Peter was born in Pomerania (on the Baltic coast, an area now split between Poland and Germany) just a few years into the thirty years war. Now a teenager, apprenticed to a master amber worker, war is all he's ever known. The armies of both sides have left a land full of refugees and memories of the dead, including Peter's older brother. Peter feels he can't compete with the shadow of his dashing brother, and his home, where his merchant father is on the verge of bankruptcy and his younger sister, Effie, is not like other girls--she is nonverbal, and non-neurotypical. And, soon after the book begins, she is raped and retreats even further away from other people. Peter is distressed but feels powerless to fix anything, and so he visits home infrequently. In his master's house, he has a place dreaming of being a journeyman, and working to make beautiful things of amber...the amber that washes ashore on the beaches that the powerful Guildmaster's have closed so that no-one can gather amber for themselves.
But one day, Peter, discouraged by life, wanders out onto the beach and finds two pieces of amber that call to him. And in defiance of the laws, he claims them, and starts, in the dark of night, to work them. One becomes a heart for Effie to wear (the amber is known to have healing properties). In the other, he sees a crane, and starts to set it free.
Magically, mysteriously, the amber sends Peter forward in time, where he meets a girl, a bit older than him, caught in her own war, WW II. Lioba is desperately travelling west ahead of the advancing Russian army, trying to make it back to her parent's home. His visits don't last long, but they are frequent enough so that he becomes invested in her journey, and all the while he is working on the amber crane....
Lioba's story is, for the first two thirds of the book, much more interesting that Peter's, but when Effie is accosted at a rare outing by the man who raped her, Peter takes action and attacks her assailant. The amber heart Effie wears is revealed and makes her the object of suspicion. She's accused of being a witch, and Peter is held for assault, and it is just as interesting as Lioba's increasingly hopeless quest to escape to a place where she can follow her own dreams.
Time travel-wise, this is great. Peter's reactions to the future ring true, and despite the circumstances, make for diverting reading, and the amber crane is a satisfactory bridge between the two time periods. Character-wise it is harder to call great, because Peter is not a very charismatic lead; he's not a Doer, and he's rather self-absorbed, so it's hard at first to care much about him. He gets a romance, but it didn't feel quite earned. Lioba, seen only in brief vignettes, is appealing, but her story remains secondary.
Where the book felt weak to me was with regards to the historical setting. If you go into this book knowing very little about the Thirty Years War, you will leave it not knowing much more. Yes, it's in character for Peter not to be thinking much about the bigger picture, but I wanted more about the context for what was happening in his world. The root cause of it was a religious struggle--Catholic vs Protestant, but religion barely registers in Peter's pov. It made him feel kind of dead to the world. I also wanted more geography; I knew it was on the Baltic Coast, but it still felt unrooted in place. There is a glossary at the end that includes some background, I wish it had been integrated into the story.
By the halfway point, I was absorbed in the story, and closed it with a sense of having read a good book, and as someone who loves reading about the making of things, I very much appreciated the amber-working, but it still fell just a bit short of what I'd hoped it would be.
How unfortunate this didn't reach its potential. Still, it sounds like a pretty good historical time travel. Thanks for the heads up.
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