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5.0 out of 5 stars
Calculating Trouble, December 4, 2009
This review is from: A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles, Book 2) (Perfect Paperback)
It's VERY good - a worthy successor, for those who liked vol I, but an altogether more ambitious production. This time, the time-frame is more distant - 1851; Hannah, Alex, and Brandon have a storyline each, and the terrain extends from the slave-run plantations of Savannah to the coal pits of the English Black Country and the dark Satanic mills of Dundee. The puzzling Professor is also more obtrusive this time round, arriving just in time with choc chip granola bars for Hannah (reduced to eating congealed gruel under a hedge) and some quick suggestions for Brandon (who has just disgraced himself during a fancy funeral at Kensal Green). As before, Laing revels in the different mind-patterns of the past, and produces some powerful effects from juxtaposing them with the (enlightened? softened?) present: one particularly telling moment shows Hannah, spoiled California Girl turned slavey of the Industrial Revolution, suddenly realizing that there's something she likes about the community to which she now belongs: "there's something neat here, too. I just don't know how to explain". In another memorable scene, gentle Alex, now working as accountant for a slave-owner, finds himself lured into the idea that well-treated slaves don't have such a bad life - and then catches himself out in horror. There's no sentimentalizing the harshness and helplessness of most people's lives; and Laing is uncompromising in making her characters face this. Nevertheless, the book is anything but preachy: it's fast-paced, often very funny, and always true to its child protagonists, revealing the past through their bewildered modern eyes.
A real original of a book, fervently recommended!
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5.0 out of 5 stars
An entertaining and exciting, yet informational, read, September 26, 2010
This review is from: A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles, Book 2) (Perfect Paperback)
Laing has done it again! She's managed to cram a whole lot of information into an entertaining story (with a bit of actual danger thrown in this time) and created a dizzying web of characters connected to each other, the characters in the previous book, and Hannah, Brandon, and Alex's present day lives. Some of these connections are pretty obvious (the Gordons that Hannah lives with are the grandparents of Mr. Gordon from the first book and a young girl in Balesworth who is the spitting image of Verity turns out to be her great-grandma), but that certainly didn't detract from their stories. And most of the connections I didn't see coming until the series of big reveals toward the end. I think that's the most amazing thing about these books for me: how some of the details all work out so seamlessly without being so obvious that I figured them out halfway through the book.
Hannah, Brandon, and Alex thought they had things bad in WWII England, but their experiences in the last book are nothing compared to what each of them goes through in 1851. Alone. In 1851, all three of them are considered adults, expected to earn a wage and take care of themselves. They each have to deal with this realization and figure out how to make their own ways and survive before they can even begin to think about how to find each other and get back home. The way that the book shifts between their stories was very clear and easy to follow. And for anyone (like me) for whom the year 1851 doesn't ring a bell, they are doing this all in the midst of preparations for Prince Albert's Great Exhibition and a growing disapproval across England and Scotland of the lingering institution of slavery in America.
Alex, still in Snipesville, comes face to face with slavery. As he travels to Savannah looking for work, he is accompanied by a slave, Jupe, who is about his age. No matter how he tries to treat Jupe as an equal, Jupe never opens up to him or fully trusts him. Alex does manage to keep Jupe with him by lying about who legally owns him, keeping Jupe from being arrested, punished, or sold because he ran away. The situation with Jupe is complicated by the fact that Alex genuinely likes his employer, even though Mr. Thornhill buys and sells slaves in the course of his land sale transactions. The question of how otherwise good people could participate in or even condone slavery is never answered here, which is probably as it should be.
Hannah and Brandon are free from the emotional and intellectual turmoil that Alex must endure in 1851. Instead they're both left in horrible working and conditions by their trip back in time. Brandon "comes to" already in the pitch black dark of a coal mine and eventually makes his way back to Balesworth. On the way he lives in a workhouse, becomes a professional mourner, and is, once again, a novelty to those around him. People assume that Brandon is a former slave, especially after he tells people that he was born in America. Many people, especially the upper class women, want to know Brandon's thoughts on the subject and want to hear all about his experiences. The fact that he has to fabricate these experiences based on what he learned in history classes doesn't seem to bother anyone.
Hannah has the most tumultuous time. She's forced to be a piecer in a mill, first cotton and then jute, and earns pennies a week. She's fired twice and almost starves to death in between. She has a lot to complain about, but what Hannah is the most worried about is her lack of shopping opportunities. Her attitude is, once again, off-putting for most of the book. At some point during her ordeal, it seems like Hannah may be learning something from the life she's living. She makes friends and finds herself in a family; she agitates for workers' rights (to hang out in the park) and gives an upper class woman who lives off mill profits the scare of her life by walking her through a tenement neighborhood. Still, as soon as she is rescued by the Professor and given a fancy dress and a bit of pocket money, all those hard-learned lessons fall right out of her head and she goes shopping.
Even with my disappointment in Hannah's character development, or lack thereof, I really enjoyed A Different Day, A Different Destiny. I also learned a lot about the working class in the British Empire during the Industrial Revolution and British involvement in the American Abolitionist Movement.
Book source: Review copy provided by the author.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Reading At The Beach: Reviews, August 12, 2010
This review is from: A Different Day, A Different Destiny (The Snipesville Chronicles, Book 2) (Perfect Paperback)
In the second book of "The Snipesville Chronicles", Alex, Hannah and Brandon time travel travel agian, but this time the year is 1851, but this time they go to different places.
Alex is still in Georgia, but since it's 1851, that means plantations and slaves. Brandon goes to a coal mine in England and Hannah lands in Scotland, at a cotton factory. All three learn what it was like to be working class in that era.
There are many surprises in this book and the story is so good that you won't want to put it down. As with the first book, "Don't Know Where Don't Know When", emotions overflow while reading about the times and places these kids visit.
I loved the first book, but this book affected me more and I can't wait for book 3.
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