow by force.

Joelle Charbonneau's second book in her series, Independent Study (The Testing) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) deals with the struggle for justice in a dystopian society in a devastated world. Unlike many other such novels, including the current Hunger Games series, Cia's struggle is primarily intellectual. Although there are plenty of life-and-death encounters, reaching justice in The Testing series requires more than strength and fighting skill. Intelligence and an ethical compass are the powers which author Charbonneau highlights, and she mostly succeeds in creating believable young characters, removing the layers of the personality to reveal the weaknesses and strengths of the human heart. There are plenty of dangerous trials and cliffhanging episodes to keep young adult science fiction action fans absorbed throughout the narrative, but Cia's choice of which side to join and which others to trust provides a theme that is both current and eternal.

My review of the first book in this series, The Testing can be read here, and Joelle Charbonneau's trilogy will conclude with Graduation Day (The Testing),forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in June of 2014.

Pigeon Peril: The Mesmer Menace (Gadgets & Gears) by Kersten Hamilton

WALTER'S HAIR WAS ALL STANDING ON END WHEN HE WOKE ME TO DEMONSTRATE HIS INVENTION.

"IT IS FINISHED, NOODLES," HE SAID, HOLDING UP A SMALL VEST WITH BAT-LIKE FOLDING WINGS.

I TRIED TO SHAKE THE SLEEP OUT OF MY EARS AS HE BUTTONED ME INTO IT.

"YOU'RE AMAZING!" WALLY SAID.

I WAGGED. THE WINGS FLAPPED UP AND DOWN!

"YOU CAN DO IT, BOY!"

MY WAGGER WENT WILD.  SUDDENLY, I CAME FULLY AWAKE TO FIND THAT I'D RISEN TO THE CEILING.

Dachshund Noodles believes that the problem is not with his loyalty, but his acrophobia.  I mean, not even a devoted dachshund can keep wagging when his wagger is all that keeps him aloft over an abyss!

But life is pleasant, if a bit wacky living with a family of eccentric inventors, until Wally Kinnewickett opens the door of the Automated Inn to a hobo and things take a turn for the outright bizarre.

"HOW CAN WE HELP YOU? " CALYPSO KINNEWICKETT ASKED THE HOBO KINDLY. "BREAKFAST, PERHAPS?"

"WE'VE NO TIME FOR THAT," THE HOBO SAID. HE TOOK OFF HIS COAT AND HAT.

WALLY GASPED. "THEODORE ROOSEVELT!"

MR. PRESIDENT!" OLIVER KINNEWICKETT EXCLAIMED. "WHAT AN UNEXPECTED HONOR!"

"THE COUNTRY NEEDS YOUR AMAZING BRAINS, KINNEWICKETTS," SAID THE PRESIDENT.

It seems a nefarious gang of magicians plan to use their powers to mesmerize the leaders of the country, gain mind control over them, and take over the nation, if not the world. T. R. urges Wally's parents, Calypso and Oliver, to turn their inventive minds to espionage to avert the coming catastrophe. The senior Kinnewicketts quickly pack and prepare to leave in disguise with the President, leaving Walter to manage their Atmospheric Electron Collector designed in collaboration with Nikola Tesla, aided by their staff of automatons, Gizmo the housekeeper, Knives the cook, and dozens of automated Dust Bunnies who keep the Automated Inn clean.

But no sooner do the President and his two new covert operatives disguise themselves and take the train to Washington, than the chief Mesmer of them all, in the form of the so-called Mr. Potts and his mustachioed assistant Mr. Slade, arrive at the Inn, pretending to be pop corn purveyors visiting to view Mrs. Kinnewickett's invention, the surplus electron corn popper.

But with them comes a peculiar pigeon, Iron Claw, who has one spinning eye capable of mesmerizing anyone who gazes at it. Wally soon sees through the ruse and invents for himself some special spectacles impervious to the pigeon's stare, while everyone else falls under its spell, even Wally's supercilious cousins Prissy and Melvin and the entire automatonic staff.  Wally realizes that he must get word to the telegraph office asking Mrs. Roosevelt to contact his parents to return and foil the plot, but with Potts and Slade watching his every move, the young Kinnewickett realizes that his only hope lies in Wally's wag-powered wings to carry the message to the town telegraph office. It's all up to Noodles' wagger to power his flight, but can a dachshund hampered by a deathly fear of heights manage a long flight and a sustained wag?

Kersten Hamilton's first in a projected series, The Mesmer Menace: Gadgets and Gears, Book One (Clarion Books, 2013), has all the trappings of sci fi fantasy adventure, a  pair of evil magicians, a family of famed wacky inventors who put the kabash on evil while perfecting an unlimited (and carbon-emission-free) source of electricity to power the world.  Wally is the quintessential kid genius inventor, and his dachshund Noodles is the, er, dogged narrator of this comedic introduction to the quirky Kinnewicketts for young readers who like their fantasy on the spoofy side.

"Steampunk with training wheels for the chapter-book set!" quips Kirkus Reviews.

On the Dark Side: The Shade of the Moon by Susan Beth Pfeffer

"They used their belts for a noose," Mrs. Brunswick said. "They told Laura to say her prayers... Then they used her for target practice."

Mrs. Brunswick was sobbing. "They said they'd kill our children if she wasn't still there when they came back. I'm so sorry, Jon....  There's a back door," she said, "...it might be easier for you."

But when he left the school office Jon went out the front door. They wanted people to see Mom. They wanted people to understand what they were capable of doing.

Jon stood still beside his mother's body. He wanted to take her home, back to Pennsylvania, back to life as it had been. He wanted Mom to see the sun again, to see the grandchild she'd been so eagerly awaiting. He wanted to kill.

Four years have passed since a meteor strike on the moon changed life on earth. Billions have died from the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and ashen clouds that blocked most of the sun's light. The earth is vastly changed, but human nature, freed from the social conventions so laboriously worked out over millennia of human life, sadly has not. A much different United States endures, but limited to an oligarchy of enclaves of the privileged,the clavers, surrounded by subject workers, grubs, who provide the manual labor to sustain these small communities.

Jon is living with his stepmother Lisa and his little half-brother inside an enclave in Tennessee called Sexton, while his mother Laura lives with his sister Miranda and her husband Alex, living in the nearby grub town of White Birch. Jon is a "slip," admitted by a suspect pass to the better-fed claver community, with the help of Lisa's administrative position and his place as a star soccer player on Sexton's high school team. Even sport is seen as a way to humiliate grubs and keep them in a subordinate position, and Jon's coach demands that they overwhelm the grub teams they play to keep them in their place. When Jon meets the newly arrived Sarah, a transfer with her doctor father from another enclave, his teammates force him to choose between them and her, and aware of his tentative position within the enclave, he reluctantly sides with them. Still Sarah and Jon contrive ways to meet secretly and form a bond of closeness that reflects their inner disapproval of the social inequity of their position.

When the grubber White Birch team seems to be winning their match, a riot begins in the stands which spreads throughout the town as a grub revolt, brutally subdued after several days by the clavers' overwhelming force. Jon's mother is cruelly murdered trying to reach the school where she teaches, and when Jon discovers that his sister's baby has been stolen, under a pretense that it was born deformed and died soon after birth, Sarah comes up with a tenuous plan to take the baby from its adoptive parents and flee Sexton for a refuge with Jon's brother Matt, several hundred miles away. Jon has to make a moral choice, whether to leave his privileged but uncertain position as a claver, or take his chances rescuing his sister's child and trying to survive in the countryside on their own.

In the fourth book of her post-apocalyptic series, The Shade of the Moon: Life As We Knew It Series, Book 4 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) Susan Beth Pfeffer takes on the moral dilemmas resulting from such a chain of events, disasters so overwhelming that humans fall back on a primitive and unequal society, at first in order to survive, but soon as a means to preserve power for the few. Whether or not our society would so quickly revert to oligarchy, Pfeffer's story deals frankly with the ethical choices that such a conceivable society would mean for earth's survivors. For those who have read her powerful, best-selling first book, Life As We Knew It: Life As We Knew It Series, Book 1 this story, albeit with some questionable twists of plot, will be a must-read new novel for young adult readers, especially those who value the insights found in dystopian fiction. Booklist says, "Pfeffer's well-written take on what life might be as it returns to 'normal' is sometimes brutal and always depressingly real."

In addition to her popular first book, earlier books in this series are The Dead and the Gone, Book 2) and This World We Live In: Life As We Knew It Series, Book 3.

The Survival Games: The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau

A shiver snakes up my spine. I don't know what to believe. To believe my father's dreams are something more than dreams is unthinkable. Tomorrow I leave for Tosu City. At the end of the week I will begin my Testing. To refuse is treason and all that implies.

My father puts his arm around me. "Whatever process they used to wipe our memories could have caused the dreams. Our brains might be creating false memories to replace the ones that were taken."

"But you don't believe that." I jump to my feet, angry. "So now what?"

My father doesn't raise his voice to meet mine. "Better that you go to Tosu City prepared to question everything you see and everyone you meet. That might be the difference between success or failure."

"Cia, trust no one," he says in a whisper.

In the post-apocalyptic world of the United Commonwealth, a few hundred sixteen-year-old graduates are chosen to participate in the Testing, with only those remaining eligible for university training and leadership roles. Devastating worldwide war and concurrent environmental collapse has left the surviving humans in small colonies struggling to restore the land and water and repopulate the world, and only those who pass the rigorous Testing can become leaders. Valencia Vale is chosen with four others to represent the Five Lakes Colony and taken to the capital for testing with candidates from other colonies. But the testing involves far more than mere multiple choice questions on history, science, mathematics, and literature. Cia quickly notices that they are watched constantly by surveillance cameras. Those who pass the initial phase are cast into teams which complete hands-on trials, and in her group Cia sees teammate Malachi die almost instantly when he choses to touch the wrong device. The Commonwealth testers offer no assistance to those who die during the trials, and she realizes that simply surviving to the end will be perhaps her hardest task, and that, as her father tried to warn her, one of the threats will be her fellow candidates.

Still, Cia comes to trust Tomas, a boy from her own colony, and they agree to meet and work together on the final test, making their way with only three items of their choice across 200 miles of wasteland from the ruins of Chicago to Tosu City. Uncontaminated water and non-poisonous food are scarce, and there is the threat of mutated wild animals and as Cia learns, mutated humans as well.

The animal snarls as I roll out of its grasp. I scream as the creature's claws slash deep into my left arm. Whatever this thing is, I know I cannot outrun it.

I turn and extend the gun in front of me. As I aim I finally get a look at it. Long legs matted in a tangle of brownish hair. Long arms that are extended toward me with three-inch claws I already know are razor sharp. A hunched back. Curled lips revealing blackish teeth. And the eyes...

My finger pulls the trigger. The eyes of my attacker go wide. There is fear and anger as the wound in its chest blossoms with bright red blood. My enemy sinks to the ground and with its last breath lets out a cry that sounds like a call for help. Now that I have looked into the dark blue eyes of my attacker, I know this isn't an animal. The eyes are too intelligent. The body was twisted and deformed, but there is no doubt. I just killed a human being.

But as Cia and Tomas make their way toward Tosu City, they realize that their greatest danger is from their own kind, the Commonwealth examiners who have set deadly traps along the way and most horrifying of all, from their fellow candidates who will kill to eliminate competition. Although Cia and Tomas share a growing love for each other, Cia remembers her father's portentous words: Trust no one.

Joelle Charbonneau's forthcoming The Testing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) joins a long list of dystopic novels, beginning with Lois Lowry's notable  The Giver series and most famously Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games trilogy, dealing with the rebuilding of human society in which young people face trials in a vastly altered system of survivors. Charbonneau's first young adult novel holds its own with others of this genre, dealing frankly with the often cruel choices to be made among the survivors of worldwide apocalypse. Charbonneau's is a  suspenseful narrative which grips the reader from the first pages and continues with unresolved conflicts even beyond the conclusion of this first book in a projected series. Her characters are heroic but believable teenagers and the setting is far from unbelievable in a dangerously devastated earth where choices are never easy.

Opening to high praise from both her fellow authors and reviewers alike, The Testing (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) offers page-turning intensity and real philosophical questions as it explores what it means to be human and what a human society should be. Publishers Weekly adds "...action, romance, intrigue, and a plausible dystopian premise ... a near-flawless narrative."

Not In Kansas Anymore: Goblin Secrets by William Alexander

The Captain took a step forward. Rownie shuffled back a bit, under the wagon.

"The Lord Mayor would be very interested in the whereabouts of any unChanged actor," the Captain said. "Even a child, even someone who has only worn a mask once. In exchange for such information the Lord Mayor would provide you with a special license to perform within the proper limits of the city."

"Very generous," said Thomas. We would, of course, be delighted to help the Lord Mayor with his interests."

Rownie took a breath. The old goblin wasn't about to turn him in. The Guard-boots made a precise turns and surrounded them. Rownie heard Thomas climb up into the driving seat. A gearworked mule unfolded itself at the front of the wagon. Rownie could see coal glowing red in its belly.

They use coal, he thought, horrified. The mule began to trot. Rownie's hiding place was moving, and now he had nowhere to go.

A hatch opened in the wagon floor above him. Several pairs of hands reached down, caught him and pulled him inside.

Rownie has no mother, not even his own name, just a truncated version of Rowan, his brother's name. Fleeing the harsh and wicked Graba, a Fagin-like witch with clockwork chicken feet, whose orphan charges do her bidding in exchange for a pile of rags to sleep on and an occasional supper, Rownie runs away to the inchoate city of Zombay. Seeking his older brother in a troupe of players, clearly Tamlin (goblin), Rownie is taken in and fed by these masked actors, even donning a mask himself to play a part in a performance. For this act he finds himself a marked fugitive, hunted down by the automaton soldiers, the Guard of the Lord Mayor, and only the quick wits of Tamlin leader Thomas enable his escape.

With the sharp-eyed pigeon spies of the Baba Yaga-like Graba everywhere and the city a turmoil of rumors and an overwhelming fear of the Flood, Rownie is on his own, drawn to the mystique of playacting and the kindness of the Tamlin. The goblin troupe seem to have known his brother, and Rownie's only hope is to hide out with them and try to reunite with Rowan. But as they hide in the maze of tunnels under the town clock, deep beneath the Zombay River, Rownie finds his brother, but much changed, a senseless, heartless automaton, unknowing in the path of the coming Flood. His quest seems hopeless, but Rownie leads his mindless brother into the hidden stairs under the clock tower in the hope that he can find a way to save him and the city from the oncoming waters.

William Alexander's National Book Award-winning Goblin Secrets (Margaret K. Elderry Books, 2012) is a mysteriously imaginative fantasy, part traditional folklore, part steampunk science fiction, set in its own world of clockwork soldiers and animals, steam-driven by coal, but not coal from deep in the earth, but living hearts torn from living creatures, human and otherwise. There are traces of Oliver Twist and his orphan band, a sort of evil Wizard of Oz Lord Mayor, and a cast of seemingly human characters with very little more humanity than their clockwork servants. Strangely, it is only the Tamlin, green, long-fingered, and secretive, who retain any vestige of human empathy for others, and Rownie sees no choice for himself but to join them and risk being changed to Tamlin form himself.

Constructed in acts and scenes instead of chapters, it is a strange world which William Alexander creates, through which familiar elements flicker and turn upon themselves, all of them not what is expected. But courage and human loyalty perhaps prevail in the novel's perplexing conclusion which suggests a sequel or two. Themes of appearance and reality, of what it means to be human, and the nature of free will swirl through this multifaceted story, giving the more sophisticated young adult reader much to consider.

Kirkus Reviews says "Though highly textured, it's tightly woven and reassuringly seamless. The result is wryly humorous and bearably yet excitingly menacing: Even while much is left unexplained, Rownie's triumph is both gripping and tantalizing."

The Source: The Son by Lois Lowry

She turned away, feeling tears well in her eyes. What on earth was the matter with her? No one else seemed to feel this kind of passionate attachment to other humans. Not to a newchild, not to a spouse, or a coworker, or friend. She had not felt it toward her own parents or her brother. But now, toward this wobbly, drooling toddler–

“Bye-bye,” she whispered to him, and he looked up and wiggled his little fingers.

Claire choked back tears as she pedaled her bike back to the Hatchery. More and more she despised her life, the dull routine of the job, the mindless conversation with her coworkers, the endless repetition of her day. She wanted only to be with the child.... It was not right to have these feelings. Not normal. Not permitted. She knew this. But she did not make them go away.

Lois Lowry’s final book in the Giver Quartet series, Son (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), takes the reader back to the source, the dystopian society she delineated in her initial volume. Her protagonist in this finale, Claire, we see to be indeed the source, the mother of the child Gabriel for whose sake Jonas, the chosen, the intended future Giver, flees his colorless world to save the life of the child he has come to love, the one who doesn’t quite fit into that regimented society.

In her own ceremony of the Twelves, when children are assigned their vocation, Claire is disappointed to be chosen to be a Vessel, a Birthmother, to be inseminated and to bring forth a Product, a child that she is never intended to see, taken at birth to the Nurturing House until its adoption by a parental pair chosen by the Committee. Unable to give birth easily, Claire undergoes a Caesarian and is decertified and sent to the community’s fish hatchery. But Claire realizes that she craves the depth of emotions felt during her pregnancy and secretly disposes of the “pills” given to all citizens, pills which she intuits hide the vividness, the colors and emotions of real human life, and keep the citizens docile. Having inadvertently discovered her “product’” was a boy designated only  “Number 36,” she befriends one of the Nurturers and volunteers to help with the babies in order to be with her own son.

But when Jonas, the boy chosen to receive the history of the society from the aged Giver, suddenly disappears, taking Claire's son, now named Gabriel, Claire has only one hope of finding him, to stowaway on one of the supply boats that move freely between communities along the waterway and and search for Jonas and her son. Claire befriends the cook, who helps her make her escape, but when the boat reaches the sea and is shipwrecked in a storm, Claire is the only survivor, brought ashore in an isolated communitym very different from the only one she had known, a primitive one of fishermen and farmers, but one in which the normal human emotions and attachments are deeply rooted in daily life.

Claire is taken in by a childless old midwife and healer, but as her memory of her former life returns, she is determined to return to the world she left behind and find her son. She manages an impossibly grueling climb up the cliff face, only to meet with a frightening figure, a man who calls himself the Trademaster, an evil force with dark powers who offers her a terrible trade–her youth for the chance to see her son again, and so she finds herself transformed from a strong and beautiful young woman into an old crone, bent and racked with the pains of age.

Her son Gabe is now a young man, also restless in the community of refugees from the dystopic
community from which he was saved by Jonas, now an elder of the town. Gabriel is drawn
to the river, obsessed with building a boat which might take him back to discover his own source and perhaps his true mother. Claire is at first content just to watch Gabriel from a distance, feeling that he could never believe her story, but as she nears death, she shares her account with Jonas, who alone can guide Gabriel to overcome the Trademaster and restore his mother to her true age and place in his life.

Lowry’s final tale in the series is totally absorbing, as Claire’s world expands to unite the earlier characters, Kira from Gathering Blue, Jonas from The Giver (Giver Quartet), and Mentor from Messenger,-in the final confrontation,  which comes down, as all such sagas must, to a showdown of good and evil. Lowry has developed this series as a river grows from its source to its final merger with the sea, using the narrative and metaphoric skills which have made her one of the most versatile and notable authors of her time. Hers is a brave theme, that human love can overcome the darkness arrayed against it, one told and retold through literary history and recently culminating most famously in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7). Dedicated readers of that series who came of age after Lowry’s The Giver won its Newbery Award in 1994 will find it worthwhile to read this and the other books in the Giver Quartet, which absorbingly tell the same venerable story in a much different but no less meaningful way.

"…A beautifully wrought political fable... [this] rare concluding volume will send readers back to the first," says The Washington Post. Kirkus Reviews puts it simply, "Bravo!"

Crossing: The Line by Teri Hall

The Line itself was invisible. There was a barren ribbon of soil, running along the meadow as far as the eye could see, where the grass couldn't grow. And Rachel thought she could see a funny sort of haze, but even that was only apparent in certain lights--right before dusk or early in the morning.

Though the Line was almost imperceptible, it had affected many lives. It affected Rachel's, too. In a sense, the Line was the reason Rachel ended up working in the greenhouse, instead of just playing.

As a small child, Rachel's life on the Property felt safe and secure; there was just Mrs. Mason, the elderly owner for whom her mother gratefully worked as housekeeper, who allowed Rachel and Vivian to live in a small nearby guesthouse, and old Jonathan, who did odd jobs and helped in the orchid greenhouse which supported them all. But the greenhouse, in a corner of the Property, looked out upon the Line, some sort of government-ordered force field which prevented anyone from crossing into the benign-looking woodlands of what everyone called Away, where frightening beings called the Others were said to live, and so the greenhouse had always had a strange attraction for Rachel. She grew to love the orchids which Mrs. Mason skillfully tended there and longed to learn more about them, but her fear of the intimidating Mrs. Mason kept her from showing herself there. And the pull of the mysterious Line, taboo but so near, drew her there every day.

But as Rachel grows into her teens she sensed that beneath the sequestered life she lived, there were secrets being kept, hidden fears that her mother and Mrs. Mason shared. Her mother had always kept a low profile, venturing only into the nearby small town of Benson for household necessities, and in the lessons she assigned to Rachel was a strong distrust of government information. Rachel knew the United States had defeated at powerful enemy which had used radioactive weapons against her country and that her government had sealed off the devastated area behind the impenetrable Line, leaving the people there on their own, and controlling the rest of the population through rigidly managed media and a system of secret police whose "Identification Arrests" were feared. Rachel gradually comes to realize that her parents were some sort of collaborators against the government and that her father was conscripted forcefully and sent to his death somewhere in the forbidden territory.

Then Rachel finds a "corder," an old-looking device with a recorded message from the other side of the Line, begging for medicines for someone called Indigo, and as she struggles with what to do with the plea, she meets a boy of her age, Pathik, who says he comes from Away, asks for her help, and her efforts to provide that help reveal secrets about who she, her mother and father, Mrs. Mason, and the messenger Pathik really are. And when these secrets are spoken, it is obvious that choices must be made, choices which will end their secure, secluded lives.

Teri Hall's The Line (Dial Books, 2010) is, like Lois Lowry's landmark futuristic novel The Giver, an absorbing character-driven dystopian novel which develops slowly through dialog and its unobtrusive third person narration, building slowly but eventually coming to deal with serious issues of governance, individual liberty as opposed to group order and security, freedom of speech and due process, and the ethical responsibility of humans to each other. Hall does no preaching through her narration, unobtrusively allowing the major issues of the novel to evolve through the interactions of the all too human characters.

Hall's conclusion, in media res, leaves the resolution of these issues open, even as Rachel makes her choice to cross alone into the Away, with the outcome left unresolved in a way which encourages the reader to think about the issues of policy and ethics raised (and also laying the foundation for a second book as well.) Fans of Lowry's Newbery Award book, Margaret Peterson Haddix's best-selling Among the Hidden (Shadow Children #1) and M. T. Anderson's riveting Feed will find Hall's work equally absorbing, thought-provoking, and, yes, exciting.

On A Dare! Sabotaged by Margaret Peterson Haddix

"I. Don't. Care," Andrea said.

"I know you think your plans and your strategies are important, and it really, really matters to outsmart the man who lied to me--and to protect time, like it's some perfect, priceless jewel. But it isn't. It doesn't matter."

She was getting choked up. She gingerly touched John White's sleeve. "This man came all the way across the ocean to find his family. He risked his life for that. So if I'm one of the people he's looking for--and I am--I'm not going to hide from him. I'm gonna tell him who I am."

But what Andrea wanted to do--that was just reckless. JB would never allow it. So there was no way that JB knew where they were, Jonah thought. Nobody knew where they were.

In the third book in Margaret Peterson's best-selling Missing series, Sabotaged (Missing) (Simon & Schuster, 2010), the author sends brother and sister Jonah and Katherine with their also kidnapped- from-time friend Andrea back into the sixteenth century to "fix time." However, Andrea, the stolen-from-time Virgina Dare, has secretly been approached by a mystery visitor from the future who entices her into reprogramming her Elucidator with the promise that it will enable her to go back one year and prevent the deaths of her twenty-first century "parents" in an accident.

But the three land on an unknown destination, a deserted island seemingly without inhabitants. But they soon stumble upon a crumbling settlement and find a log with the word "CROATOAN" carved into it and realize that they are indeed back in the time in which Andrea's alter ego, Virginia Dare, might have been alive. And when the three see an elderly man struggling in a sinking small boat in the wild surf off the island, they instinctively rescue him, and Andrea soon intuits that the man is John White, her grandfather who left the struggling colony to seek reinforcements and supplies back in England shortly after her "birth" as Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America.

As in her earlier titles in this series, Found (The Missing, Book 1) and Sent (Missing), the theme again plays upon the time traveler's iconic dilemma, that is, whether it is ethical to right wrongs and do good in the past at the risk of irreparably altering the future in unforeseen and perhaps malevolent ways. Andrea, having lost her second set of "parents," is determined to reveal her identity as Virginia to her grandfather and claim whatever family link she can find in 1600 in the New World. Jonah and Katherine know that such a reckless action can exile them in "broken time," removed from their twenty-first century lives and their yet-to-be-revealed "first" lives sometime in the past, leaving them "out of time" forever.

Haddix, who first ventured into futuristic fiction with her gripping 1997 novel, Running Out of Time, runs into some problems in this third novel of her current best-selling series. Muddled exposition leaves the reader a bit lost in time with her characters, confused as to exactly what their back-in-time mission is. The introduction of "Second," another visitor from the far future at odds with their mentor JB, comes only late in the novel to explain why they are apparently wandering in time and why this all matters. The manipulative "Second" turns out to be a proactive believer in the virtue of changing time for what he determines is best:

"Is it an ending or--just the beginning?" Katherine asked.

"Oh, very good!" Second was beaming. "There are so many possibilities.... With his granddaughter at his side, John White has a reason to live now. And he'll keep drawing pictures. In just seven years, English settlers are going to trying again in Jamestown... What if John White and Virginia Dare go and help out at Jamestown, bringing the gap between the English and the natives? What if there's finally some respect between the two sides?"

"And what if your wonderful time shift ruins everything?" Jonah asked.

It seems the reader must wait for Book Four to find out. With her detailed epilogue which fills her readers in on the true story of the "Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island (in case they, like her character Jonah, were daydreaming through his fifth-grade social studies class that day) and her persistent reminder of the time-travel problem, Haddix does give middle readers a bit of history and plenty to ponder philosophically in this science fiction/historical fiction adventure series.

Margaret Peterson Haddix is also the author of the award-winning near-future science fiction Shadow Children series, as well as the equally engrossing Double Identity and Escape from Memory, both page-turning suspense stories plotted on that border between reality, science fiction, and fantasy.