5.0 out of 5 stars
An intense, heartbreaking, yet ultimately uplifting end to a beautiful series
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 22, 2020
“It was in these moments the world fell away. It was just the two of them, one heartbeat, two bodies, soft whispers. Danny’s heart was bigger than himself; it crowded the room, the house, the town, all of this island on a cold battering sea.”
With Firestarter, as if weaving the strands of time like one of her clock mechanics, Tara Sims brings the Timekeeper series to a powerful, at times heart stopping and emotionally draining, end. This third and final book allows the moral ambiguities she so carefully balances in the earlier books to unravel and spin out of control; what we, as readers, found so rare and precious in the lives of her characters is suddenly at risk. From the apparent wreckage, Ms. Sims weaves another kind of beauty, a deeper vision of her world, just as lovely yet very different from when Danny Hart first came to fix Enfield’s clock tower and fell in love with a spirit named Colton.
How can I care so much about these characters? I was so emotionally involved with them that there were times in this book that I simply stopped reading, just to delay facing what I felt would inevitably happen. Sometimes I was right, other times I wished I’d been right - because what actually happens is unforeseen and far more intense than I expected. Ms. Sim is not afraid to follow the Hero’s Journey, no matter where it leads, even when it is disquieting.
In Timekeeper, Book 1, we get a precious, beautiful vision of two boys who overcome the odds for their love.
In Chainbreaker, Book 2, we get a beautiful and inventive work of art, whose power is viscerally felt in both the story itself and in the way its lovingly crafted. It sets us up for the grand finale, which we might expect to be a reprise of earlier story elements in a major key, a theme and variation on a grander scale.
Well, times change. Things break. Including, in this series, people.
In Firestarter, Book 3, Ms. Sim takes her storytelling close to the fantasy equivalent of an epic tragedy. It takes courage, it seems to me, to have the characters she’s created, her close knit ensemble of family, friends, and lovers, good people who’ve already faced the worst they can imagine, now endure the unimaginable. Danny, Colton and Daphne face horror after horror, and, in the process, question everything they believe, even who they are, as they struggle to survive and not become mirror reflections of the horror around them.
As Firestarter begins, I was caught off guard by my loathing for Zavier, the one-armed commander of the airship Prometheus, and Edmund, his smug second in command, who have kidnapped the trio. I envisioned a number of unpleasant ends for both of them, along with their misfit crew. But loathing is a relative, comparative emotion, and the book soon introduces others who make Zavier and Edmund look like tantrum-throwing brats in a pre-school romper room.
By the end, there is heartbreak but also redemption, despair but also transformation. Another reason I stopped reading every so often is because I didn’t want it to end. It’s an intense ride, but the characters – including Cassie, Christopher, Leila, Akash, Meena, and more – are good, essentially kind, people, and, while I wanted to their story to end well, I also wanted to spend more time with each of them. But stories do end. In the case of the Timekeeper series, though, I’ve purchased hard copies of the books that now rest proudly in my home library. Their story might have ended, but I can still keep these wonderful people close to me.
