The Book of Time

Prevost, Guillaume. 2007. The Book Of Time. Translated into English by William Rodarmor. Scholastic. 224 pages.

Sam is a young boy who's about to stumble into a great adventure. Curious about his dad's mysterious disappearance, he is snooping around his dad's bookstore--he specializes in antique and rare books--he discovers a secret room. And here the adventure begins, when Sam accidentally finds himself shuffling through time. Each destination he finds himself in turns out to be dangerous. Some locations the danger is immediate and obvious, but at other times, it takes a while for the action to begin. He's not quite sure what he's doing. And he definitely has no clue how to travel where he wants to go. He just knows that this time travel business has something to do with a statue and something to do with round coins with holes in the middle. He also has more than enough clues to guess that his father is a time traveler and that he's somehow been trapped in his travels. Sam takes it upon himself to save his father. To master this time travel thing, find his father, and save them both. Can he do it? What do you think? If you guessed that all that would be impossible in just one book, you'd be right. This is the first in a series. I'm not sure how many books there will be. But I do know there are at least two books.

How do I feel about this one? Well, it's incomplete in some ways.

Semi-

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It's an obvious first-book-to-a-series, we have more setting up than actual action. That's not quite true, we do see some action. We see Sam discovering time travel. We see him shuffled to four different locations not including his two trips back home. We see him discover 'the book of time' and work on solving this riddle with his cousin, Lily. But we don't really reach a true climax of the action. We're still working on the rising action when the book ends. What we have is an interesting premise that hasn't really fully been presented. It's enough to give the reader an idea if they want more though.

The books were originally published in France.

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