Persy -- Singularity by William Sleator

Sooo I really was going to write this on an actual weekend day, buuuuut my dorm kind of flooded last night and it threw off my schedule just a tad. I'm also super sleep deprived and loopy right now, so this is going to be an awesome review! Yay college!

Harry and Barry are sixteen-year-old twins. Harry is smart, Barry is athletic and popular and generally gets what he wants. Their family randomly inherits the old house of a crazy uncle, and Barry gets it into his head to spend a few weeks there while their parents are away. Harry thinks it's a bad idea, but Barry convinces their parents.

There they meet Lucy, a teenage girl, and hear stories of animals wandering onto the property and then disappearing. When the trio unlock the playhouse, they slowly discover that inside time passes differently. Once you step inside, the outside world practically stands still. You could spend a year in there and mere hours would pass outside.

There is a singularity inside the playhouse, a portal to another world that is affecting time. Harry finds their uncle's journal and begins to get worried about what might come through the singularity. He wants to tell someone, but Barry threatens to lock himself inside the playhouse if Harry does anything.

This is a really lame summary. Sorry, I'm really just out of it.

Basically, the point is that there's a singularity and Harry is super awesome. And there's a dog, Fred, who's cute. And there's a singularity. And it's awesome.

But really though, I love this book. There's a very eighties feel to the writing and yeah, it starts off pretty slow in the beginning, but it definitely pays off. I mean, talk about character growth (this should make you laugh if you've already read the book).

Yes, I would've liked even more time travel play and that kind of thing, but this isn't meant to be an indepth, hard scifi novel. It's basically a quick, young adult read, and it functions very well as such. Because it's not super hardcore, readers who don't normally like scifi can probably still enjoy it, while there's still enough awesomeness for scifi nerds to get into. It's a very nice balance.

So, y'know. Read it.

--Persy

You might like this if you: like time travel; like science fiction; like hard science fiction but want a quick read; only like soft science fiction; aren't normally a huge fan of science fiction; like character growth; like awesome books; or if you feel like time passes super slowly sometimes and are worried about the possible causes.

Persy -- The Highlander's Touch by Karen Marie Moning

Here's the thing, Karen Marie Moning: you write a story in which time travel plays a significant part, and I'm GONNA be harsh.

This is actually the third book in Karen Marie Moning's historical romance Highlander series, but you don't have to read them in order, so don't worry about spoilers for other books. However, if you don't know the standard plot to a romance novel and/or don't mind discovering one or two minor plot surprises, you might not want to read this review.

Lisa Stone is working two jobs, struggling to support her cancer-ridden mother. Her father died long ago, and now she's all Catherine, her mother, has. She works as a night maid for a museum, and one night she happens upon a mysterious artifact and... well, touches it. She is instantly transported back in time to the Scottish highlands... where she comes face to face with Circenn Brodie, a deadly man who is a stickler for rules. But will his unquenchable love for Lisa cause him to break . . . every . . . single . . . rule?

Sorry, I get super dramatic when I review romance novels. Dunno why.

Let's start way back in the Prologue. Circenn curses a flask so that once it is touched it will be transported back to him, effectively returning the lost flask. Unfortunately, it will also return whoever touches the flask. Adam gets pissy and makes Circen swear to kill the bearer of the flask to protect all the secrets, or whatever. After a lot of arguing, Circenn makes the oath. But here's the thing: Circenn swears to kill the MAN who touches the flask. MAN. MALE. Guess who brings the flask? Right. A woman. I totally expected this to be the loophole. And it would've worked SO WELL because Adam knew who would pick up the flask, and Adam didn't actually want her dead, and even if Circenn forgot he said man, Adam could've been all, "Remember, you swore to kill the MAN. AHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA."

But that's not what happened. Oh well.

Moving on. I don't see what the big deal is about Circenn being immortal. I mean, yeah, I get not wanting to curse anyone else with immortality, but still. Do you have any idea how much trouble would've been saved by him just spilling the beans? "Oh, Lisa, your mother is going to die alone in the future? WAIT, I'm IMMORTAL. I promise to seek her out and take care of her. Heck, I'll even throw my sexy bod into the equation."

But that solution never occurred to anyone. Whatever.

Moving on. Perhaps this is a small detail, but it seriously bugs me. The longer Lisa spends in the past, the more upset she gets because every day she spends there is a day her mother is alone. But... she's not on another planet. She's in the past. So if she were to find some sort of way to time travel... she could just travel back to the moment she left.

But maybe I'm just being nitpicky about time travel.

But now that we're on the subject, the ending. Oh. my. gosh. the. ending. Romance novels are notorious for magical, happily ever afters, but THIS? SERIOUSLY? You are taking it TOO FAR, here! You can't just DO THAT.

There are also some absolutely random parts that I don't understand. There's the stereotypical best friend Ruby, who gets left behind in the modern day world. She has a total of two scenes, and afterwards she's sometimes referenced but never more than to explain away bits of knowledge or clothing that Lisa possesses. There is never any sign that Lisa misses her best friend. But this isn't a major issue.

What strikes me as REALLY odd is the redhead who snubs Duncan. I mean, what the crap? She and her brother hint at some malicious intent and there's the insinuation that they're even lying about their names. Moning goes into such detail about her appearance and the scene seems so dadgummed important... and then she disappears completely. Maybe it's a reference to another book in the series? I don't know. But it's just plain weird.

And my final irritation... the first time Circenn sees her in her undies, she says that he caught her in the one fancy pair of underpants she happens to own: a set of lacy lavender lingerie. The ONE pair she owns. But then at the very end, she rushes to get dressed and we find out later that she is now wearing a set of lacy PINK lingerie. What.

Oh wait. Of course. Of COURSE she'd have more lacy lingerie, because THEY CHANGED THE EFFING FUTURE. Naturally, that would result in her having more pairs of flirty underpants.

All that aside... I mean, the characters weren't bad. I guess. I didn't think the book was too awful until I started writing a review of it. Let's be honest, this isn't much of a review... more like a rant. But I can't think of anything so awe-inspiringly brilliant that it would make up for all of my little pet peeves that showed up in the book. I swear, when I was actually reading it, it wasn't awful.

But she messed with time travel. How can you expect me to not be harsh?

--Persy

You might like this if you: just really like historical romances; like time travel, but don't like it when it's complicated; have an afternoon to kill and don't want anything serious; or if you work as a night maid in a museum and wonder what would happen if you inspected all the artifacts yourself. That's right, bad stuff would happen. Don't do it.

Book Arena -- A Well-Timed Enchantment by Vivian Vande Velde!

Persy: ...How do we even start without sounding like idiots?

Arty: Pfffft, we should sound like total idiots.

Persy: Okeydaisy! WELCOME TO THE BOOK ARENA, Y'ALL. How's that?

Arty: How about... I WUV OWIVER. That's even better.

Persy: Totsally. Now I'm just going to be making an effort to sound like an idiot the whole time.

Arty: That'd be awesome.

Persy: Ahem. Welcome to the Book Arena, where your favorite book bloggers will be discussing a book we've BOTH read (we won't go as far as to say we've both enjoyed/hated it). http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lftt05XjgG1qei9lto1_500.jpg Woah, look at this tree!

Arty: THAT IS SO EPIC.

Persy: I KNOW. But anyway. This week we'll be discussing A Well-Timed Enchantment by Vivian Vande Velde (one of my favorite authors)!

Arty: Quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, too.

Persy: A Well-Timed Enchantment starts in the present day with our young heroine, Deanna, having been forced to spend her summer in France.

Arty: Her only friend in France turns out to be Oliver, a black cat. Oliver's with Deanna when she stops by a secluded well - and manages to drop her watch into it.

Persy: To her alarm, the water inside the well begins to rise, and Deanna is pulled in! Oliver jumps after her, and the duo find themselves in an empty clearing...but suddenly it's not so empty.

Arty: Two very strange men inform Deanna that by dropping her watch into the well, she's put time itself in danger - the well is a time portal, and the watch has ended up somewhere in medieval France, where anyone might happen to pick it up.

Persy: Deanna is forced to retrieve her watch from history, but not alone. The two men transform Oliver into a human boy, to "help" her, but things only get more complicated as Oliver and Deanna try to adjust. Will she get her watch back before history is changed? Will Oliver be able to cope with being human? WILL THEY GET BACK THEIR OWN TIME INTACT!?!?!?!??!!

Arty: THE SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME!! I mean, it was. Since I read it already, it's not anymore. It was a reeeally good ending...

Persy: Aaaaah, the suspense at the end was really good. Not so much in the beginning, but that's kind of the way all of VVV's books are (most of them anyway): slow beginning, amazing end.

Arty: Yeah, I'm starting to get that feel. But really, the beginning wasn't even that slow, since it had about a chapter of lead-up, and then BAM, she's falling the well and those two awesome elf/fair folk/whatever they are are explaining and then Oliver's a human and... I'm suddenly not sick of Deanna's issues anymore.

Persy: Heh, yeah. It's just not much like VVV's usual stuff, so I wasn't enjoying it a ton until the ending really started to kick in, and then I LOVED it. So rabid VVV fans might not enjoy this one as much.
I feel like some kind of lame talk show host...

Arty: XD
I liked it moderately except for Oliver... really, I was mostly reading it for him. HE WAS SO CUTE. I mean... he was such a cat. That can talk. It was just so cool... it got kind of rambly for a while, but whenever I started to get bored, Oliver did something adorable and I got reinterested.

Persy: I actually wasn't too interested in Oliver for a while, until I realized that he was still remarkably cat-like. VVV did a really good job of that. Oliver got better and better, but Deanna just got bearable, if you know what I mean.

Arty: Yeah, I was never overly interested in Deanna... she was just kind of there. I was very impressed with Oliver. I expected a snarky smart-alec, but then he acutally really WAS catlike, like you said, aaand it was just adorable. But I really liked the castle people, too. Leonard was hilarious.

Persy: Ooooh yes I LOVED them. Though that's one thing I really had to get into, because normally VVV's characters are more realistic rather than whimsical and fun, if you know what I mean. But once I'd embraced the general tone of A Well-Timed Enchantment, I really liked everyone in the castle.

Arty: Yeah, since I haven't read as much stuff by her, it was probably easier for me to like it... I haven't really gotten into her 'feel' so I wasn't expecting anything. Except it being really fun.

Persy: ...I can't think of much else to say, except to mention that MY COPY IS SIGNED.

Arty: Pffft, lucky.
I think this might work better if we Book Arena books that one of us dislikes... then we'd be all cuh-razy defense and offense and stuff...

Persy: Yeah really, 'cause this is going nowhere. We're both just agreeing with each other.

Arty: Preeeetty much.
Soo... that's pretty much that? Read the book, 'cause it's really fun once you get to the end? And it's hard to find a book that we both really like, so you know it's got to be good...

Persy: Yeah, really... SO tune in this weekend for a review by Arty, and look forward to our next BOOK ARENA when we'll actually argue about a book!

Arty: Which should be REALLY fun!

Persy: So...are we done then?

Arty: Yeah, i think so... geez, now I REALLY feel like a talk show host.

--Persy and Arty

Arty -- When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I'm... really at a loss. I have no idea how to summarize this book. So here's Amazon's summary:

Sixth-grader Miranda lives in 1978 New York City with her mother, and her life compass is Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. When she receives a series of enigmatic notes that claim to want to save her life, she comes to believe that they are from someone who knows the future. Miranda spends considerable time observing a raving vagrant who her mother calls the laughing man and trying to find the connection between the notes and her everyday life.

Yeah, Amazon can't do it any better than I can.

The book starts out in what you might call 'the present.' Miranda's mom has just won the chance to appear on The $20,000 Pyramid, a popular '70s-'80s game show. But this isn't an ordinary book - it's a letter to someone, the mysterious 'you' who had been leaving strange notes for Miranda to find. Notes that can seem to predict the future.

From there, the book devolves into flashback mode to show what has happened since Miranda's mom won.

Yeah, I was pretty confused too.

That's the big negative I found about When You Reach Me - the timing. For the first twenty or thirty pages or so, I had no idea what was happening in the past and what was happening in Miranda's present. Rebecca Stead switched back and forth between the times. (A second reading would probably be helpful.)

Then, once Miranda gets firmly into flashback mode, the real story starts.

On the surface, it's about Miranda, her mom, her mom's German boyfriend, Richard (who is awesome, by the way), her once best friend Sal who started ignoring her after getting punched, her new friends Annemarie and Colin, and her rivalry with Julia, the school snob. Oh, and the old crazy man who stands by the road kicking at cars and occasionally shaking his fist at the sky - the laughing man. But, with the notes, it becomes something of a treatise on time travel.

It's an insanely hard book to sum up. I won't try. To say too much would be to ruin the effect. In my humble opinion, it wasn't even that well-written. But about halfway through, it started getting really, really hard to put down. So I didn't. And the ending was... well. It's the kind of ending you love and hate in equal measure. It wasn't breathtakingly exciting or amazing, but... then, it was. I don't know why, but - I'm baring my soul here - I loved it.

I'll just say this. Marcus is great. And I love that crazy old guy.

This isn't much of a review, I know, but it's a kind of a book that has to speak for itself. I'm positive it's not a book for everyone. It's probably not a book for hardcore time travel fans. But... well, if you find it, give it a try. It may or may not surprise you.

Arty -- Don't Touch Anything by James Valentine

All Jules wanted to do was ask Gen out. He had battled his brain (literally) for who-knows-how-long about how to go about it and whether to even do it.

And just when he's finally about to pop the question, some kid with technicolor hair and a talking Coat materializes in Gen's room. Not a situation conducive to asking a pretty girl out on a date.

As it turns out, Theo is from waay in the future, which explains the whacky hair and ad-spewing Coat. In his time, he won a contest to be the first kid to use the newest JumpMan - the device that allows everyone to go back in time. But there's something wrong with this new (new?) JumpMan - and that's why Theo's in Jules's time. That's also why he can't get back to the future.

Well, what are Jules and Gen supposed to do? Let Theo try to make it back to the future without helping? Of course not.

Already, it's not such an original plot. (Unless there's a dearth of time travel novels in Australia, which is where the author is from - something very helpful in decoding the book's lingo.) The writing is decent, and there are some seriously funny parts - particularly Jules's squabbles with his own brain.

Jules, in fact, is pretty much the only likable person around. He's the classic not-too-popular, not-too-handsome kind of stock character that you really can't help loving because no one else does. Gen is also a stock character - the pretty, popular, girly-magazine-reading girl with (theme music) girl powah. Why Jules is so in love with her, I haven't a clue, because he really is smarter than that.

I'm pretty sure we're supposed to like Theo, the off-the-wall, funny, careless guy from the future who has crazy hair and an awesome Coat. But I didn't. Why exactly did he hate Jules's guts right from the start? Why does he think Gen is awesome but not Jules? Why is Gen so enthralled with Theo? (Oh, right - because he's funny and looks cool. That's it.) He just came off as some pompous jerk, bragging about how much better the future is than the 21st century. (And yet there's no sarcasm or scorn for the Neanderthals they go back in time to see... how does this work, exactly?)

For a long time, zombies have been a dramatic symbol of modern social structure and politics (or so they say). Werewolves and vampires are dramatic symbols of human failings and morality. Time travel, I think, has become the dramatic symbol for eco-friendly, go-green messages. I find nothing inherently wrong in this... except that Don't Touch Anything handles its own message less than gracefully.

It's basically 'You bad, 21st century humans you, destroying the earth. Be ashamed.' There's one part where Theo is explaining how the world was used up (an inevitable plot twist). In essence, he tells Jules and Gen, 'Your time was the biggest mistake in the world.' Jules and Gen apologize - literally. 'We're sorry.' Is it just me, or is this not really fair? And don't get me started on the whales - no way do I want whales to go extinct, but can Valentine not come up with a more original way of expressing the horrors of extinction?

I mentioned Neanderthals a little before now. I found it interesting that Valentine never goes back in time to any documented period of history. Jousts and beheadings are mentioned, but the only trips that Jules, Gen, and Theo take (besides a very quick materialization in ancient Egypt) are to the times before mankind (supposedly). It's all oooh-pre-Big-Bang! and look-the-first-animal. I don't believe evolution, so maybe it's just me, but it made the book seem more like a textbook than an interesting story.

In retrospect, I realize that I made Don't Touch Anything sound like a horrible book. It's not. It was interesting, even thought-provoking a time or two (though I'm not sure any halfway-decent time travel book isn't). But I think Valentine could have done better, put a little more effort and a little less textbook material into it. As it was, it barely felt like he tried. For more interesting, well-pulled-off time travel, I'd suggest Linda Buckley-Archer's Gideon trilogy or The Dreamhouse Kings series by Robert Liparulo.