Storm at the Edge of Time, by Pamela F. Service, for Timeslip Tuesday

Storm at the Edge of Time, by Pamela F. Service (1994), is the first book by this late 20th/early 21st century author of children's fantasy/sci fi that I've read.   Her first book, Winter of Magic's Return, was published in 1985, when I was in college and not reading much for pleasure...And then the 1990s were a difficult time reading-wise for me--I would go to libraries and bookstores and not find anything that looked good.  It was so wonderful when the internet happened, and my tbr pile never looked back.  But in any event, this evening I finished reading Storm at the Edge of Time.

Three young teenagers, Arni (a Viking), Jamie (a contemporary American girl), and Tyaak (a half alien from the far future) are all on Orkney in their different times when they are pulled back to the ancient past by a magician desperately trying to save the universe from destruction.  The magician spent most of his own power 6000 years ago in the past, and the three staffs that were once joined in a single tree of protective power were scattered.  The three kids are descendants of the magician, and have inherited some of his power, and so they are pitted against the forces of darkness, desperately search for the staffs in their own time periods.  

They are not a natural team, they have no idea what they are doing, they are time travelling (1 person in their own time, the other 2 not), and powerful agents of darkness, who do know what they are doing magic-wise, are trying to get the staffs themselves.  Unfortunately, the book is too short to do justice of all of this, and the Three Time Travel adventures ended up feeling sort of skittery and surface level, with the occasional elements of good description and emotional depth making the reader (me) want the whole thing to be more...

The part that I actually enjoyed best was the bit where Jamie is introduced--dragged to Orkney by birdwatching parents, she's annoyed and isolated, and desperate to see a ghost so that she can have something that is special about her....This very introspective, character focused section is a sharp contrast to the adventures in time.  The two boys each get their own introductory bit too, but these are short and don't quite make their characters three dimensional, especially that of the half alien from the future, who is just an unpleasant grump for most of the book.  

All this being said, I didn't mind reading the book at all, though I do wish it had pushed a bit more past the adventures into the characters.  And I will certainly pick up Pamela Service's New Magic series and stand alone books if they come my way, though probably not her Alien Agent and Way-To-Real Aliens books....