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.

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.)