The Navigator
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Time travel adventure in which a boy joins a rebel uprising against a sinister enemy – ‘The Harsh’ – in order to repair the fabric of time.
Owen's ordinary life is turned upside-down the day he gets involved with the Resisters and their centuries-long feud with an ancient, evil race. The Harsh, with their icy blasts and relentless onslaught, have a single aim – to turn back time and eliminate all life. Unless they are stopped, everything Owen knows will vanish as if it has never been…
But all is not as it seems in the rebel ranks. While Owen is accepted by new friends Cati and Wesley, and the eccentric Dr Diamond, others are suspicious of his motives. Could there be a Harsh spy in their midst? Where and what is the mysterious Mortmain, vital to their cause? And what was Owen’s father’s role in all this many years before?
As he journeys to the frozen North on a mission of destruction, Owen comes to understand his own history and to face his destiny.
About the author
Eoin McNamee was born in County Down, Northern Ireland. He is critically acclaimed as an adult novelist, the best known title being Resurrection Man (‘one of the most outstanding pieces of Irish fiction to come along in years’ Irish Times) which was also made into a film. He was awarded the Macauley Fellowship for Irish Literature in 1990. In addition to his literary novels, Eoin has written two thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McNamee (Resurrection Man, for adults) makes his YA debut with an inventive time travel story. Owen lives in the shadow of a father who committed suicide, but readers barely get to meet the young hero before he encounters a tiny man who warns him, "It has begun... it is to be you." From there, Owen is whisked to the Workhouse, "the center of the Resisters to the Harsh and the frost of eternal solitude that they wish to loose upon the earth." He is taken in by these "custodians of time," who tell him about the Harsh faceless creatures that "long for emptiness, for cold nothingness." To this end, the Harsh have begun the Puissance, which is causing time to run backwards. In order to defeat the Harsh, Owen and new friend Cati must find the Mortmain, a device of unknown shape and size that can destroy the Great Machine causing the Puissance. The Mortmain recalls Rowling's "portkey" concept a magical artifact, hiding in plain sight as an everyday object, which may feel a bit derivative to some readers. But the ultimate discovery of that object and its keeper ties the book's ending to its beginning in satisfying fashion. McNamee's setting is certainly unique, and readers who relish the brain-teasing nature of time-travel stories will also relish this book and its planned sequels. Ages 9-12.
