A Tale of Time City

I bought this on June 30 and read it seven times in the following ten days! Now I feel I've finally got it all figured out. Contrary to all DWJ's magic-based books, she doesn't simply rely on "magic happens" to push the plot along. Here, although there is still a lot of unexplained mysticism after the resolution, there is a lot of careful world-building and especially science-type concepts, like the time locks, the belt functions, automats, and things like that. It's much better to read. (I still don't quite understand what the "temporons" and "chronons" are all about, though.)I do have to wonder why DWJ chose WWII for Vivian's home setting. At the time she wrote this, 1987, her target readership was already far removed from WWII, and especially to us Americans, things like evacuations and barrage balloons (and even Shirley Temple and Mr. Chamberlain) would have meant very little to the average YA reader. When Vivian tells the assembled dinner party that war was declared at Christmas of 1938, everyone is aghast, but I had no idea why this was such a big deal until I went and looked it up on Wikipedia. And I'm in my 50s!I'm also quite surprised that Wilander and Enkian, two men who are tutors and have therefore the job of educating children, will occasionally refer to our heroes as "stupid child" or "stupid children." I know this book was written in a different era, ABOUT a different era, but I find it hard to believe a teacher would be permitted to repeatedly address his students as "stupid children." I feel like DWJ could have made a much less offensive word choice there.

I liked the three main characters , none of them super- human . That is refreshing nowadays . They all had flaws , they were ordinary human beings and a sense of humor that appealed to me . The story had twists , not so many that you lose sight of the plot , but enough to keep you guessing till the end of the book . It begins in war time in England and a young girl has to evacuate from the city to the country side , like so many had . From there , everything gets mixed up , she gets rescued and ends up in Time City with two boys from there . The boys are trying to save the city , against the advice of the grown -ups . Of course they get into all kinds of adventures and scrapes . All in all , it was a delightful book and I read it all in two days instead of spreading it over a week to make it last longer and thus give me even more pleasure . There were time-paradoxes , not my favorite ploy , for I am not good with that I tend to get lost in those . But not too bad , as I said before , I managed to keep track . I'll read it again .

nice to have a hard copy. :)noticed that this was a Middle school library book, first editon (1987) and it's never been checked out. I think I'm the first to read this copy. how sad.

i read this novel to my ten-year-old, and it was a huge leap, intellectually, for her to understand the time travel aspects, especially the bits about changing history when you visit it. the characters - especially the heroine - really drew her in, however, and she loved it so much, we could hardly put it down. diana wynne jones never disappoints, and while this is not our favorite of her novels, it's in the top three. anchoring the story in children being evacuated from london during world war two - quoting, in effect, c.s. lewis' "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" - is a stroke of genius, both because it creates a historical framework (so much time travel takes place from the present day, which makes it harder to conceptualize 'time'), and because the familiarity of a known beginning can be so comforting. all the better when the novel hares off in a completely different direction!

A Tale of Time City by Diana Wynne Jones is an exciting book about time travelling and the impacts one action or choice can have on others (or in this case the whole of history!)I liked this book because it had interesting characters and the plot line was quite good. The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars was that some of the events happened so fast you had to go back and re-read a few pagesOverall, A Tale of Time City is an amazing book well worth your time!

I love DWJ, and have since I was a child. It's only now that I'm getting into her more obscure works. (And by obscure, I mean the ones you normally don't find in most chain bookstores.) This one was good (I'm a sucker for time travel), but the ending was rushed.

A wonderful story about time, and how it changes. I won't give away the plot line but it is a worthy story.

She handles time travel very authentically. Creates good tension in the plot.

I was sure I'd read this 20+ years ago and I was sure it was one of my favourite books when I was 11 or 12. However when I started reading it, none of it seemed at all familiar. Rather like Polly in Fire and Hemlock, I felt the story had changed from the one I remembered, though I couldn't actually recall any of the plot except for there being some kind of delicious food. So I got the pleasure of rediscovering it, reading it afresh, and then remembering the incredible descriptions of butter-pies. I wish someone would invent a recipe for a butter-pie; I want one almost as much as Sam does in the book. The story is slightly atypical DWJ in that we're not in a magic world, we're in a time-shifted world; but the beautiful descriptions of people and places are there, and I particularly like the descriptions of happy times in the build up to the earth-shattering finale.

I agree with some other reviewers here that the characters in this story are under-developed. Vivien is quite likeable and fairly well-delineated, but she reacts in a way that is much less emotional than you'd expect from a child who is suddenly dragged from a rural railway station in a village where she is being evacuated in 1939 to a crumbling city outside time, by two irritating boys, for no really convincing reason that I could see. Jonathon and Sam are both slightly tedious, I thought, though I felt Sam came alive more than Jonathon.I loved Elio and I thought Sempiturn Walker was a good creation though I got very bored with the long descriptions of his running about in a panic before every ceremony. Though Vivian finds this hysterically funny, it just didn't seem very funny to me - not after the first time, anyway. But this might be because I'm not a child myself.As with all Wynne Jones's books, this is highly imaginative and original, and I thought the guardians were fabulous inventions - I also liked the way the villains turned out to be who they were as I wasn't expecting it. I like the way Jones is unafraid to present some children as hideous and cruel rather than as all brave and good, and I like the way she doesn't always dismiss adults, like some children's books do, but presents children and adults as equally likely to be good, bad and complex. I thought, as with some of her other books, that the story was padded out slightly around 80% of the way in, in order to make it longer, but the final climactic stretch was pretty well-paced, I thought.The plot is convoluted and unusual, and there is the trademark sly humour, but this novel didn't involve me as much as some of her others have, and didn't create quite the atmosphere I've come to expect from Wynne Jones. But nevertheless, if you're a fan, you'll enjoy it.

Diana Wynne Jones returns to her favourite themes of time travel and alternate histories in this book. I don't know of any other childrens' author who is so adept at communicating very complicated ideas about time and the effects of time travel and as always, I'm in awe of her world-building skills. Time City has a terminology and set up all of its own and whilst some of the terminology is a little complicated (given that this book is aimed at 8 year olds upwards), it's amazingly easy to get used to - mainly because of the sheer confidence and skill that Jones has with her writing.And yet for all this, I just didn't find myself loving the book as much as I have her other works. There are two reasons for this:1. At no point do I emphasise with Vivian or her plight. For someone who has been wrenched from her time, away from her parents and everything she knows, she's remarkably un-upset. Also, the reasons for Jonathan and Sam effectively kidnapping her are a little contrived and don't really make sense once you get to the end of the book and look back on it; and2. You have no sense of who the bad guys are in this book until right at the end. Put it simply, it's too late. By the time their identity is revealed, the plot's too far gone for you to care about their motivation (which comes in an expositional paragraph) and this really robs the plot of a lot of the mystery that it needs.Characterisations are also pretty bland and by-the-numbers. Just as I don't feel any empathy for Vivian, nor do I feel anything for Sam or Jonathan either - in fact, the two boys rapidly became an irritation as Jones makes them both manage to be smug. Elio and the Sempiturn do begin to make up for this (although both need more development) and in fact, the only character who worked for me was Dr Wilander (who reminded me of the gruff characters in Jones' other books).There are some wonderful ideas in this book - the Time Ghosts were particularly intriguing and the idea of the Guardians had a lot of potential. I really think though that the book needed to stew a little more before being released because ultimately, it's not very fulfilling.

A great plot, more depth and interest for confident readers, well-drawn characters, have read this tale over and over. I'd say best for pre-teens who are happy with the complexity of something like Harry Potter but don't want scary or distressing story lines.

Read it as a teen and re read it as an adult with just as much enjoyment. Another great book from a brilliant author.