#alex scarrow

[bookishfreedom]

I really enjoyed both of these - finished them in a single day each. that's something i love about YA. you can get sucked in quick, and next thing you know, you've finished the book.

[freetobeafcknriot]

Words cannot express how much I love Liam O'Connor he's just— [insert heart-eyes emoji. multiple times. and some sparkles]

[weird-middle-school-books]

wow I’m sad you guys

I’m re-reading Timeriders (amazing series if you haven’t read it) and I wanted to find the fandom, but there’s barely any.  Half the posts under the Tomeriders tag is just people going “is there anyone here?”  It’s like discovering a ruin filled with “x person was here” on the walls.  I mean the first book came out more than 10 years ago but still?  I’d expected something.  

Anyways, if you ever want to talk to me about Timeriders you can, seriously.

[soemthingsparkly]

Anyway, the TimeRiders tag needs to be populated because it’s such a great book series with little of the attention it deserves.

TimeRiders, by Alex Scarrow, is a YA time-travel series about a trio of teenagers who are enlisted, just moments from death, to function as an underground adhoc agency of time police (essentially).

Maddy Carter - from the year 2010 - is an eighteen-year old techie. She’s in charge of the logistics, as well as being the leader of these out-of-time teenagers.  Liam O’Connor was swept from the belly of the Titanic in 1912, just moments before the ship snapped and submerged. He is the sixteen-year-old field operative, whose job it is to go back in time to fix anomalies. He is often accompanied by the part-computer, part-man leviathan, Bob.  And Sal Vikram - from 2026 - is a thirteen-year-old girl from Mumbai, enlisted to be the team’s observer. Sal is responsible for watching out for any major or minor shifts in reality - anything that may signal a change in history.  These three live together and operate from an archway field-office in New York, 2001. From there, they work to ensure time goes as it should. This means fighting with post-nuclear cannibals, Romans, surprisingly intelligent lizards, Genomes, Men with Guns, and... Abraham Lincoln?

(Personally, Abe Lincoln is my favourite side character). 

And, of course, who doesn’t love a little ‘things are not what they seem’ conspiracy?

Read TimeRiders, everyone. 

[klicksalt]

Liam O'Connor appreciation post

That's it

That's the post

[semper-legens]

23. Time Riders, by Alex Scarrow

Owned?: Yes Page count: 425 My summary: Three young people are pulled from the brink of death - the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, a plane crash in 2010, and a building fire in 2026 - to become Time Riders, guardians of the time stream making sure that time travel doesn’t destroy the world. Just after they are recruited, there is a massive shift, to a fascist-ruled America where individuality is suppressed. Can they figure out what went wrong and fix it - or will their meddling cause a worse future to unfold? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

Back to the world of YA, and one from my personal bookshelves - I’ve been meaning to reread this for a while! I absolutely loved this when I was younger, and the way that the story develops is really interesting to me. I’ve been meaning to revisit it as an adult for a while, just to see what I think.

Let’s start with the characters. We’ve got Liam from 1912, Maddy from 2010, and Sal from 2026, along with Foster, the old man that recruits them, and Bob, a clone with an AI in his brain who acts as muscle. Right off the bat, I can tell you that I love all of these idiots. Some get more focus than others - poor Sal gets kind of shafted in this first book, though later ones give her a bit more focus. It’s weird that, given that this came out in 2010, Liam seems to be more of the audience-insert; although given that Liam is the one we spend longer with as he actually goes back in time, that makes a degree of sense. One thing that bugs me about them is how little general knowledge they seem to have - it makes sense for Liam, but Maddy doesn’t know about JFK’s assassination for some reason, and they have to explain other concepts I would have thought to be common knowledge. I get this is for the reader’s benefit, but come on, I knew more than that as a teenager. Otherwise, though, they’re pretty strong characters - Liam is charming and funny, Maddy is responsible and practical. Sal is the emotional heart of the team, and is a bit younger - I do dislike that a lot of her writing is very ‘adult-man-writing-a-teen-girl’. It’s not awful, just a bit cringey.

The timeline of this world is very rigid. Time travel is invented in the 2060s, the world is already pretty much in ruins by 2026. And, apparently, Arnold Schwarzenegger was the 45th president of the USA. Can’t decide if I want this timeline or the real one. It’s a bold move, not leaving anything really to ambiguity, and opens up questions of ‘why do they want to preserve this shitty future’ that become a running theme of the series. A lot is set up here that I know will pay off later, and it’s very fun to catch the little bits of foreshadowing sprinkled throughout.

One criticism I had was how fast-paced the novel is. It works for the sections with Maddy, Sal, and Foster in the apocalyptic future, but with Bob and Liam in the past it does skip around a bit too much for my tastes. There’s time-skips of months, which leads to the alternate history not being as developed as perhaps it should be.

Speaking of underdeveloped, I didn’t think much of the antagonists of this either. Their plot is (spoilers!) to go back to Nazi Germany and make it so the Nazis won the war, so they can take over the world and ensure that the shitty, overpopulated, under-resourced, polluted future doesn’t occur. I think this would have been a lot stronger were it not for the Nazi thing? Like, they sided with the Nazis, ergo they are evil, but they never really had a strong reason for that to be Plan A. They could conceivably have taken over the world at a number of points in history, why the Nazis specifically? It just felt a bit lazy. Other than that, though, their plot is compelling, with the moral dilemma of whether it’s acceptable to change history in order to save it, with no idea of what the new future will actually hold.

This feels like a lot of complaining. Ultimately I don’t think any of the flaws of this novel drag it completely down. It’s still a fun, surprisingly complex YA series, and I’m looking forward to reading the rest!

[casual-violinist-fangirl]

THERE’S GOING TO BE A 10TH TIME RIDERS BOOK EXCUSE ME WHILST I SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST 😭😭😭

[goodbadanduglybooks]

My guilty pleasure genre is anything apocalyptic, no matter how bad the writing. But this one was actually really good! The writing wasn’t too bad and it went by so fast that I finished it in a day. Great for anyone who loves thrillers like me.