City of Time

My son loved the Navigator, but he couldn't put down the City of Time. He said it was better than the first and finished it within a week. He highly recommends.

When I was a little girl, I used to worry a lot about the world ending. It was often talked about in religion classes. As I recall, there were supposed to be signs and warnings that would precede it, mostly about strange weather and mixed up seasons. I never worried about the world running out of time! In Eoin McNamee's hair-raising second book of his Navigator trilogy, The City of Time, the world actually is running out of time. This is causing the moon to almost crash into the earth, clocks to start running slowly, faces of children to suddenly age but then revert back to normal and geese turning to dust as they fly by the full moon. Unless young Owen, the Navigator, and his equally competent friend, Cati, the Watcher, can do something to stop it,the world is doomed. McNamee has created creatures called the `Harsh' which make C.S. Lewis's White Witch look like an amateur as they freeze the earth and its inhabitants in a war they continuously wage to destroy all living things by dismantling the fabric of time. Owen realizes he must travel across time to Hadima, a legendary city where he learns that time itself was once traded in `tempods.' (Don't ask! Read this book!) Owen and Cati must find a tempod and restore the fabric of time in the world before it is too late. On their journey to Hadima, which is every bit as scary as Tolkien's Mines of Moria, Owen encounters supernatural beings and people that only an imagination as rich as Eoin McNamee's could create. As the cover to The City of Time declares: "Time is a dangerous place!" Although this book stands on its own and can be read without reading the first book of this thrilling trilogy, I would strongly recommend starting at the beginning with The Navigator. But don't miss The City of Time.

A year has past since Owen and the Resisters won the battle against the Harsh Ice beings who wanted to destroy the world by destroying time. Now the Resisters are sleeping until they are called again when the world is in peril by Cati the Watcher. Owen has the Puissance, a weapon that can destroy time, locked inside his trunk; the lock is the magical Mortmain, which looks like a tarnished brass lock, but is much more. Owen knows trouble is coming when he speaks to a young woman when he suddenly looks at the face of an old woman. Cati sees geese age crumbing into dust in an instant. Cati notices the atmosphere in the work house is stale as time is leaking out of the world. Owen gets a note from the famous Navigator telling him he must obtain a tempod,, an object that holds time, and bring it back from Hadina, the CITY OF TIME. Cati and a Resister, who Owen awakened, accompany him, but Hadina is full of danger with part of it seeming like it is dead. To survive and save time, Owen must begin to act as the Navigator. CITY OF TIME is an apocalyptic thriller aimed at young adults; yet this entertaining action-packed science fiction thriller will remind grateful older fans of the works of Robert Heinlein. Owen is a brave hero; a person afraid but performs his mission to save the world anyway. With a great climax, this middle book can stand alone though it remains consistent to its predecessor THE NAVIGATOR. It is also worth reading as a great tale and to better understand Owen and company. Harriet Klausner

This second book in McNamee's THE NAVIGATOR TRILOGY picks up a year after THE NAVIGATOR left off. Life has been easier for Owen since the defeat of the Harsh, but the Resisters' disappearance once the disaster was taken care of leaves him lonely. His friend, Cati, left to hold the position of Watcher and remain awake while the remainder of the Resisters slumber, feels the same loneliness; she can see Owen, but he cannot see her where she hides in the shadows of time, and she is not allowed to contact him except in the case of a great emergency. Of course, such an emergency quickly appears. While talking with a girl at school, Owen sees her face change for a split second into that of an old woman. Cati witnesses a flock of geese quickly age and turn to skeletons before falling to the ground as dust. Cati attempts to wake the sleeping Resisters, but they will not stir. She enlists Owen's help, and together they are able to wake a small number of the resisters, including Dr. Diamond and the warrior, Pieta. Dr. Diamond determines that the strange happenings are a result of there being not enough time present in the world; this lack of time is interfering with the physical universe in strange and threatening ways, which will eventually result in the distortion of gravity and may cause the moon to come crashing down into the earth. Cati, Owen, and Dr. Diamond set off in search of the mysterious "city of time," Hadima, where legend has it that time was once bought and sold. This book moves at a faster pace than the previous one in the series, and I enjoyed it more. It also makes use of more characters' perspectives from the very beginning, allowing the reader to see the story through the eyes of most of the main characters. The ideas behind the story in this novel are richer and fuller; now that McNamee has established the rules of his world, he begins to play around with them, introducing new settings and characters while elaborating upon old ones. It would probably be difficult to get the full emotional impact if these books were not read in order, but whether you read it on its own or as part of the larger trilogy, CITY OF TIME delivers action, adventure, and not just a little speculation about the nature of time and our place in it. Reviewed by: Candace Cunard