Horizon – A Warp in Time

A Warp in Time by Jude Watson is the third Horizon book, a science fiction survival story for 10 year olds in which the stranded children find they aren't the only people here.

What happens

Music is the last thing they expect. It comes drifting through a forest of blue-green trees, high and piping, and Yoshi insists it's birds. Akiko plays the flute and knows better. It's Mozart.

So they run towards it. Yoshi, out in front as usual, drops straight into a pit covered over with sticks and leaves. Somebody dug that.

The somebodies are a marching band. The Cub-Tones come from Bear Claw, Oregon. Their plane came down here too, and they've made a proper camp with lean-tos, a vegetable patch and buns made out of mashed tubers.

They're friendly. They're also a bit odd. Kimberly says "jeepers" and "neato", asks whether Yoshi and Akiko are "going steady" and talks about a TV show nobody else has heard of. So how long have they really been here? (The title's a clue.)

Your reader will probably work it out a page or two before the characters do, which is half the fun.

The forest is no kinder than the places before it. Anna follows a strange insect a few steps out of camp and can't find her way back. Then something with yellow eyes starts following her.

The opening chapters hop from one child's head to the next. Javi isn't sure he still knows his best friend. Yoshi has read a letter he wasn't supposed to open and decided he's better off alone.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Yoshi kills an attacking animal with his sword and you see it happen, blood and all. The band have lost friends to the creatures here and name them one by one, and one beast is said to bite people's heads off. Molly's dad died before the story began, and a piece of music brings it all back to her. Yoshi's letter is from his mum, and he reads it as her not wanting him.

That's a lot for a tender-hearted reader. One who's come this far with the series will know what they're in for (and probably won't want to stop).

Don't start here, though. It's book three of one continuing story and leans on everything before it. Horizon by Scott Westerfeld is the beginning, and Deadzone comes after that.

What to read next

For something completely different from the same writer, there's Jude Watson's Loot. March McQuin is a jewel thief's son who's been taught a rule for everything, and he's suddenly alone in Amsterdam at three in the morning. It opens with a death, so read those first pages yourself.