The Time Travelers

The Time Travelers is the first book in the Gideon Trilogy by Linda Buckley-Archer. It was previously published under the title Gideon the Cutpurse.

400 pages, Published in 2006 by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in New York, New York.

1763: Gideon Seymour, thief and gentleman, hides from the villainous Tar Man. Suddenly the sky peels away like fabric and from the gaping hole fall two curious-looking children. Peter Schock and Kate Dyer have fallen straight from the twenty-first century, thanks to an experiment with an antigravity machine. Before Gideon and the children have a chance to gather their wits, the Tar Man takes off with the maching - and Peter and Kate's only chance of getting home. Soon Gideon, Peter, and Kate are swept into a journey through eighteenth-century London and form a bond that, they hope, will stand strong in the face of unfathomable treachery.

First Sentence: "It was early morning on Saturday, the sixteenth of December, the first day of the Christmas holidays."

Pros

• "The story of Peter and Kate is phenomenal." -Anonymous poster on inkweaver-review.blogspot.com
• "I highly recommend this book to anybody willing to try this series. It is exciting, captivating, and very thrilling!" -Anonymous poster on inkweaver-review.blogspot.com
• "It’s fun, exciting, and somewhat depressing, and it ends on a cliffhanger that’ll make you want to scream." -http://birdbrainbb.net/2011/11/28/review-the-time-travelers-by-linda-buckley-archer/

Cons

• "I can only remember the abysmal beginning, which is slow and boring." -http://birdbrainbb.net/2011/11/28/review-the-time-travelers-by-linda-buckley-archer/
• "The book had long wordy paragraphs." -Anonymous poster on inkweaver-review.blogspot.com
• "Though [Peter's] character does develop somewhat over time, he remains somewhat petulant, which gets old, after a while." -Jane Air on amazon.com

Personal Verdict

3.5 out of 5

The Time Travelers is an exciting and captivating novel. Once you get past the slow beginning you are in for an amazing adventure that will leave you screaming for more.

Related Books

1. The Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix
2. Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George
3. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
4. The Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan
5. The Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan
6. The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel  by Michael Scott

About the Author 

Linda Buckley-Archer was born in Sussex, but spent most of her childhood on a blackcurrant farm in Staffordshire and now lives in London. Originally trained as a linguist, she lectured in French for some years before becoming a full-time author and scriptwriter. She has written original drama for both BBC Radio (most recently, Pearls in the Tate) and television (One Night in White Satin), but is best known for The Gideon Trilogy of novels which she started out as writing as a radio drama, but realized, once she read it aloud to her children and they refused to let her stop for dinner, what potential the script had as a novel.