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"Terrific exhilarating futuristic thriller"

In the Kingdom of Versailles in the year 715 of the New Revolution winter keeps its grip on everyone while aristocrat, freeman, serf, and slave expect the Berber Kingdom of Berry to attack soon. Most residents ignore the threat as hard agricultural labor consumes all available time if one wants to eat. Teenage Khadija is an exception to the farming equation as she is the daughter of apparently wealthy Moorish business moguls. Actually that is their front; Khadija is Crosstime Traffic Californian Annette Klein who with her family comes from the future. Currently they head to the Marseilles portal so Annette can return to school.

Bandits attack her train and abduct her heading to a slave market to sell her and other prisoners. Annette still has high hopes her family will find her even after she is sold until her owners reach the unexpected destination. Slavery may have been outlawed for over two and a half centuries (since the American Civil War), but this is a non- sanctioned CT transposition chamber; meaning she can be anywhere in time as well as the planet while her anxious family struggle to find and rescue her.

Leaving the alternate past to a different portal, Harry Turtledove provides a terrific exhilarating futuristic thriller starring a wonderful young protagonist and a deep support cast. The storyline is fast-paced once the players are introduced and the abduction occurs. Annette is a fabulous individual who keeps the plot focused as she, her parents, and the audience wonders if she will ever reunite with her family. The third CT science Fiction (see CURIOUS NOTIONS and GUNPOWDER EMPIRE) is a wonderful entry in a fine series as once again a courageous female takes charge of the story.

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted December 15, 2005

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted January 25, 2007

In the 21st-century Kingdom of Versailles, the roads are terrible and Paris is a dirty little town. Serfdom and slavery are both common, and no one thinks that's wrong. Why should they? Most people spend their lives doing backbreaking farm work anyway.

But teenaged Khadija, daughter of a prosperous family of Moorish business travellers, is unfazed. That's because Khadija is really Annette Klein from 21st-century California, and her whole family are secret agents of Crosstime Traffic, trading for commodities to send back to our own timeline. Now it's time for Annette and her family to go home for the start of another school year, so they join a pack train bound for their home base in Marseilles, where the crosstime portal is hidden.

Then bandits attack while they're crossing the Pyrenees. Annette/Khadija is separated from her parents and knocked out, and wakes up to find herself a captive in a caravan of slaves being taken to the markets in the south. She's in a tight spot.

Then the really scary thing happens: her purchasers take her, along with other newly purchased slaves, to an unofficial crosstime portal…leaving open the question of whether Crosstime Traffic will ever be able to recover her!