Veterans Day, Remembrance Sunday, Armistice Day, Remembrance Day. No matter where you live, it’s the same thing. Today we honour those who have sacrificed their lives for us and those who are currently putting their lives on the line.
Out of respect for those brave men and women I will not be posting a book review today. Instead, please take the few minutes you would normally spend reading my daily post to reflect on what Remembrance Day symbolizes and what it means to you.
I went shopping last Saturday and not only discovered that the bookstore owner knows my first name, but also seems to know my reading tastes. This would be normal if it was in my small town, but the bookstore I shop at is in a city an hour away. Okay, obviously I buy a lot of books. So what did I buy this time? (For those of you concerned about my spending, don’t worry. These were all in the ‘Almost New’ section.)
Yes, I’m sticking with the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey. I love her writing style and her world-building. I am also very curious as to where the series will go right now. The Mummy is one I’ve had my sights on for years, but alas, it is mostly out of print. When I saw it in the used section I nearly caused an avalanche (the books are stacked up on the shelves so there’s more room) to get it. The last three books about the Tudors are evidence of the bookstore owner’s knowledge of my reading tastes. Of course Philippa Gregory is excellent, but after Lisa Jennings reviewed Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir, I discovered a new take on the Tudors.
So what are you reading this weekend?
The Infinity Ring: A Mutiny in Time is the first installment in what appears to be a long-term project by several different authors to provide the next big middle-grade book series. The basic concept being that the world all of the characters are living in is actually an alternate reality brought about by many, many well-known historical events not happening the way we remember them. It’s certainly and interesting twist on the usual approach of alternate realities in books. Usually characters are traveling to the alternate reality, not arriving from the alternate reality. I have to say, I loved it through and through.
Dak and Sera are serviceable enough characters for what the story is trying to accomplish and I can entirely understand why they don’t have the depth I’m used to with characters I read because this is a middle-grade series and with a target audience like that you have to keep things a little more simple. There are a few clichés tossed around as far as character personalities are concerned, but nothing glaring and nothing that bothered me all that much.
In this first book of the series the two friends discover The Infinity Ring, a device capable of traveling them through time. Through a series of somewhat unfortunate events they are forced to aid a group known as the Hystorians who are trying to fix all of the wayward big moments in history. Each event has to be righted in a specific order so as to keep the events closer to modern day as unaffected as possible. The first of which that Dak and Sera have to correct is the fact that Columbus was not credited with discovering America.
Back in time the two friends go and as they are younger than your standard adventurers they have plenty of blundered moments that almost leave them stranded in the past. They figure things out in the end however and the result is a fun, quick, exciting tale that takes and interesting approach to time travel and its effects on space-time and all that.
The second installment of The Infinity Ring series, Divide and Conquer was released earlier this week and I look forward to reading it soon and letting all of you know what I think.
Grade: B
Length: 192 pages
I’ve written a lot about what I think makes a good book and maybe some time this month I’ll compile it into an article. But first I want to know: What do you think makes a good book? Is it characters you can connect with? An exciting plot? Fantastic world-building? I don’t think there’s one single thing that makes a book good every time, but what thing(s) make a good book for you?
(Cover picture courtesy of The Independent Author Network Blog.)
Rescue the past to build the future. In 2280 EarthGov is desperate when aliens destroy their first colony. They’ll even comb through the wreckage of the aliens’ UFO that crashed in 1947—where one man claims he’s found a time machine. Now the race is on to scour history for the treasures and talents EarthGov needs.
Sid Feynman just wants a government grant. His hopes for a quiet academic life are dashed when EarthGov thrusts the beautiful historian Nell Playfair upon him and expects Sid to actually use the time machine.
Soon Sid and Nell are rocketing across light-years of interstellar space and millennia of history—seeking that which is lost and finding time.
[Full disclosure: Steve Poling gave me a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.]
Well, that certainly wasn’t what I expected.
That’s a compliment, by the way. Finding Time is a book with many different viewpoints, but Steve Poling handled each of them so well that it was never confusing. The first chapter seems completely unrelated to the rest of the book until later, but when the reason behind the event was revealed it made perfect sense. That’s what made Finding Time so interesting for me: the different narrative threads intertwining perfectly, especially toward the end. I live when things are tied together in a way that makes sense and that is especially important in a time travel story.
I won’t even begin to pretend I understand half of the science behind time travel in this book. Science was never my strong point, but hard science fiction fans will love this book for it. I would have liked the explanations to be “dumbed-down”, but I am not the audience Steve Poling was writing for. Each to their own, really. I’m sure most people will have a better appreciation for his attention to detail than I do.
However, I did appreciate the characters. Nell and Sid were the two main characters and they definitely stood out. Their bickering is priceless, but you can tell that they become good friends by the end. No, they don’t fall in love with each other. Gasp! A male and female lead that don’t fall in love! Call the press! As Steve Poling put it in his initial email to me: “there’s no cussin’, smokin’, or gettin’ nekkid.”
See? It is possible to write a good novel without any of those things! YA writers take note.
I give this book 4.5/5 stars.
*Only available through Amazon in Kindle format.