The Tar Man and Time Quake by Linda Buckley-Archer

My last review was about "Gideon the Cutpurse" and I was impressed with it. I was also excited to read the rest of the trilogy. The next two books, however, did not measure up to these expectations. After the novelty of the original idea and the wonderful detail that went into making it I was hoping for more, but "The Tar Man" and "Time Quake" were pretty much more of the same and, not being invested enough in the characters this was disappointing.

The characters continued to be distant. I'm not sure exactly what it is about the author's writing, but even when I'm reading a character's perspective I don't feel like I'm close enough to care or even get a good sense of them as a unique character.

Another problem was the whole antigravity nonsense. Science is one of the most awesome things, but I really don't want to be reading long sections of dialogue where people are describing in great - and confusing - detail how the supposed science in this world is supposed to work. It becomes even worse when 12 year olds are making scientific discoveries - consciously making scientific discoveries and thinking about them enough to coin terminology and become all philosophical about atoms and space and time. It becomes ridiculous when the characters have to say things like "I know, it's confusing, but it all makes sense if you really think about it..." Yeah. I had no problem with the concept of time travel until I had to wade through all these ridiculous explanations.

The point of these last two books seemed to be for the author to preach about how time travel would destroy the world. Two books later I remain unconvinced. This is because she failed to show proper consequences or real evil guys. Yes, Lord Luxon ends up doing some pretty stupid things in the end of the third book, but there didn't seem to be any stakes... she didn't give us anyone to care about and identify with and feel for. I'm also getting tired of New York being threatened by some type of apocalyptic disaster. I mean, the entire storyline was set in England until, suddenly, out of the blue, Lord Luxon decides to threaten the U.S. It didn't make sense.

I'm not going to say much more except that this trilogy had a lot of potential which was wasted.