Tempest (Tempest Trilogy, #1)

by Julie Cross

After his girlfriend Holly is fatally shot during a violent struggle, nineteen-year-old Jackson uses his supernatural abilities and travels back in time two years, where he falls in love with Holly all over again, learns that his father is a spy, and discovers powerful enemies of time who will stop at nothing to recruit him for their own purposes.

• ISBN10: 0312568894
• ISBN13: 9780312568894
• Publish Date: 17 January 2012 (first published 8 September 2011)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 10 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Griffin
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 339
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Tempest is what I wanted [b:Jumper|47970|Jumper (Jumper, #1)|Steven Gould|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1304981770s/47970.jpg|3050557] to be.

Jackson Meyer is a likable protagonist with extraordinary abilities. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, he learned he could time travel. At first, it was a couple hours, and he only submitted a projection of himself. Then, suddenly, it is two years and Jackson is living in the past. The problem is, his abilities have taught him some strange things about his family, and he isn't sure who he can trust. And for good reason - someone just shot his girlfriend.

Trusting a friend from the future and trying to thwart the CIA and other time travelers alike, Jackson is placed in a precarious position. He must make important decisions about his future, his family, his love life, and he must pick a side.

Tempest has a lot going on all at once and sometimes, it's difficult to keep track.

On one end, we have Holly. I believe the author really wanted Holly to be the center of everything. As far as I'm concerned, she's a pretty mediocre girl. I understand why Jackson likes her - they're very compatible. For the reader? She's a bit boring and flat. Jackson spends a lot of time trying to win her love and protect her, and that was SO TEDIOUS compared to time travel.

Then we have Courtney. Jackson's twin sister died of brain cancer when she was 14, and Jackson has many regrets. He misses her dearly. EVERY TIME Courtney shows up in this story, things get interesting. I believe she's much smarter and knows a lot more than this first book lets on. Even at the end, we don't get a lot of answers about Courtney and she is my primary reason for going to book two - I really liked this character and thought there could be a lot more story around her and Jackson and their abilities.

Then we have the whole CIA/EOT plotline. This is the high-action angle of the story, but it's written in such a way that it always feels like it's INTERRUPTING the love story, which is an issue for me? The book isn't marketed as strictly a KISSING BOOK so the plot and subplot shouldn't be all switched? That said, the CIA plot felt weak and I didn't like it anyway. Mostly people appeared and try to shoot other people, then everyone threw their hands in the air and asked questions or laughed evilly. Then. Jackson jumps, because we're done with that! YUP.

Overall, I couldn't put it down.

For whatever this story lacks in cohesion and focus, it makes up for in curiosity. The time jumps happened just as soon as things were starting to get interesting, so you'd have to read more, faster, so you could find out what happened. Characters have a habit of disappearing as well. There was several pages where Jackson & Co. were getting shot at on a boat? And the whole time, all I could think was, "OKAY. BUT WHERE IS ADAM. IS HE DEAD. TELL ME THINGS!!!?!" ... (You do eventually find out about Adam.)

This book will swallow you up. Some of the scenes are really beautifully written. I'm glad I read it.

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[rakesandrogues]

Talk about book hype. TEMPEST was already stirring up a lot of buzz way back in September 2011 when I first heard about this book. The film rights had been sold to Summit Entertainment a long time ago. It seems like the publisher is pushing this book quite hard, so when I was given the chance to review it through NetGalley, I jumped at the chance. After all, I do love time travel.

I honestly would have loved to see TEMPEST revolving more around the family dynamics rather than revolving around Holly. I loved Jackson as a protagonist, but to be honest, I just found his chemistry with Holly really lacking. We do see the evolution of their relationship but I just didn’t feel the spark between them. On the other hand, the moment that Jackson mentioned that he had a twin sister, I felt the love between the two siblings immediately. I think a novel revolving around Jackson and Courtney would have been more effective because of the stronger ties between them. Holly, I was not a fan of, but I liked Courtney immensely.

Backtracking, I do like Jackson as a protagonist. There is a need for more male protagonists in the genre (and in my TBR pile…) so reading from a male perspective was refreshing. I like the fact that Jackson was 19 and in college. The majority of the novel does take place 2 years in the past so really the college scenes are minimal.

I started out enjoying TEMPEST immensely. I am a big fan of time travel and I get excited whenever I hear about a new time travel book in YA. I was hooked into the novel straight from the beginning. At first, it was fun trying to figure out what was going on. After Holly is fatally shot, Jackson finds himself traveling back in time to 2007 instead of sticking around to find out what happens to Holly. 2007 is two years in the past and Holly and Jackson have not yet met. Jackson tries to adapt to his life back in 2007 and tries to figure out how to get back to the future. It was nearing towards the end of Jackson’s 2007 experience when everything went downhill for me.

I like logic. One of the cool things about science fiction is that some authors have the ability to come up with such fantastic theories as to how some things such as time travel can work. I think that for a science fiction novel to truly work, it has to have some scientific accuracy or even realism. The theories have to make at least a little sense in the reader’s mind.

I think some time travel stories can just skirt around explanations without having to dive through complex physics. And it can still work. (I’m thinking Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series here.) But if you’re going to attempt to nitpick at the science behind time travel, you have to have a concrete theory. You can’t just spew mumbo jumbo that contradicts itself a million times. One of my biggest problems with TEMPEST was that the theories behind time travel were just everywhere. I know that Jackson himself tells Holly (and I guess the readers) to abandon everything that you know about time travel. Easier said than done.

Cross mixes in parallel universes on top of time travel and it just creates a huge mess. There is no linear timeline of events. There are so many parallel stories that by the end of the book, the first half of the novel essentially did not exist. It didn’t happen. At one point, I literally just stopped trying to make sense of the mess because it was just impossible. If I were to use TEMPEST as a textbook for time travel, I’d end up more confused than I was if I hadn’t tried to learn the theory.

Bottom line, I did not love this book though I wish I had. The novel just became too convoluted to make sense logically. For me, it was over-hyped and just did not live up to my expectations.

Why I’m Biased: I had very high expectations for this book and it just didn’t live up to it. I guess I also put certain expectations toward time travel novels.