Book Review: Time Sniffers by C.S. Lakin

“Time is only a matter of perspective.”

I am a long-time fan of alternate world/world-within-world stories. My love of the genre probably started with Madeleine L’Engel’s amazing books (particularly A Wrinkle in Time/the Murray family series). I consumed her books as a kid, and have re-read them countless times throughout my life. There’s something so magically compelling to me about the idea of stepping sideways into another world, one that is like but not-like this one…

Time Sniffers, the first in a new series by C.S. Lakin, is redolent of – but not derivative to – Wrinkle, and that may be what really drew me into the story. I was intrigued by the description, and while it was very thorough in its explanation, after reading the blurb I expected a bit more of a time travel component – it is, after all, referred to as a “deep time-travel story”. I don’t consider this one time-travel in the traditional sense – it’s more of a time skip, with a lot more time spent in parallel/alternate worlds than in history (the backwards movement is never more than a couple of weeks). Still, that expectation aside, the story was very interesting and there were enough intermingled science, adventure, coming-of-age, and alternate world elements to keep me engaged and entertained. There was also a more traditional sci-fi element mixed in (in the form of the Sniffers and Searchers). I enjoyed this; it gave the story a fresh feeling that I quite liked.

“Everything just keeps circling around, just like that time vortex, ad just like all those ribbons of time that kept swinging back to the past, to this one event. It makes me wonder if time is by nature circular – if maybe everything we do and everything that has happened in all of history just circles back around and repeats endlessly.”

The characters were a big part of what I found so enjoyable. I liked the variety in personalities and skill-sets and the unexpected depths that emerged throughout the course of the story. This was probably where I found the most comparison to Wrinkle and where another reader might have felt that the two books were overly similar. Bria is pretty spot-on Meg Murray, Dylan could not be more Charles Wallace-esque, and Jace is pretty tightly Calvin, right down to his tragic home life. BUT I did not mind this; after the initial descriptions, the story – and characters – developed on their own tracks and on the whole Bria, Dylan and Jace were distinctly their own personalities, such that my ongoing mental comparisons to the L’Engel cast fell away fairly quickly.

The book weighs in at a hefty (for YA) 347 pages (100+ pages more than Wrinkle). Frankly, I think it was a little long. There were several sections where it felt like the descriptions/setups were unnecessarily lengthy, and the pacing was not always as even as I would have preferred. Then again, I had L’Engel in my head throughout my reading, and she is a master of pacing and balancing the desire for explication with the need for forward momentum. I recognize that it is not fair to compare the stories (even if subconsciously), and it’s possible that this was a part of my frustration during those portions of the book – if so, my apologies to Ms. Lakin, but I did find myself shifting between frantic page turning and the desire to skim ahead more than once so felt it worth mentioning. It did not detract from my enjoyment or my desire to see the story through to the end though, and that’s the important take-away.

There are “romance” elements in the story, but they are managed very well and incorporated into the overarching plot in a way that is rare to find in young adult stories, which (in my experience) tend to either go overboard and make the entire book about the love interests or to underplay those elements until they feel gratuitous. Bria is growing up, and a part of growing up is growing into yourself – her interactions with Jace and Ryan are major parts of that personal growth, and as such they were valuable additions to the story.

The book is described as the first in a series. I think there’s solid potential here, and look forward to seeing what Bria and her friends (and hopefully her indomitable mother) come up against next!