Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Tempest by Julie Cross

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 334
Series or Stand Alone: Book 1 in the Tempest trilogy
Summary: The year is 2009.  Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.
That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.
Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.
But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler.  Recruit… or kill him.
Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

Review:
Everything about this book (i.e., the cover, title, and description) made me want to read it. TIME TRAVEL! COLLEGE-AGED NARRATOR! LOOK AT THE COLOR SCHEME ON THE COVER! Etc, etc.
Jackson has the ability to jump through time--and not in a time machine or device. Jackson is a time jumper, that specializes in doing experiments with one of his friends. The whole time travel thing isn't serious for him; things only alter permanently when Jackson is in his "home base," all of the rest is an experience for him, but not anyone else. That is, until his girlfriend Holly is shot in her dorm room and Jackson makes a full jump, making his new home base 2007. There Jackson has to decide whether to try to save Holly in the time he's in, or join up with the people who shot her in the first place that can offer him answers that were hidden from him his entire life.
Heaviosity, dude.
First of all: time travel for the win! I loved that time was relative to the person in this story. Jackson was able to jump through time because he had a specific ability to do so, not because he was lucky enough to have a device. I also loved that the experiences he had lacked impact for everyone else except him. Really cool concept.
For this reason, the story was really well crafted. With time constantly jumping and characters other than Jackson not remembering the experiences, it must have been difficult to keep the continuity of the story together. I give Julie Cross a lot of credit here.
Jackson was a great narrator--he was believably male, which is important. It gets on my nerves when a male character has a voice that sounds like he should be a girl. I thought it was awesome that Jackson was in college. There are so few young adult books that take place in a college setting. It was refreshing to take a break from the high school based drama and jump into a slightly older setting, even if Josh ends up jumping back to a year that meant he should have been in high school.
Julie Cross's Tempest was a completely refreshing young adult time travel novel. Cross's believably college-aged characters and brand new time travel theory created a great start to a new trilogy. I was satisfied with the ending, though I'm curious as to where the next two books will go. Recommended!

Rating: 4 - good.

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