Friday, November 23, 2018

Edge of Time, by Susan M. MacDonald

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Alec was your typical video-game loving teenager. Like many teens, Alec has family problems. His father is a violent alcoholic. Many kids and teens today know what it's like to have a loved one who is an addict to drugs or alcohol. The addict often becomes abusive, and this is what happens with Alec's father. This is an important detail, but it is not the main focus of the story.

Alec used to think that he'd live a normal life. Get a girlfriend, graduate, go to college, graduate, get a job, and start a family. Then someone tried to kill him. Then someone else did. And someone else and someone else. The weird thing about it all (like people trying to kill him is not weird enough) was that the people trying to kill him could point a gun at his head, but no one would notice, even if they did it in public, in broad daylight.  Like the assassins all have Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak or something.

Riley was also a typical teenager. Currently, however, she is trying to get away from her step-mother (whom she thinks of as a "witch") and get to her sister's apartment in Vancouver. This wouldn't really be a problem if it weren't for the fact that someone has just tried to kill her (again) at a subway station. Like Alec, she too has had multiple people try to kill her, and like with Alec, no one else ever seems to notice when it happens.

Someone, or something, is out to kill them both. What they are aware of is that something unnatural is going on, and that they don't like it. What they are unaware of is that someone (or something) can mind-control innocent humans, making them do horrible things: kill people, blow up cities.

Or simply not see when an assassination is about to take place right in front of them.

Their paths cross when a man named Darius Finn informs them of the rare genetic trait they possess that gives them special powers. Darius and a group called the Tyons have been searching for people like Riley and Alec, people with that special genetic trait. The Tyons need people like Alec and Riley to learn how to control their power in hope that they can use it to help fight against that someone, that something, trying to kill them both, which they Tyons call Rhozan.

Darius brings Riley and Alec to one of the Tyons' secret bunkers in Toronto, where they are given further information about the Tyons and their role as Potentials. At first, Alec and Riley think Darius and the Tyons are crazy, but things start to make more sense to them after the bunker is attacked, and they realize that there is more going on than they think. The three flee to another bunker in Newfoundland, so Tyon operatives can fully train them to use their powers.

In Newfoundland, however, Alec is discovered to be far more powerful than anyone dreamed. In fact, it was an explosive burst of anger directed at his abusive father that caused the "rip" that allowed Rhozan to come through from his dimension in the first place. Now even some of the Tyons want him eliminated. If Rhozan were to take over the mind of someone so powerful...

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game, writes:

It's the best kind of story - kids with troubles of their own suddenly find themselves the targets of assassins while even weirder people claim to be protecting them. And Susan M. MacDonald is the best kind of writer- she drops you into the middle of the action and makes you care what happens so you can hardly stand to put the book aside until you've finished. 
Edge of Time is the action-filled first novel in a trilogy (the next book is Time of Treason). I received the trilogy as a birthday gift from my relatives in Newfoundland. (Thanks, guys!) The ending will make you want to read the next book in the series; in fact, the ending will FORCE you to read the next book in the series. It really leaves you on a cliffhanger! I recommend it for anyone who likes a lot of action in their books, movies, or video games. (There is a sort of a video game connection in the book, but I don't want to spoil it!)

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Daddy's afterthoughts: An auspicious debut novel! This might be a book you have to hunt for online, but it is worth it. It is published by Newfoundland's Breakwater Books, a small publishing house that focuses on Canadian writers in general and authors of Newfoundland and the Maritimes specifically. Read more about author Susan MacDonald, and the rest of her trilogy, here.

Fair disclosure: My wife's (Julia's mother's) aunt works for Breakwater. But if Julia did not really like the book, she would have said so! (In fact, read her other reviews, and you'll find a couple where she did just that...)




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