Creative Kid Thursday! Guest review by Molly Johnson

• Title: Outlaws of Time: The Legend of Sam Miracle
• Age Range: 8+
• Grade Level: 3+
• Series: Outlaws of Time (Book 1)
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books (April 19, 2016)

    But Sam is about to discover that the world he knows and the world he imagines are separated by only one thing: time. And that separation is only an illusion. The laws of time can be bent and shifted by people with special magic that allows them to travel through the past, present, and future. But not all of these “time walkers” can be trusted. One is out to protect Sam so that he can accept his greatest destiny, and another is out to kill him so that a prophecy will never be fulfilled. However, it’s an adventurous girl named Glory and two peculiar snakes who show Sam the way through the dark paths of yesterday to help him make sure there will be a tomorrow for every last person on earth.

What I thought:

ND Wilson’s style and prose are engaging and alluring, and he really drew me into the story.  In the first two sentences of chapter one, I could actually feel the heat rising from the page: “There’s a kind of heat that can peel lizards, even in the shade.  Heat that sends every creeping thing slithering under rocks and into graves, heat that floats the crows up and away to find whatever cool whispers of mountain air might be trickling in over the painted mesas.”  Though the book is 330 pages long, the story moved very rapidly.  There is a lot of action, and it starts almost right away.  I was definitely rooting for Sam (the main character), even though there wasn’t a lot of him that I could relate to.  Glory, his sidekick, is an amazing girl with an adventuresome spirit who gets shot on the day she meets him (because of him) and then decides to help him rescue his sister and save the world anyway.  And it’s clear soon after they meet that he certainly could not succeed without her help.  The plot is interesting, but it is a bit complicated.  I really needed to think my way through portions of the book, and don’t think it would have been as enjoyable if I was tired.  However, this book definitely passes the most important test, which is:  Would I read it again?

The answer, most emphatically, is YES!

Thank you very much for stopping by, Molly! I really appreciate you doing so!