A Tale of Time City

“We started planning two days ago after they met the train and couldn’t find her,” said Sam.

“Two days ago!” Vivian exclaimed. “But I was there
today
, and so were you!”

“Yes, but you can get to any time you want through a time-lock,” Jonathan said, waving that puzzle away in his most lordly manner. “My father went there and Sam’s father, and so did the Head Librarian and the High Scientist, but they all came back saying Vivian Smith had slipped through them somehow. That was when I thought we had a chance of getting you—her—ourselves. Only you’re the wrong Vivian Smith for some reason—and I
still
can’t understand it! Sam, we’ve got to think what to do with her.”

“Send her to the Stone Age,” said Sam. “You wouldn’t mind that, would you?” he asked Vivian.

The Dalemark Quartet

Cart and Cwidder

Drowned Ammet

The Spellcoats

The Crown of Dalemark

The Chrestomanci Books

Charmed Life

The Magicians of Caprona

Witch Week

The Lives of Christopher Chant

Conrad’s Fate

The Pinhoe Egg

Other Books

Changeover

Wilkins’ Tooth (
USA:
Witch’s Business)

The Ogre Downstairs

Eight Days of Luke

Dogsbody

Power of Three

Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?

The Four Grannies

The Time of the Ghost

The Homeward Bounders

Archer’s Goon

Fire and Hemlock

Warlock at the Wheel
(short stories)

The Skiver’s Guide

The Thirteenth Enchanter

Howl’s Moving Castle

A Tale of Time City

Chair Person

Wild Robert

Hidden Turnings
(editor)

Castle in the Air

Black Maria (
USA:
Aunt Maria)

A Sudden Wild Magic

Yes, Dear
(picture book)

Hexwood

Fantasy Stories
(editor)

Everard’s Ride
(short stories)

Stopping for a Spell
(short stories)

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland

Minor Arcana
(short stories)

Deep Secret

Believing is Seeing
(short stories)

Dark Lord of Derkholm

Puss in Boots
(retelling)

Mixed Magics
(short stories)

The Year of the Griffin

The Merlin Conspiracy

Unexpected Magics
(short stories)

The Game

House of Many Ways

Enchanted Glass

Earwig and the Witch

W
HERE
F
ANTASY
T
AKES
F
LIGHT
™

Introduction by
Ursula K. Le Guin

FIREBIRD

AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Tabitha and William

   
Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin

 
1  Kidnapped

 
2  Cousin Vivian

 
3  Time City

 
4  Time-Ghosts

 
5  Time-Lock

 
6  Cousin Marty

 
7  The River Time

 
8  Duration

 
9  Guardian

10  Ceremonies

11  The Age of Gold

12  Android

13  The Gnomon

14  The Age of Silver

15  Evacuees

16  The Lead Casket?

17  Faber John

T
his is a wonderful story of time travel, in which you, the reader, get to travel even farther than Vivian Smith, the heroine. Since you live in the twenty-first century, as soon as you begin reading this book you’ve traveled back in time… to the last century, to the autumn of 1939, the beginning of Hitler’s war. German bombs were falling on London, and schoolchildren were being sent away from the city into the countryside where their parents hoped they might be safe.

Just as Vivian arrives at the train station of the little town where her cousin Marty is supposed to meet her, a strange boy introduces himself as her cousin, grabs her luggage, and hurries her across the station platform and straight through a solid wall.…

Ah, yes, these things were happening, long, long before they ever happened to Harry Potter.

Vivian doesn’t end up at wizard school, but thousands of years into her future (and yours) at Time City, a place that exists outside history. Her being there at all is a mistake. The boy wasn’t her
cousin Marty at all. His name is Jonathan, and he’s trying to save Time City from a terrible fate, and he needs Vivian Smith to help him do it. But when he went back in time for her, he got the wrong Vivian Smith.…

Or did he?

The one he found is certainly a courageous and resourceful companion. She’s scared and confused, as who wouldn’t be, getting kidnapped by mistake away from a war into the middle of a disaster. But she bravely faces every adventure and danger to be met in Time City. And it’s a thoroughly dangerous and adventurous place, at least if you insist on doing what Jonathan and his friend Sam are trying to do in order to save the City from the doom that’s coming closer and closer to it every day—the End of Time.

Actually, Sam is more interested in eating butter-pies than in saving the City from doom. Butter-pies are one of the finest inventions of Time City. A butter-pie comes on a stick and has an ice-cold, crunchy, toffee-ish outside, but when you get to the inside, it’s hot. The idea is to mix up the cold crunchy part with the hot syrupy part as you eat it. Vivian learns very quickly to eat butter-pies—although not as many as Sam. Sam is too easily distracted by the very thought of butter-pies. Vivian, however, soon realizes that an unknown enemy wants to prevent Jonathan from saving Time City, and that this enemy is quite ready to leave them all marooned in some strange, lonesome part of history where they don’t belong, and from which Vivian will never be able to get back to the twentieth century where her mother and father are.

One of my favorite parts of the book is where the three of them
actually go back in time to the train platform in 1939 to try to put things straight. This time they meet the real Cousin Marty that Vivian was supposed to stay with so she would be safe from Hitler. And Vivian realizes that even though Jonathan has got her into an awful lot of trouble in the Far Future, he may have saved her from something—well, not as bad as Hitler, maybe, but pretty bad.

When they get back to Time City, Doom is coming ever nearer, and terrible things begin happening in history—things that weren’t supposed to happen—such as the invention of nuclear war a whole century too soon.…

In reality we can’t mess around with time, but we can in our imagination, and time-travel stories are a lot of fun. But when you start messing with time, it can get very confusing, and you need a strong imagination, plus a clear head, to keep making sense. This story makes wonderful sense all the way through, even when confusion is at its worst, when everything in history as we know it is changing, and the very foundations of Time City are cracking and crumbling under Vivian’s feet. It’s a complicated story but it doesn’t seem complicated. It’s as straightforwardly exciting as a roller-coaster ride through a hundred centuries.

A Tale of Time City
was written and published for young adults. But, like all really good fantasy, it isn’t just for one kind of people, one age group. Fantasy doesn’t care how old you are. Imagination pays no attention to all those walls we put up between the different stages of life; it just breezes right through them. A lot of kids younger than their teens will certainly enjoy this story. And people a long way past their teens can enjoy it just as much. I can guarantee
that. I’m ancient, and I went along on the roller-coaster ride whooping and hollering all the way.