Thursday, January 17, 2013

Young Adult Thursdays Review: Ruby Red

Ruby Red (Edelstein Trilogie, #1)
 By Kerstin Gier
Summary:
    Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
    Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon--the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.

Review:   I feel like the Summary from the back of the book gives you a pretty good idea of what is going on, and to avoid giving away too many spoilers I'm going to stick with it for this review. That being said, the only characters I feel I need to tell you about are Paul and Lucy. They are Gwyn's aunt and uncle, though she has never met them, that stole the device that controls time travel back around the time that she was born. When they did so, traveling back in the time with the device essentially cut them off from ever returning to the present therefore losing the device forever. What does this device do you may ask? Well it is called a chronograph and it takes the blood of the time-traveler and sets a date, time and place where they will visit and come back from, making their trips into the past controlled versus randomly poofing into god-knows-where. This prevents people from being hurt, say you are standing in a skyscraper and it isn't built yet ultimately plummeting you 82 stories from the air, or ending up in Victorian England wearing Beats headphones causing suspicion. Now, even though they took the device there is a back up used by the Guardians(the group of time-travelers that use the device), however it doesn't contain the blood of all the people that have the time-travel gene like the one that was stolen does. Why does it contain the blood and what does it do? I have no idea and that's where my problems with this book start, questions.
        This is a 300+ page book that I felt like I got ZERO answers from.
Why does Gwyn's mother fake her birthday? Don't know
Why do Lucy and Paul steal the device? No idea.
How does the time travel-gene work or get passed down? Not a clue.
What is the deal with the Count and why does Gwyn's mom fear him? He's creepy but there was no reason

My point is that I felt like this was an introduction into a story, not a whole book. I didn't get a sense of why the the Guardians exist and what do they do for the world. Gideon and Gwyn don't kiss til THE LAST CHAPTER. I was more confused when I finished this book than I have in a very long time. Cliffhanger does not do this book justice. That being said, I did enjoy where the story was heading and all the mystery surrounding these people, I just felt it was very slow getting to its' point. Gwyn is a little immature and whiny for my taste, but I did get the sense as the book progressed that she was growing up and will do more growing up in the future. I also seemed to see more bravery and inner strength in her than I anticipated, especially when put in some very bad situations in the story. Overall I'll read the second one to find out what happens with these time-travelers but I was left wanting a lot more- My Opinion- Burrow

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