Kit meets his great-grandfather, Cosimo in an alley in
London. He finds out that Cosimo uses ley lines to travel through time and
dimensions. Kit also has this ability. His girlfriend, Mina, doesn’t believe
him so he takes her through to another dimension. Except, as he doesn’t know
what he’s doing, she ends up in Prague in 1606. There she meets Etzel and
together they set up the first coffee shop in Prague. Kit, meanwhile, is with
Cosimo and his friend Sir Henry. In order to try and work out where Mina is
they must get the Skin Map. This was made by a man named Arthur Flinders-Petrie
who also travelled like them. He made a map of where ley lines were and where
they went in tattoos on his skin. After he died his skin was made into a map.
However, there is also a man named Burleigh who is after the map, and so after
Kit and Cosimo.
I really liked the sound of this book when I read the blurb
on the back. I am a sucker for a good time travel novel. As with every time
travel book, there are rules to the travel. In this case, you cannot travel to
the future, only the past. This is fine because there is plenty of past to go
to and plenty of parallel universes to visit. In this book you go to England,
Prague and Egypt. You spend a lot of time in Prague with Mina but I think Egypt
could have done with a bit more description. I couldn’t really picture where
they were.
As usual, there were characters I liked and characters I
didn’t. Unfortunately one of the characters I didn’t like was Kit and he is
essentially the main character. He is supposed to be an adult but just acts
like a child. To begin with I wasn’t sure about Mina but I really liked her
towards the end and can’t wait to see how she develops in the next book. Cosimo
was a fun character to read; he’s just a fun old guy who doesn’t take things
too seriously, even when he is in serious danger. I’m interested to learn more
about the baddy, Burleigh. It’s not clear what his agenda is and what exactly
he wants from Cosimo. So far he is not nice at all so hopefully he will be a
formidable opponent for Mina, Kit and their friends.
The writing style is okay; I felt it improved as the book
went on and I was more engaged with the characters. Okay is pretty much how I
felt about the whole book up until the last chapter. It ends with the reader
asking a lot of questions, which I suppose you need to read the nest book to find
out. There was also an epilogue with a teaser for some new characters in the
sequel. Half way through I didn’t think I would be continuing the series. Now,
provided we have less from Kit’s perspective and more girls kicking butt, I’m
going to have to read the second. This is a planned five part series, so we’ll
see how it goes as to whether I’ll be reading the whole series.
It was an alight read but nothing that special for me. It’s
not very long so if you wanted a quick read I think you would enjoy it. It
might also be a good read for teenagers wanting to get into adult books as it
is part of a series and it’s easy to read. I have read better time travel books
but it certainly could have been a lot worse.
Overall rating 3 out of 5.
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