THE DESTINY RING

A unique ring sends a girl on a journey back in time in Bird’s SF novel for children.

Australian teenagerJacinta Bowen loves studying history and often spends time outside class with her teacher, Mrs. Tindall, and Mr. Wang, a retired university science lecturer. While at an open-air market with her mother, Rachel, Jacinta visits a tent where she purchases a beautiful ring that seems as if it was made just for her. One day, a lightning storm causes the jewelry to spin on her finger and suddenly, she and Mrs. Tindall go back in time to Norway in the year 940. They return to their own time and place during another lightning storm, and Jacinta learns that Mrs. Tindall, Mr. Wang, and her parents are all members of the Strategic Earth Alliance for the Limitation of Temporal Hijack, or STEALTH—an organization that’s dedicated to returning artifacts, stolen by time-traveling thieves, to their original eras. The group is eager to study her ring, and she joins the organization as a junior time operative. Before long, she agrees to go with the team to the Valley of the Kings in 1274 BCE on a quest to return the stolen throne of Tutankhamun. During the mission, an act of sabotage traps Jacinta in the past, putting her in a race against time to return home. Bird’s book is full of exciting ideas and engaging characters. Jacinta proves to be a likable protagonist whose empathy shines in an early scene in which she defends a classmate from a school bully. However, the narrative’s brisk pace leaves some story elements underdeveloped, and opportunities for more robust worldbuilding get lost. For example, Jacinta’s accelerated training for STEALTH lasts less than a page before “one by one, her instructors signed off on her as mission-ready.” A more detailed description of the process might have yielded intriguing insights into the organization and its history. Still, the novel’s time-hopping premise is irresistible, and the sequences set in the Valley of the Kings are particularly dramatic and gripping.

A brisk and imaginative, if occasionally uneven, tale of time-travel adventures.