Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "time-slip"

Two Times a Traitor by Karen Bass

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Being uprooted from your home and moving to a new country can ruin your life. At least that’s how twelve-year-old Lazare Berenger sees it and he blames his dad for doing so without any discussion. They’ve been arguing now for seven months, but Laz wildly lashes out while vacationing in Halifax, Canada. Out of control he runs off to explore the Citadel alone and let his anger ebb. Deep inside a tunnel under the fort that an ancestor once guarded during the American Revolution, he trips, falls, and blacks out.

When Laz awakens and emerges from the tunnel, Halifax has disappeared. Instead of a fort, there are only silhouettes of old sailing ships and an English sentry pointing a long-barreled rifle at him. Laz assumes this is an elaborately staged trick of his father’s to make him cease rebelling and behave. During his confrontation with British Captain Elijah Hawkins, however, he painfully discovers this is not a charade. The year is 1745 and Captain Hawkins believes him to be a French spy, not only because of how Laz pronounces his name and his ability to speak both French and English, but also because he wears a St. Christopher’s medal – a decoration only a Catholic would wear and the English are not Papists.

Laz believes his medal holds the key to getting back home, but Hawkins confiscates it. If Laz’s purpose is to learn more about the upcoming invasion of Louisbourg and take that information back to the French, he will hang as a spy. But there is one way to earn Hawkins’ trust and regain his medal – sneak into the fortified city of Louisbourg, cause mischief, and return to the ship. On the journey closer to where he will disembark, he makes both friends and enemies, one of whom will do his utmost to kill Laz simply because he’s French.

Sneaking ashore where the French will easily find him, getting to Louisbourg, and convincing the French that the English plan to attack turns out to be more difficult than Laz imagines. Only one officer takes him seriously. Port Commander Pierre Morpain not only listens and asks questions, he provides Laz with food, a place to shelter, and new clothes. Laz becomes his confidential messenger – a job that teaches him how to get around and introduces him to many citizens and soldiers. Before long, he can come and go as he pleases without arousing anyone’s curiosity. But the longer he’s among the French, the more he feels like he’s found a new home among friends the harder it becomes to betray them and Morpain, who treats him like a son.

Two Times a Traitor is a riveting time-slip adventure. From first page to last you are caught in the vortex that whisks him from the present back to the past. When the sword slices his hand or musket balls whiz by, you feel and hear both. His emotions become yours as he wends his way through dangerous actions and foreign places where he doesn’t know the rules, yet his life depends on knowing them. Bass vividly recreates past places and times and her characters, both good and bad, compel you to discover how Laz resolves the conflicts he faces as he matures from an immature youth to a teenager wise beyond his years. Beware: Putting the book down is near impossible. Nor is this book just for older children and young adults; adults will equally be enthralled with this historical novel that explores a period in Canadian history of which few Americans are aware. Once you begin to read, you soon discover why this highly recommended book was chosen as a 2017 Junior Library Guild selection and one of the Best Books for Kids & Teens for 2017.




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Savage Winds by Michelle C. Reilly

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ana Salvatore, a marine biologist, and her uncle return to his boat after scuba diving off the coast of Grand Bahama only to confront two armed strangers. Born into one of the leading mob families, she has tried hard to distance herself from the unsavory ties that eventually killed her parents, but now they are after her beloved Uncle Louis, who raised her. In the ensuing struggle, an explosion flings Ana into the depths of the Caribbean. When she comes to, she finds herself in a captain’s cabin, although not aboard her uncle’s vessel. This is a ship of wood and sails where the captain has a strange English accent and he and his men wear outfits from the past. At first, she assumes they are re-enactors, but soon discovers that she has traveled back in time to the early nineteenth century.

Jacen Stirling has little time to deal with the beautiful woman whose unfamiliar words and skimpy outfit puzzle him. His country is in the midst of a war with Great Britain, and he must determine whether Jean Laffite’s offer of assistance is real – a pursuit that requires him to infiltrate the pirate enclave at Barataria. To gain Laffite’s trust, Jacen pretends to be a fellow buccaneer and must arrive at the pre-arranged rendezvous before time runs out. Rescuing Ana and having her aboard a ship full of men is a complication he doesn’t need, yet he cannot spare the time to see her safely ashore and still make his appointed destination.

A brief stop at Nassau to take on supplies adds to the urgency of his mission. Amassing in the harbor is a fleet of many Royal Navy ships, most certainly the invasion fleet bound for New Orleans. Jacen assigns Ana the duties of a ship’s surgeon, which leads to some comical situations when twenty-first-century medical practices clash with nineteenth-century proprieties.

Wary of being on her own in a time where she doesn’t belong, Ana insists on going with Jacen when they arrive off the coast of New Orleans. To earn Laffite’s trust, he agrees to do the pirate’s bidding, and to ensure that Jacen obeys, Laffite keeps Ana as collateral. Should Jacen fail, she will be delivered back to his ship . . . dead. In his absence, she ministers to the slaves on a nearby plantation. She also befriends both their children and the master’s rebellious daughter, as well as engaging in risky business of her own – teaching slave children to read.

Savage Winds introduces Reilly’s new series, Savage Times – time-travel romances where heroes and heroines forge bonds while confronting dangerous situations in unaccustomed surroundings and historical periods. Her intriguing portrayal of Jean Laffite combines dangerous and deadly with charismatic and courteous, differing from the usual impression of the descriptor “gentleman pirate.” She also adheres to the belief that Dominique You was one of the Laffite brothers, although the Jean Laffite journal and Stanley Arthur Clisby’s biography state that You was the oldest, rather than the youngest, of them. There are several historical inaccuracies. Tricorn hats were not part of American military uniforms of this period; holystones – used to scrub the decks of wooden ships – were blocks of sandstone, rather than bristle brushes; and in 1814, William Claiborne was governor of the state of Louisiana, not the territorial governor.

For the most part, these are minor slips when examined from the perspective of the entire story. Ana’s unfamiliarity with society and history provides both comic relief and grim awakenings between the world she knows and the new one in which she finds herself. Getting back to her own time period never seems a priority, perhaps because there is no simple answer of how one travels through time when disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle and she has no family left to go back to. This makes for a more believable story. For me, the second time-slip is much stronger, fantastically portrayed in a way that makes us look anew at our own world and the technology we take for granted.

This spicy romance successfully intertwines humor and drama to spin a web of intrigue and danger. Aside from the historical aspects of the story, I was drawn to the sketches that Jacen draws. The reason for their inclusion remains unclear until the final pages, which then makes perfect sense but kept me guessing (not an easy feat to achieve). As the historical events of the War of 1812 unfold, disparate forces must work together to protect the fledgling United States, while Ana and Jacen struggle to keep both themselves and their burgeoning love alive.




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