How dark were the Dark Ages? Joss is about to find out...
‘The Vikings are better armed than we are. They have long, heavy axes that can take a man’s head from his shoulder. I know this because I see it happen.’
When his mum burns down their house on the Whitehorse estate, sixteen-year-old Joss is sent to live in a sleepy Suffolk village.
The place is steeped in history, as Joss learns when a bike accident pitches him back more than 1,000 years to an Anglo-Saxon village. That history also tells him his new friends are in mortal peril from bloodthirsty invaders. Can he warn their ruler, King Edmund, in time?
And will he ever get
home?
When his mom burns down their house, 16-yr-old Joss is sent to Hoxne to live with foster parents Tim and Cressida while his toddler twin sisters are fostered in their home city of Ipswich. He knows his mom, Tracey, screws up a lot. But he belongs with his family, watching over them. Hoxne is a village with a long history and it’s in the middle of nowhere. Joss tries to make the best of a crappy situation and while Tim and Cressida are nice people, he finds himself in trouble on his first day of school. But that all fades into background noise when a bike accident throws him back 1,000 years to a time of King Edmund and a Viking invasion. Is this for real?
This isn’t just a tale of how one teenager travels back in time and handles being in the Dark Ages with a Viking attack imminent. It also deals with how a teenager handles being in foster care and being totally different than his peers. To say Joss carries a lot of anger around would be putting it mildly. The author does a terrific job of putting the reader in Joss’s shoes. I ended up so angry and helpless I just wanted to smash things. So excellent job there! No, I did not beat or smash things, so don’t worry.
The time travel is so interesting. Is it real? Or isn’t it? How the hell did it happen? Why did it happen? All excellent questions. Joss is 16. He’s still got a lot of learning and growing to do and his situation isn’t the greatest. It’s no wonder he wants to escape back to a time when things seemed simpler. But were they really? Each time period has its likes, dislikes, problems, and enjoyments. It’s what Joss takes from each that really matters.
I think the two different time periods are done well. I just had a problem with the style of writing. It seems kind of choppy. At times well-defined and others kinda of skipping through the paragraphs. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly. But that’s totally on me, a personal preference and doesn’t reflect on the author. If you’re looking for a young adult time travel steeped in history then look no further.
K.A. HAYTON was born in Lincolnshire and read English at Sheffield University. She lives in Suffolk with her husband and has two daughters. The idea for The Other Side of the Whale Road came from her study of old English poetry at university, and from living in a place where Anglo-Saxon history feels very close.
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