“Are some things in life worth taking a stand for, no matter the cost?
Fourteen-year-old Adams Klein lives by one simple don’t do anything that might change the course of history. To protect him from a murderous tyrant, Adams was hidden away in the year 2015. A refugee from the distant future, his existence is a secret. But when he witnesses a tragedy unfolding, he can’t stand by and do nothing. Now history is being changed, and Adams and his new friends are being hunted by a villain who’ll stop at nothing to retain his iron grip on the world of the future, even if it means destroying the past.”
Series: Book #1 in “The TimeFall” trilogy.
Spiritual Content- “Thank God” is exclaimed once; Emma thinks her parents are angry at God even though they never say anything about religion; Emma notes how she is one of the only children in town that doesn’t attend church (not even on Christmas or Easter); A couple mentions of Bibles; A couple mentions of fate & miracles; A mention of there not being words when asked why God would allow a child to be killed; A mention of someone telling another to “thank their Maker” about something; A mention of religion being removed from Adams’ world; A mention of being Blessed; A mention of being a good Samaritan to someone; A mention of someone reaching for forbidden fruit (that is illegal);
*Note: The Marshal (a dictator and the villain of this story) tells his underlings about the “Ones Out There” and says ““Far be it from me to invoke religion, but do you suppose we are so much more enlightened than those who lived long ago? ….They were called gods, spirits, muses, angels, demons…..The labels don’t really matter. What’s important is that everyone from the Egyptians to the Aztecs to the Babylonians to the Greeks and the Romans believed. From East to West and from North to South, every thriving civilization was spurred on by help from Out There. Could it really be that all of these mighty empires, in many cases separated from one another by great distances of time and space, just happened to hold the same basic belief? Let me ask you: Who is more likely to be wrong—billions of people around the world, across thousands of years, all testifying to the same basic truth that we are not alone, or we who, only recently in the cosmic scheme of things, have chosen to dissent from the tide of history in order to stick our fingers in our ears and ignore the helpful voices calling to us from Out There?””; The Marshal believes that the dreams he has been having are a warning from “the Ones Out There”; A scientist is said to have led humanity into a “new enlightenment” & this is partially because of an item that is said to come close to “bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth”; A conversation about Osiris (an ancient Egyptian god), people worshiping him, and others being “deathly jealous” of those peoples’ devotion to a single deity; Adams’ father tells him that “no matter how tight its grip”, no evil thing lasts forever; A thief is called a “Ghost” of a local lake because no one has seen him in person (Clay calls this “very cool” and a female classmate calls it “romantic”); A few mentions of evil people; A mention of a group acting “deliberate, serious, [and] silent” like they are responding to an alter call (when they’re actually going to steal something).
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘blasted’, two ‘dumb’s, and seven ‘stupid’s; Clay is called a “spaz” three times by bullies; Some eye rolling; Killing human-like drones with it’s “blood” spraying everywhere (border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed); Seeing human-like drones being shot and killed, their blood, & the drones melting into the ground (up to semi-detailed); An explosion & people being hurt/dying (*Major Spoilers* The book ends with Adams being killed by the blast and the others being sad or sobbing about it plus his dog resting his head on Adams; In the epilogue, however, he wakes back up after several hours *End of Spoilers*, up to semi-detailed); Falling through a frozen lake, Almost drowning, Saving another from drowning, Fighting, Being shot/shot at, Almost being kidnapped, Being choked, Being held at knife-point, Being held hostage, Pain, Injuries, Blood/Bleeding, Passing out, & Major headaches (up to semi-detailed); Stealing an item (up to semi-detailed); Seeing dead bodies (of human-like drones, barely-above-not-detailed); Adams is expected to kill a drone in school (which because the drone mimics a human being and will show “crimson lubrication fluid” that looks like blood, he thinks it will look, sound, and feel like taking another person’s life); Adams has a school training that involves shooting in a jungle-like setting (he gets shot by a classmate, up to semi-detailed); Adams hates school because he sees it as the Marshal raising up a “programmed and devoted army”from his generation and feels sick at the thought of being chosen for military service; The Marshal (a dictator and the villain of this story) orders for someone’s vocal cords to be removed & wants Adams to be crushed/destroyed; Emma panics and cries that a man is going to shoot someone; Adams, Clay, & Emma come up with a plan to steal an item they need for Adams to return home (this includes lying to others and breaking a display case); Clay is bullied (both on-page with physically being hit and threatened plus remembering past incidents, up to semi-detailed; After that, he decides he will never speak up or draw attention to himself again) & Emma deals with a mean girl and her snide comments; Adam feels grief about being alone with no family; Mentions of a child that was hit by a car and died & grief from the parents (Emma’s older brother); Mentions of drownings & almost drownings (including two kids that drowned and a news report of it); Mentions of deaths & killing drones that look human; Mentions of assassins & ordering murders (including an ordered murder on a teen by an evil dictator); Mentions of wars; Mentions of weapons, being shot/tased, & weapons being aimed at others; Mentions of attacks, rebels, & a possible plan to murder a dictator; Mentions of crimes & criminals; Mentions of thieves, stealing, & stolen items; Mentions of boys stealing/robbing a store; Mentions of pain, injuries, blood/bleeding, & passing out (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of being being tied-up & locked in a closet; Mentions of nightmares of dying and blood; Mentions of lies & lying; Mentions of bullies; Mentions of divorces & parents shouting; A few mentions of prisons & arrests; A few mentions of vomiting; A few mentions of rumors; A couple mentions of a mother who died from cancer; A couple mentions of being robbed & held at gunpoint; A couple mentions of graffiti; A couple mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of eavesdropping; A couple mentions of urine; A mention of enslavement; A mention of someone needing a “new pair of boxer-briefs” during a sports event; A mention of poker; A mention of hunting;
*Note: Adams’ father gives him an injection for bacteria and viruses his body will fight in the past timeline (adding that he wished he had a vaccine like this for Adams’ dog that is going with him); The Marshal keeps his grip on the people he rules over by having them to cranial injections to learn more, but also remove information that he deems “inconvenient truths”; A classmate of Clay’s used his name to cover for himself to his parents to have “some time for himself” when he doesn’t want his parents to know where he is (such as when he went to see an R-rated movie); The classmate wants Clay to meet his parents to prove that he is real and while Clay doesn’t want to lie, he does meet him (and there’s no punishment for the boy lying to his parents nor shown as wrong); Emma’s parents are divorced and often hears her parents shouting at each other and tries hard to keep them from being in the same room (she recalls her mother yelling at her father and blaming him for different things; Emma feels jealous of other kids that have parents in a happy or peaceful marriage; Her older brother died when she was little after being hit by a distracted driver and Emma’s parents tried to hold it together for several years, but were too angry and heartbroken; Emma thinks it’s weird that her parents have left his room the same way all of these years; Emma is upset to hear one of her parents is dating and feels heartbroken over the revelation that her dream that as a child of divorce, her parents getting back together won’t happen now; When she has to tell her parents something serious and they are able to be in the same room without fighting, she is stunned and angry that they are able to behave themselves around each other because she’s believed they were “in a sense, victims of their painful memories” and realized they could get along despite choosing not to and she’s been the one paying for their selfishness; A police chief tells the kids something about an open case, but then says he can’t talk about it (this happens a few times and has a sometimes doofus-like personality because of it); A scientist borrows skin calls from his lab rat to test on; A dog is shoved and whimpers; Mentions of a science/technology item that has nanobots which can spy on the person who ingested them, tell others what they are thinking, & can even attack and kill the person’s organs; Mentions of a group & song (‘Here Comes the Sun’ by the Beatles); Mentions of US Presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and Grant); Mentions of books & authors (‘War of the Worlds’, ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins’, ‘A Wrinkle in Time’, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin’, ‘Watership Down’, ‘Animal Farm’, ‘Hamlet’, and ‘Crime and Punishment’); Mentions of car brands; Mentions of a woman’s athlete’s foot (barely-above-not-detailed); A few mentions of vaccines; A few mentions of brand names (John Deere, Athena candy bar, & LEGO bricks); A couple mentions of superheroes (Superman & Captain America); A mention of the Marshal ordering for the capital to be “de-Americanize[d]”; A mention of Micky Mouse; A mention of lottery tickets.
Sexual Content- Emma gives one of the boys a kiss on his cheek (as a goodbye); Adams gives CPR to Emma, but before he “could lock his lips around hers to create a seal”, she coughs up water; Clay has a crush on Emma, who he thinks is the prettiest girl in school and acts awkward around her at first (as he gets to know her, his crush grows and he blushes); Clay doesn’t think he could handle being a host to Adams if Emma has a crush on him; Mentions of dates & dating; A few mentions of crushes & having feelings for someone;
*Note: Adams thinks that “girls go nuts over a guy just because he’s from another country and has an accent. I’m from another century. That has to count for something.”; Unlike most of the girls her age, Emma rarely wears makeup and was in “no rush to force her way through adolescence into adulthood”); A girl comments that she would “never eat anything so fattening” when referring to a muffin.
-Adams Klein, age 14
-Clay Danvers, age 14
-Emma Bloom, age 14
P.O.V. switches between them & a few others
Set in 2196 & 2015
276 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
This book took me a bit to get into because of the different POVs, the head switching, and trying to figure out the world. I think the author did well enough explaining things and the advance technology in the future setting, though, which left me with little questions on that.
There were a few parts that made me think this book would be better for boys than girls, but it truly depends on the girl. I didn’t personally care for some comments or having the mental image of urine in a urinal, but perhaps that’s just me. In that regard, it felt like what I would usually call a “boy book” meaning that there some comments and/or humor that would probably make a young boy laugh and not bother girls with brothers, but it wasn’t enjoyable to me.
This book might not be the best choice for sensitive readers, mainly because of the villain. He orders for one underling to have his vocal cords removed and orders for our young main character to be killed. He also made some confusing comments on “the Ones Out There” when referring to a higher power, that were odd and I’m not sure what the author was going for. I’ve quoted the section above in the Spiritual Content part of this review because while it’s long, it’s kind of hard to shorten it to get the point across.
There were a few parts I didn’t like seeing a conclusion about—not even referring to the plot that would have a conclusion in the next book, but more so the characters or side characters. Such as a classmate of Clay’s using his name to be able to be by himself when he doesn’t want his parents to know where he is (the classmate looks at this flippantly as he needs time for himself and there’s nothing about the parents finding it out; instead when they meet Clay and hear something heroic about him, they really like him being friends with their son; Perhaps it’s not Clay deceiving them, but he knows better and is helping his classmate lie to his parents and it’s not shown as wrong). Clay is also bullied by boys who steal from a store and because they’ve bullied him before, he decides not to tell anyone and covers what they stole with his own money. Maybe conclusions or justice didn’t happen in these situations because of the short amount of time and characters hurry for other things, but it could give the wrong idea or impression to young readers.
Overall, this mainly wasn’t my kind of book, but I could see some other readers enjoying it.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.