“Time is only a matter of perspective.”

I am a long-time fan of alternate world/world-within-world stories. My love of the genre probably started with Madeleine L’Engel’s amazing books (particularly A Wrinkle in Time/the Murray family series). I consumed her books as a kid, and have re-read them countless times throughout my life. There’s something so magically compelling to me about the idea of stepping sideways into another world, one that is like but not-like this one…

Time Sniffers, the first in a new series by C.S. Lakin, is redolent of – but not derivative to – Wrinkle, and that may be what really drew me into the story. I was intrigued by the description, and while it was very thorough in its explanation, after reading the blurb I expected a bit more of a time travel component – it is, after all, referred to as a “deep time-travel story”. I don’t consider this one time-travel in the traditional sense – it’s more of a time skip, with a lot more time spent in parallel/alternate worlds than in history (the backwards movement is never more than a couple of weeks). Still, that expectation aside, the story was very interesting and there were enough intermingled science, adventure, coming-of-age, and alternate world elements to keep me engaged and entertained. There was also a more traditional sci-fi element mixed in (in the form of the Sniffers and Searchers). I enjoyed this; it gave the story a fresh feeling that I quite liked.
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