Untimed by Andy Gavin

 

Charlie is an odd boy who moves through life unnoticed. Literally. People don’t see him, people look away and even his own mother forgets his name. He is utterly forgettable.

Until he runs into and battles a clockwork man and finds himself falling through a portal to 18^th century London – and meets a girl who can see him, a girl who can remember him, a girl who is out of time like himself.

But Yvaine has her own problems, a child, and a cruel gang she’s had to join to survive the streets of London who is not so quick to abandon her life to help him back to his own time. But more than their own stories, their presence has damaged the time, especially the accidental death of a young Ben Franklin. Now the future itself has been drastically changed and it’s a scramble to see if they can fix it, save Yvaine’s family and learn more about themselves

But there’s also a question of not just whether they can fix it – but also whether they should.

This book is definitely one to get your teeth into – a complicated time traveller world, leaping back and forth up and down the time line and trying to ensure the future stays right.

Of course, one of the advanced questions it asks is what is the right future, really? After all, how can any of them be sure what the time line is supposed to look like? Are the Tick-Tocks trying to bring about a change back to where they, their technology and their future is dominant – or are they fighting to bring back a future that was that other time travellers have already changed? Are they restoring the time line or changing it? Is it a time-travellers duty to change the time line? Is it their duty to preserve it?

It’s a wonderfully twisty, confusing world with lots of potentials and lots of excellent unknowns. We don’t know this, they don’t know the answers. The clues are scattered throughout time and need considerable research and translation to decipher the keys of history, to discover which individuals are pivot points on which all of time can change.

And the story isn’t about that

Oh, this complicated world certainly takes up a lot of the book. It influences everything and is part of everything and every decision has to consider it and a huge amount of it is explored. But this isn’t a book about philosophy or temporal musings with lots of dry info-dumps. This is the story of Charlie, clumsy new time traveller stumbling through the world and these revelations. Much of this he learns through trial and error and occasional insights and philosophies from people who, they themselves, have only a limited understanding. We get this excellent world show cased through the lens of a character and his more mundane wishes – trying to get home and his burgeoning relationship with Yvaine. In other books I’ve complained that an excellent world and concept has gone unexplored in favour of telling a clichéd romance – but in this book it works. This book needs the mundane to anchor the philosophical, it needs this basic, human story to balance the abstract of the concept and the world. It needed grounding so it isn’t all theoretical and concept dominated.

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Review: The Darkening Dream by Andy Gavin

Sarah is a brilliant student in Salem, Massachusetts in 1913. She has a very promising life ahead of her with her brilliant mind, albeit she’s less than pleased with her family trying to set her up with nice Jewish boys, especially when Alex, a new and intriguing boy moves to the area.

Of more concern is Nazir – an ancient and powerful vampire that has also arrived. Working with a local Warlock for an even darker power, they seek an ancient, holy artefact. Vampires, warlocks, demons and even vengeful Egyptian gods are all gathered to seize the prize.

And Sarah is the one called upon to stop them. But she has good friends and a surprisingly powerful family history and with faith, magic and determination she refuses to step aside – whether that battle takes her into fetid vampire lairs, cobbling together half understood spells to save the lives of young children or stepping through angelic portals to fight among angels.

I love the world that is created here. While none of it is unique in itself – the elements of demons and magic and vampires together makes for a very rich combination. It also harkens back to the original core of vampires as a monster in horror stories rather than the current, romantic depictions.

Nasir isn’t just a bad guy, he is out and out evil, complete with terrifying bat form and bug-eating servants, he is Dracula as Dracula was, an insidious threat to be feared and fought rather than a romantic character to embrace.

The world also draws on a of divine imagery with heaven, hell, archangels and the power of faith which instantly sets the story up with an epic feel. It has a strong sense of being much more than a fight for a few people or just one object, but with massive forces in the balance.

And part of that is because the world is very well built. Magic doesn’t involve just saying a few words and waving your hands, there is ritual and rules. Some of them very complex and requiring an almost scientific knowledge. It’s great to see a well thought out world that has magic with systems rather than shiny hand waving. And, of course, this is built on a considerable foundation of research that is always impressive to see – I feel that the author has done a lot of reading on Judeo-Christian theology and mythology and the fullness of it is really there in the text.

As to the romance element – I didn’t dislike it but nor did I particularly like it. I think it was unnecessary – a deep friendship would have served as well - but it didn’t derail the plot. Perhaps it did help destroy the sense of time and place, but, frankly, that was already hanging on by a thread.

Thankfully the story was really well paced and switched point of views smoothly enough between Parris, Nazir, Alex and Sarah that the romance, while adding nothing, couldn’t detract from the story either. The action and tension is well maintained throughout, the downtime explained and never drags and there are no moments where I’m left wishing they characters would move faster – nor are there any moments where I felt lost or rushed, except at the end.

At the end of the book we have a twist – it’s a well foreshadowed twist that is really well done – it can be predicted but only if you’ve been paying attention as the clues were there but not overt lampshading. It adds an extra nuance to the end of the story (which works really well into the book’s cliffhanger ending) and promises more depth to follow. Yet, at the same time, we’d just had the big, epic confrontation and this felt a little tacked on the end. Perhaps it should have left off with a hint and moved this part to the next book. Having the big show down and then action afterwards feels vaguely like winning a big sports match, sitting down with a cup of tea and having someone drag you up again to go to the gym.