Timewalker by Justin Stanchfield is an excellent read. It’s fast paced and fun, building the tension to breaking point until it starts into the action and then you really don’t want to put it down until you get to the end. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It may be written for teenagers, but I would recommend it to any adult who wants a good light read. The story revolves around the main hero, Sean. He is a fourteen year old who, on top of the usual problems of a being teenager, gets mixed up with time travel and ends with the future of the world resting on his shoulders. Sean has an older brother, Trick, short for Patrick, and a difficult, unapproachable father. Trick is wild and uncontrolled, pushing Sean into trouble. This family dynamic provides an excellent pretext for ensuring that the adults are kept well out of the way where they cannot interfere with Sean and Trick. The story is set in the mid west of the USA on an isolated ranch and right from the start you know that something spooky is going on. The scene is drawn rather deftly in just a few words here and there, evoking scenes of rolling tumbleweed, cattle, isolated ranches and wild, unpopulated country. Once the story breaks and the action starts you are then into a classic chase between the bad guys and Sean, but, as in all excellent children’s fiction, the bad guys are very bad and Sean turns out to be very special, indeed. They are joined by Kyr, a female time traveller who also has a very powerful tool, but it’s soon put out of action when it is used for the best of all possible reasons, which I rather liked as it meant that Sean could remain as the hero of the story. There are some nice sub-plots which most fourteen year olds will recognise, such as Sean falling in love with Kyr and finding himself in competition with his brother for her affections. The story line has a few faults. As usual, it is extremely difficult to include time travel in a story because of all the implications. Sean asks the most obvious question in time travel – why don’t the time travellers just go further back into the past and fix everything? I felt that the response rather dismissed the problem without addressing it, but only the most fanatical geeks would care. Also, the bad guys are rather one dimensional and almost absurdly obsessive in their desires to get what they want at all costs. They get rid of the law rather easily and then do whatever they want. I also felt that the use of black, faceless helicopters was a bit of a cliché, but it does work well in this story. SPOILER WARNING START I also found the ending somewhat unsatisfying. I would have preferred Sean to be more central to overcoming the bad guys, as I feel that he was rather saved by powers beyond his control just as he was proving himself. Also, I would have liked the story to end without the last scene as it somewhat defeats the growth that we see in Sean. The plot is based on “Overcoming the Monster” (see The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker for more details) although at the end it slips into another storyline of "Journey and Return" which is perhaps why I found the last scene so unsatisfying. The idea that everything basically returns to being the same as at the start of book, rather spoils all the progress and development of the characters. SPOILER WARNING END I give it the following awards, all out of five: · Five Hidden Aliens for monsters that are more scary when you can’t see them. · Five Jedi Light Sabres for a storyline that keeps the action going. · Four Star Trek Transporters for incredibly powerful technology with the possibilities for its use ignored. · Three Princess Leias for a weakly developed love triangle. · Three Jedi Knights for Sean’s special powers. To summarise, it’s a good light read for teenagers and adults alike. I recommend it very highly. Timewalker (2009) Review by Wayne Harris. |
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