My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Reading like a mash-up of I Am Legend, Robert Harris and HG Wells, this is a brilliant brilliant book. Three children are snatched from the jaws of death and brought to September 10 2001. There, on the day before 9/11, they’re inducted into the world of the Timerider – those who look after the world of time travel and fix the moments when things go wrong.
I’ve not come across Alex Scarrow before and will be fixing that in the future. Timeriders is a proper page turner, and it’s a complicated complex and challenging one that flies past way too quickly. What would you do with the power of time travel? And would you do what the eventual Big Bad of the book does?
There’s also an incredible level of pathos with holding the Timeriders in September 10, 2001. This, as the child’s guide – Foster – elaborates, is the last moment before it all changed. There’s a tension there, situating this team right on the edge of a defining event of the century, and an element of darkness that helps to direct the rest of the book. It’s a fascinating and heartbreaking choice, and one that I hope is developed further in the rest of the series.
For readers who enjoyed this, I’d suggest having a look at some of the titles of Robert Harris. I was reminded very much of Fatherland and Enigma at points in TimeRiders.
