Backward Glass
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
“Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him.”
When Kenny Maxwell moves into his family’s new yet falling apart Victorian home in 1977, he makes a shocking discovery in the carriage house. Buried inside the wall is a baby’s mummified body wrapped in old newspaper, along with a handwritten plea for help. Soon after his gruesome finding, a beautiful girl named Luka introduces Kenny to the backward glass, a mirror that allows him to travel in time. Through it, he meets other “mirror kids” from past and future decades. But the more Kenny learns about the mirror, the more he realizes that Prince Harming—a dangerous urban legend who kidnaps and kills children—is hunting him. Somehow he must use the backward glass to confront his destiny, save the baby, and stop Prince Harming before time runs out.
“Intricate, lusciously creepy paranormal mystery.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Debut novelist Lomax handles the plot's complexities with skill." —Publishers Weekly
"This debut novel will leave readers eager for more."—Booklist
"Get ready to slide down into the past with David Lomax's Backward Glass. It's cold on the way down, hot on the way up into the future, and it is always, always riveting, no matter which direction in time he takes his courageous and intelligent teenagers. I'd read this again and again. Actually, the future me has already done so, I can assure you."—Christopher Barzak, Author of One For Sorrow
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A dead baby and a decades-old list bearing Kenny Maxwell's name and birthday impel the 14-year-old on a quest through time that teaches him about sacrifice and justice. Luka, a girl living in 1987, visits Kenny in 1977 to explain how he can travel backward and forward in time via a mirror in his new home. The novel's quest theme involves standard elements of initiation (Kenny's initial ignorance about time travel) and purity of purpose (the travelers attempt to prevent the death of the infant), but the inclusion of a dialect-spouting Scotsman from the 17th-century and the inanely named Prince Harming provide a knockabout adult presence. Although the somewhat arbitrary rules of time travel (e.g., "From an even-numbered decade, you can go back on even-numbered days") complicate the narrative, debut novelist Lomax handles the plot's complexities with skill as the story builds toward a satisfying resolution that offers the hope of redemption and the promise that, while much of life is beyond one's control, it's still possible to influence one's destiny. Ages 12 up.
