Time Gliders: Marooned

The first time-travel mission takes off from 2550 C.E. to explore the history of the universe, but someone has tampered with the TG-1, leaving its crew lost in time and requiring them to jump forward in 300-million-year increments to get home. As they witness the collision that resulted in the creation of Earth’s moon and have some close calls with dinosaurs during the Cretaceous, the crew—Professor Patel, engineer Liz Ross, pilot Deon Dexter, and quasi-sentient robot Quasar—must make sure not to interfere with history while avoiding a second time-traveling ship that seeks to destroy them. The story’s educational aims mean that the action generally plays second fiddle to Professor Patel’s scientific commentary; most of the dialogue zigzags between SF jargon and dense explanations (“Since Earth was formed, its mass of 5,972 x 1024 kg hasn’t changed. But if that mass had been contained by a much larger Earth, gravity would have been lower”). The digital artwork gives the book the love of a richly rendered video game but tends to flatten the characters’ emotions. A glossary defines terms used throughout. Ages 10–up. (BookLife)