Ruby Red

Fantasy books aren’t exactly my kind of thing. But I must say that the book Ruby Red was a fairly good book minus a few things here and there. By Kerstin Gier, this time-travel themed book was very well written.

The main character in this book is named Gwyneth. She is 16 years old and lives in London England with her, let’s just say, large family. Set in about 2010, this family lives a quite interesting life keeping many secrets from one another. But what really makes this family special is that they have a time-traveling gene running right through their family. This gene was meant to be carried with in one person, and that was Charlotte, Gwyneth’s cousin.  This gene was a very big hassle, causing the carrier to randomly travel back into time. Any time period! This can have many dangers, obviously, with all of the major events that have happened in the past.

The whole family is preparing for Charlotte to have her first travel back in time. Her date of birth and everything else obviously make her the gene carrier. Or that’s what everyone thinks at least. Until one day, Gwyneth was out for a walk and suddenly everything went to a blur and she was in the past. This was impossible! Her? The carrier, there was no way. But it was true, she is the carrier. She had had no proper training and no clue what to do.

Gwyneth quickly tells her family, after she returns to the present, with much shock herself. With everyone relly surprised, they quickly try to prepare her the best they can, but there is simply no time. She is then forced to travel back in time with another carrier using a special machine. On a search to discover the big secret, this character takes you on an amazing journey.

This is one of the few fantasy books I enjoyed because I am usually not a huge fan. But this book was definitely a page turner. I had to finish, when ever I put it down I came right back to it just as fast. It was entertaining, but sometimes confusing, just because of the authors style. There were times that I didn’t know who was talking, which was pretty inconvenient.

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I got nothing out of it. It seemed to be just a pointless story with not much of a moral in it. The character may have gone on a journey, but I don’t feel that she actually changed in anything major. I’m not so sure if that is supposed to be saved for the other books in the series or something, but I personally didn’t like to see much of a personality change. For this reason I would give this book a B-.