TimeTilter

Gr 7 Up—This is intended to be an action-packed young adult novel that appeals to young gamers who love adventure stories. Participants are put in a vast, enclosed artificial environment replete with forests, swamps, rivers, and cliffs. Reminiscent of the tournament in The Hunger Games, this game challenges players to find the way out. This endeavor is complicated by the fact that the teens must inhale a drug that alters their perception of time. Later, it is revealed that the drug is being tested to see if it can alter time itself. This is one of many details left underdeveloped, which will cause puzzlement for readers. In this highly derivative novel, alternating points of view move the narrative forward, but the characters are as poorly developed as the story line is. The adult characters seem to be sinister and in on the experiment, but they might also possess some redeeming qualities—it's not quite clear. Neither the setting nor the characters are fleshed out to any satisfactory degree.