Jack Christie: Day of Rebellion by Johnny O'Brien - review

'This is the kind of book you can only read enthusiastically once'

This is the perfect ending to the sci-fi series of Jack Christie's adventures (although I haven't read the first three).

Jack lives in Scotland with his parents but when his father, Tom, goes missing he and his best mate Angus track him down to a completely ice-covered future in 2046 using the revisionists' time-travelling machine: the Taurus.

Tom's old enemy, Fenton Pendleshape, is hard on his heels trying to kill him to avenge his own father after he died a horrible death in France. Apart from trying to find his dad, Jack's mission is to correct something that changed the world back in 1860.

Tom attempts to evade Fenton with the aid of the time machine. He ends up in China during the Taiping Rebellion against the imperialists. Jack tracks down his father in 19th century China to find electric heaters, kettles and machine guns and realises that something must have happened in the past to do with the future...

The Taiping and the Imperialists both want to possess the time device that could change the course of the war and are bent on capturing Jack and Angus, dead or alive. They are not safe anywhere.

I really liked the adventurous concluding chapter to this series. O'Brien makes it seem as if time travel were really possible because he manages to evoke different times and places with the same vivid skill.

However, it felt as I were reading another version of the W.A.R.P. series which I've already reviewed: the way they travel through time, the words and thoughts that pass through the main character's mind, the same devices and machines and so on (I wonder if the authors know each other's work).

This is the kind of book you can only read enthusiastically once so I would recommend it to anyone who likes time-travelling adventures to the past or future. I rate it generously - 9/10.
