Into the Dim (Into the Dim #1)

Into the Dim by Janet B.  Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Into the Dim is a mix of adventure, suspense, and history, with a dash of romance thrown in. I enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it.
Hope Walton, a sheltered teenager with a remarkable memory, travels to Scotland for the summer after her mother's funeral. There she learns that her mother was a time traveler who got lost in medieval England. Hope, along with some new friends, undertake the journey to find her mother and keep the balance of time safe from a group of people who would use time travel for their own benefit. Hope's adventures as she seeks to rescue her mother and stay away from dangerous enemies--from her own time and from the past--form an intriguing basis as Hope learns about herself, her own past, and how to overcome her fears.
The book started off well, introducing Hope and detailing her trip to Scotland. Once Hope discovered the truth about her mother, began to "train" to travel back in time, and eventually made the journey to medieval England, however, I had a hard time relating to the book. I felt as though Hope processed the news about her mother and time travel much too easily. What should have been shock, especially of walking through a London that only existed centuries earlier seemed to be glossed over and barely touched upon. This part of the book could have used a little more fleshing out. The fact that Phoebe travels back in time with nothing to disguise her bright blue hair but a wig really took me, as a history student, out of the action--if that wig had slipped off at the wrong time, she would have been burned at the stake. Hope did not seem to really grasp the magnitude of the fact that she had physically jumped hundreds of years in the past until she realized she could not use toilet paper. This part of the book just did not ring true to me, and I considered not finishing it.
Then Hope and her friends met Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the action picked up quite a bit. From this point on I was very eager to see how our heroes would escape from danger, what secrets they would uncover, and if they could complete their mission in the past. I was even surprised by the few twists and turns of the plot, even though several times I kept wishing characters would stop beginning a sentence and then not finishing it, or telling another character to quit talking because they didn't feel the information was important at the time. I wasn't sure what secrets needed to be revealed, but I knew that something important needed to be shared.
All in all, I enjoyed the book, and would definitely read more adventures from Hope and her fellow time-travellers.


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