Kep Westguard: The Second Battle of Saratoga

In this fourth installment of a YA series, time-traveling teens fight to preserve the American Revolution’s original outcome.

Picking up right after Kep Westguard:The Great Escape (2024), this SF novel opens with Kep and his younger brother, Max, in 18th-century Saratoga, New York. Their companions, TJ and Tela, return to the modern day via a time machine to update the covert organization Kronos on what’s happening. Here’s the situation: Just before the pair’s departure home, Kep realized that someone was planning to sabotage the Battle of Saratoga, so that the British would triumph. Additionally, he suspected that a spy was hiding among the Americans. Now, if he and Max can’t agree on who the traitor is, then they have no way of thwarting the dangerous plot (“If the outcome of this battle changed, if the Americans lost, history would change. The United States might never exist”). Maybe things will improve once the brothers reunite with TJ and Tela, who first must wait for their systems “to stabilize” before time-traveling back to 1777. With all four tackling the problem, surely they’ll dream up a viable solution. Schnabel aptly mingles historical figures with the series’ recurring cast. For example, Benedict Arnold is possibly the traitor, but his infamous betrayal occurred three years later, and, according to Max, he was the unsung hero of the eponymous battle. This book also includes periodic “mission notes,” which highlight intriguing details about the real-life Battle of Saratoga and some of the people involved. The young heroes boast distinctive personalities and prove more than capable of handling the story’s astonishing task, all while making understandable blunders (at one point, TJ, who is trying to butter up Arnold, mistakenly praises him for something he hasn’t done yet). Although the cast is strong, the ways in which this story showcases individual skill sets occasionally feels contrived, particularly TJ’s acting prowess and champion skeet shooter Tela’s expertise with a historic long rifle. Further installments will undoubtedly follow, as a series-long villain (named in Kep’s opening recap, the only part he narrates) is not integral to this diverting installment.

Young adventurers headline an entertaining SF tale.