Orphans of Time-Space by Robby ChartersMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Early in this book I read: “I wonder what’s going on?”, and that more or less summed up my state of mind pretty well throughout the rest of the story. It was not so much one story as a collection of various tales about Drake and his friends, when they became time-travellers. The teen-agers are sometimes in pursuit of a murderer and at other times they are escaping from danger, or else Drake is looking for his friend, Timmy Browning. The beginning is quite gripping and the intrigue grows and grows so fast and furious, with jumps in and out of so many different time-lines, that it became a little bewildering. For me that was the main problem in that I had trouble deciding from page to page who was with Drake and at which point in time were the events taking place. Now and then the author skilfully inserted “real” bits of history, often using newspapers, TV programs, etc to inform readers where they were; including various contemporary events and political situations and politicians.
Orphans of Time-Space is exceptionally well written and imaginative so I have no doubt YA sci-fi fans will find the fast-action plot enjoyable. However, I would have liked a lot more character development and descriptions of the various settings etc. There is too much emphasis on the time-travel plot idea and not enough about the feelings of the characters. They seem much too blasé about the whole time-travel thing. Whenever I read a book that involves travelling back in time, even very briefly to the past, I have difficulty in accepting the whole concept. The school of thought about killing your own grandfather making your own existence impossible becomes a dominant consideration for me.
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest, non-reciprocal review.
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