ARC Tour Review: Tempest by Julie Cross

Title:  Tempest
Author:  Julie Cross
Series:  Tempest
Publisher:  St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date:  January 17, 2012
Source:  Wendy Darling at The Midnight Garden
Links:  Amazon | Goodreads
Rating:

From Goodreads:

The year is 2009. Nineteen-year-old Jackson Meyer is a normal guy… he’s in college, has a girlfriend… and he can travel back through time. But it’s not like the movies – nothing changes in the present after his jumps, there’s no space-time continuum issues or broken flux capacitors – it’s just harmless fun.

That is… until the day strangers burst in on Jackson and his girlfriend, Holly, and during a struggle with Jackson, Holly is fatally shot. In his panic, Jackson jumps back two years to 2007, but this is not like his previous time jumps. Now he’s stuck in 2007 and can’t get back to the future.

Desperate to somehow return to 2009 to save Holly but unable to return to his rightful year, Jackson settles into 2007 and learns what he can about his abilities.

But it’s not long before the people who shot Holly in 2009 come looking for Jackson in the past, and these “Enemies of Time” will stop at nothing to recruit this powerful young time-traveler. Recruit… or kill him.

Piecing together the clues about his father, the Enemies of Time, and himself, Jackson must decide how far he’s willing to go to save Holly… and possibly the entire world.

Review:

Maybe my expectations for this book were too high, or maybe it was just too hyped to begin with, but I just couldn’t connect to the characters or the story the way I would have liked. I love the whole aspect of time travel, but rather than be mysterious and science-fictiony (yup, another review where I make up my own words) like I had anticipated, it felt more like a rip-off of that movie Jumper. And not in a good way.

The premise is intriguing, though not all that original. However, the time travel itself is rather different, though that doesn’t mean it’s easy to understand…at all. Some things are explained well enough, like how Jackson got stuck in 2007 in the first place, but I found the logic questionable when it came to traveling along the same timeline or departing from one’s own timeline altogether. The general rules for time travel definitely needed some clarification, but maybe the reader is supposed to learn about them as Jackson does. Though he clearly had no idea what he was getting into when he started his little time travel experiments with his friend Adam and landed himself in all of this hot water in the first place.

I found the characters lacking and generally cliché. As formulaic as the plot was, the characters should have been exceptional and well-rounded, but they just fell flat. Jackson is supposed to be your typical hot, rich guy with commitment issues. And he totally fits the bill. But through this ordeal, he should show some growth, and though there are times when his character shows promise, he never truly lives up to his potential. His sacrifice is just as much selfish as it is noble.

Holly is your average girl-next-door who somehow manages to land the super-hot, rich guy, though he’s clearly not her type. Adam, who was friends with Holly before he ever met Jackson, is suddenly best buds with him, but that’s predictably because he’s the nerdy, science type, and he’s helping Jackson figure out this whole time-travel thing. And, of course, neither of them thinks to tell Holly what’s going on until it’s too late and the evil “Enemies of Time” are hot on Jackson’s trail.

I think that too much focus on time travel itself detracted from the actual storyline, and the fact that so much time travel occurs in a relatively short span of time left me reeling. I understand that the role of the first book in a trilogy is to grab the reader’s attention and guarantee that they’ll want to read the rest of the series, but I found much of this novel to be an information dump rather than an actual story. Considerably less time could have been spent on Jackson being chased through time and instead spent on aspects that are clearly going to be important in Jackson’s future (or past or present or wherever he ends up), such as his dead sister and the little girl who travels from the future (or a future timeline?) who just happens to look very much like his dead sister. Also, the romance was sweet, but most of it was just fluff, only serving as a detour from Jackson’s true purpose or calling or whatever you want to call it.

Despite my feelings toward this novel, it’s received quite a bit of buzz. The film rights have already been snapped up by Summit Entertainment, even before the novel has been officially published and released into the wild. And as I mentioned before, this is only the first novel in a planned trilogy, and a massive marketing campaign is in the works. I wish I could say I think it deserves all of the attention it’s garnering, but regardless of my thoughts on this first installment and how it’s being handled, I’m definitely intrigued enough by what I suspect is to come that I’ll pick up future installments.

Much appreciation goes out to Wendy Darling for offering up her ARC for this tour.