Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Day of the Assassins (YA)

 Day of the Assassins. (Jack Christie #1) Johnny O'Brien. 2009. Candlewick. 224 pages.

The shock wave from an air burst lifted Jack up and threw him backward twenty feet, his body twisting in midair as he flew.

I wanted to like this one more. In fact, I was hoping to love it. I love history and love the premise of time travel in my fiction. Jack and his friend Angus are somewhat unlikely time travelers. Though, in a way, they've been preparing for it to a certain degree. Jack has a decided interest in a video game, "Point of Departure" about World War I. The game has levels, of course as you'd expect, and players can try to change history, etc. Angus enjoys the game, too. And one day while they are playing they discover a secret lab of sorts that they guess belonged to Jack's absent-father. They tell one of their teachers about it, and, of course, he just happens to be in the now. Turns out the teacher and Jack's father both know about the oh-so-secret invention of a time travel machine. Anyway, the two boys happen to be in the right place, right time to go back to 1914...and there are good guys and bad guys from the present and past after them. I liked the premise of this one better than the actual story. I'm not sure if it was just my mood, or, if it is a weak story. I liked it well enough, I definitely wanted to know what happened. But, I was hoping to like it more, I was wanting to be wowed. 

Read Day of the Assassins
  • If you enjoy science fiction and time travel
  • If you want to read more about World War I, the events leading up to the war 
  • If you enjoy adventure stories with a historical focus

© 2012 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

1 comment:

Anna and Serena said...

Thanks for the review of this one for the WWI reading challenge. We've got it linked and will have a sample appear on the main blog this week.