Though Dylan is drawn like a moth to Juniper's flame, she soon realizes that he has a strength and grace that her sexier, older boyfriend lacks. With vividly depicted, believable characters, this is superior fantasy. Fortunately, Juniper and Dylan together find the strength to shield Joanna from the agony of her burning. Events rush to a conclusion as Joanna is tried by the ordeal of water and then burned, with Juniper in danger of being pulled into a 20th-century parallel. Juniper's mother warns Dylan that Juniper can be heedless, but Dylan is too fascinated by Juniper and by his own vision of Joanna's plight to withdraw. Some of these are from the past- experiences of a young mother and herb-wife, Joanna. Juniper, whose wide interests include reincarnation and time travel, drags feckless Dylan Pidgley into her experiments with telepathy because he is a marvelous artist and can draw the scenes she transmits. From Kirkus Reviews:Ī 14-year-old finds herself psychically linked with a young woman who was burned as a witch in medieval England. Edwards, Buckham Memorial Library, Faribault, MNĬopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. This is the best part of the book, and, while melodramatic, it has a genuineness and excitement that satisfies. Jordan's fiery ending pulls together threads of story and, without dodging or prettifying, provides that climax to which all the earlier suspense has been leading. Dylan's home life is such a disaster that readers will wonder where he gets the energy to receive Juniper's mental images of another time and to render his perfect drawings. Real life, on the other hand is very hard-so difficult that breezy competent Juniper panics just crossing a shallow ford, and fails to realize that her popular boyfriend is a jerk-until he almost kills her. Even the trappings that could help readers buy into the fantasy, such as Juniper's completely medieval room, seem artificial. The time traveling that takes the daring young woman into medieval times and the visions that she sends her friend to sketch never quiver or seem subject to any human failings. Yet Dylan's artistic abilities and Juniper's telepathic powers never take on reality.
There is, no doubt, an audience for fantasy that seems grounded in this contemporary reality of high school and single-parent households. The result is a Julian Thompson cast in a Margaret Mahy plot.
Grade 7-10- Take an almost perfect teenage girl and have her notice a bumbling but talented artistic boy and combine them with time-travel, ESP, and medieval witchcraft and lore.
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