The Time Key

The Time Key by Melanie Bateman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Here it is! My first blog tour post.  It was a fun to be involved and to be able to get to know the author Melanie Bateman a little better.  Be sure to check out my short interview with her here.

Buy The Time Key from Amazon or from Barnes and Noble

Summary

A chance encounter with a stranger leaves Stanley Becker with a device that allows him to travel through time. The opportunity to change his devastating past is too good to turn down.  However, in his quest he finds that there are powers in the world that he previously never knew or believed existed. His mission to make right the past becomes one of rescuing those he loves in the present through saving the future.

My Review 

I really wanted to like this book. And I really did like aspects of it. But overall it wasn’t as fulfilling of a read as I had hoped. It does have an interesting plot and the writer’s voice is refreshing and intelligent. The first chapter was fabulous! I was hooked by the mysterious narrator and the strange events that prevented Stanley Becker from taking his own life. My desire to learn the secrets that were introduced in the first few chapters kept me interested enough to read to the end.

The difficulties for me came in with the flow of the events and with the many and varied characters and fantasy elements involved in the storytelling. This is a time travel book so I was expecting the events would not follow a linear timeline, but the transitions between times and timelines was sometimes hard to follow. I also found the passage of time to be underdeveloped. Stanley is supposedly developing relationships in his “present” with other characters, but there wasn’t enough description of the time spent in those relationships for me to get attached or to really believe that the characters themselves were growing much closer. It was difficult for me to understand and believe the character’s motivations at times because the relationships between them seemed rushed and a little shallow.

I did enjoy Stanley Becker’s character development in the first half from an “intellectual” perspective. As he travels to the past to attempt to make a right a tragedy I found his decisions and reactions interesting. I am fascinated by psychology, how people react to the events in their lives and why they react that way. Stanley makes for an interesting psychological study; I just didn’t have much sentimental attachment to him. Several of the characters were still entertaining and I enjoyed their “voices” even if I didn’t fall in love with them.

What really prevented me from being fully wrapped up in the story was the lack of setup for the rules of the book’s world. I was expecting the time travel/science fiction element in the book, but I was caught a little off guard when a broad spectrum of mythical and mythological elements were introduced as well. Readers learn about “shadows creatures” in the first chapter and I while I hadn’t been expecting them, I was interested to see how they would fit in with the time traveling. However, as the story continued there were more and more creatures of fantasy and mythology, and fantastical powers to go along with them. Add to that the setting in late 1800’s London and a troop of gypsies having a major role in story, and it was all just a little too random and inconsistent for me. I couldn’t really settle in to the feel of the book with so much going on from so many different genre angles.

I kept reading though, curious to see if the connections between all of these various elements could be explained, but the explanations and connections just never fully formed for me. Each element was presented quickly and suddenly without much description of how and why the element exists, how it relates to all of the other mythical people and things, and by what rules it and its powers are bound.

While science fiction and fantasy, by definition, will include elements that are fictional, fantastic, and outside the realm of reality, the elements have to be presented in such a way that readers would find them possible and reasonable within the world created in the book. As a reader I need to be given reasonable explanation and description of the world and the rules that govern it so that I can suspend my disbelief in the magical and mystical for a little while and get wrapped up in fantasy. I never could get wrapped up because there was not enough information provided for me to see how all of these varied elements could and did coexist. I felt little suspense particularly through the second half of the book because there were very few rules explained for how all of these great powers functioned. It felt more like I was just sitting back and watching random worlds collide, and the events that followed were aimless. With no rules and connections to help guide my expectations or predictions for the characters or events, it was difficult to care about the outcome.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad read; I just wasn’t invested in it. I think it’s a decent work for a first time author. Her voice is so fun to read, and I hope she writes more! The pieces that were missing for me in The Time Key are all things that a little deeper and broader editing process could help flesh out. There are so many other aspects of good literature that aren’t easily learned or improved upon, and fortunately, Melanie Bateman has natural talent for those. So, I will look forward to reading whatever she has coming up next!

Age Recommendation: I would suggest this one for 18 or older simply because I think a more mature reader will appreciate the themes and characters better.  But it’s not a difficult read so mature readers of 14 and older would likely still enjoy it. ‘

Appropriateness: There is an attempt at suicide and drinking in the book.  There was nothing offensive in the book to me, but I mention these two aspects because there may be some readers that will be sensitive to them. There is no profanity, and while there is action and excitement there are no graphic descriptions.

Other Book Recommendations: If you liked this book or if it sounds interesting to you than I suggest you also try Eruption by Adrienne Quintana, Enchantment by Orson Scott Card, The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo, Fablehaven Series and Beyonders series both by Brandon Mull, Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, Running with the Demon by Terry Brooks, Gossamer by Lois Lowry,  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, and Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt.

Follow along with the blog tour and find out what others have been saying about The Time Key: 

“The Time Key” blog tour schedule:
June 16: Community Bookstop
June 17: Jodi Woody
June 18: Making Life a Bliss Complete
June 19: Kaylee Baldwin
June 20: Rockin’ Book Reviews
June 21: 2 Kids and Tired Books
June 22: Choco Meiske | Literature Approved | Fire and Ice
June 23: Bookworm Lisa
June 24: The Reader’s Salon
June 25: Bookworm Nation
June 26: Wishful Endings
June 27: Connie’s Bookmark
June 28: Once Upon a Time
June 29: Storyweaver
June 30: The Unabridged Girl
July 1: Mel’s Shelves
July 2: Blooming with Books
July 3: The Book Addict | Inklings and Notions
July 4: Novel-ties
July 5: Singing Librarian Books
July 6: Reading Lark
July 7: Paranormal & Romantic Suspense Reviews