A clever and charming time-travel adventure.
With help from a mysterious professor, three intrepid children travel back in time and then must figure out how to get home.
In this first installment of the Snipesville Chronicles, Laing (Look Ahead, Look Back, 2012) introduces three plucky children who accidentally stumble across the ability to travel back in time. Hannah Dias and her brother, Alex, have just moved from San Francisco to the sleepy town of Snipesville, Georgia, and Hannah especially is bored by her new surroundings. On their first day at a new summer camp, they meet Brandon, a young, nerdy African-American kid interested in World War II history. When the three encounter a mysterious professor, they suddenly find themselves in WWII–era London during the Blitz. With occasional help from the professor, who appears to guide them, Hannah, Alex, and Brandon must find a lost boy named George Braithwaite before they can return home; in the meantime, they must quickly adjust to their new surroundings. Laing, herself a history professor, crafts an endearing, clever story that remains coherent despite the perils of a time-travel plot. Her keen eye for historical detail of the period and the struggles the kids face (particularly Brandon) helps bring her setting vividly to life. Moreover, the lessons they learn and the dangers they face ring true as the kids slowly get a sense of life’s difficulties in the era. There are a few instances where dialogue and characterization fall a bit flat; for instance, sulky teenage Hannah has a few too many lines like “Why don’t you mind your own stupid business?” that feel a little canned. Nevertheless, the story’s charms will draw readers in and keep them engrossed until the very end, and the tightly structured narrative ensures that the pieces of the mystery come together well and that each twist feels plausible. This being the first of a series, let’s hope the next installments continue to infuse historical fiction with the same sense of joy and wonder.
A clever and charming time-travel adventure.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2007
ISBN: 978-0979476945
Page Count: 204
Publisher: Confusion Press
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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