Lost Cities: A Drift House Voyage

Children's Literature - Anita Barnes Lowen

Siblings Susan and Charles Oakenfield are about to set sail in their Uncle Farley's Drift House when a time-tidal wave washes ashore. Suddenly Charles finds himself in a place in the distant past with the Qaanaaq, a Native American tribe. Susan is left with Uncle Farley aboard the Drift House but soon finds herself in the first Viking settlement of Newfoundland. Can Charles and Susan cross the sea of time to find one another? What is the purpose of the strange books that Charles has in his keeping? And why is finding the Amulet of Babel so important? Mysteriously materializing throughout time and place is Murray, the children's youngest brother. Has Murray become an accursed returner trapped forever in time, or is he at home with the chicken pox? Readers may have a better idea of just what is going on if they have read the first book of the "Drift House" series. This second title is overly long, at times tedious, frequently confusing and, to quote Charles, often "affected." "Bah!" says the mad priest of Osterbygd when he sees Susan. "Black magic swirls around her from the tips of her shorn raven tresses to her shadowed ankles, which are as delicate as a reindeer's." With so many fantasies on the market, there may well be a more magical choice than this one.

VOYA - Mary Ann Darby

In this second of the Drift House series, Susan and Charles return to visit their Uncle Farley's time-craft mansion while Murray stays home with the chicken pox. A mysterious, powerful book is delivered to the children by someone looking suspiciously like Mario/Murray. When Charles sneaks off to read it, a time-storm tidal wave sweeps him to Newfoundland, while Susan and Uncle Farley are transported to medieval Greenland. Charles struggles to understand the mysterious book with him, but he is captured by Wendat Native Americans. With them he meets the Wanderer, who explains the mystery of the book, Mario/Murray's role of Returner, and Charles's task to help stop the time jetty. Meanwhile Susan meets a young man named Iocab who will also be instrumental in ending the time jetty as it shoots forward through time, smashing boundaries and swallowing civilizations unnaturally. The jetty is halted with help from Charles, Iacob, and Murray. Fans of the first book will be mesmerized by this second volume, which seems to flow better and have more substance than its predecessor. This series is clearly geared toward history-minded and philosophical young adults. Although the protagonists are young, their visits to places of historical significance, including the Tower of Babel and pre-Columbus America, make for challenging and thought-provoking reading. It is a series to place alongside His Dark Materials. Peck wants his young audience to think about the big picture of who we are and why we make war on one another.

Kirkus Reviews

Washed back nearly five-and-a-half centuries by a sudden tsunami in the usually placid Ocean of Time, preteen siblings Susan and Charles, first introduced in Drift House (2005), tackle a space/time storm (confusingly mislabeled a "time jetty") that is leaving a trail of destruction stretching from the Twin Towers through Pompeii and Atlantis to ancient Babylon. Once again lacing his tale with inscrutable elements-including at least one (possibly more) strong-willed magical volume(s) and at least one (ditto) other-than-human time "Returner" who single-handedly fills out the cast with multiple appearances in various guises-Peck plunges the separated Susan and Charles into contrived encounters with Pre-Columbian residents of Greenland and North America, and then on to twin cataclysmic climaxes over modern Manhattan (for Susan) and beneath the Tower of Babel (for Charles), before a final happy reunion aboard their ship-like Quebec mansion. Floating thinly atop its opaque, anthropocentric metaphor ("The jetty is a manifestation of the eternal human desire to cheat time, to get to the end without going through the middle," explains the Returner, with typical clarity), the sequel is as likely as its predecessor to leave readers at sea. (Fantasy. 11-13)