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Time is running out-and so is Miss Stoneflange's patience... Peter has lived most of his life in the assurance of two comfortable convictions. One, that he is always the cleverest person in the room; and two, that when it comes to magic, he does not make mistakes. His ability to make-or keep!-friends has been less assured, and despite the fact that Peter enters the University of Mechanics as the youngest student in all of his classes, the disquieting conclusion that he might not always be the cleverest person in the room slowly begins to creep over him. When he tries to impress his classmate, Miss Stoneflange, with his latest time-altering device, things go disastrously wrong. Now, Peter has a new conviction: namely, that whenever Miss Stoneflange is involved, something will inevitably go wrong. Worse, it doesn't seem possible for him to stop making mistakes around her. Peter will need to decide who is the biggest threat to the timely continuation of the Two Monarchies: Miss Stoneflange and her ability to set things wrong, or himself and his own rash determination to be always right...… (more)
User reviews
Because Peter ends up messing around with time-travel, there are
I also felt invested in his journey even though he spends a lot of time being arrogant and oblivious to how his actions affect others, because I knew that there must be a significant change up ahead. And even before that realisation, even when Peter still feels justified, the narrative is not blind to his faults.
I found the way Peter’s dawning realisation is handled unexpectedly satisfying. His mistakes and their consequences are not dismissed, not trivialised, and apologising doesn’t magically make things right; he has to live with some of his mistakes. And maybe being a better person will take a lot of hard work, but he’s capable of that, he has the opportunity of that; he’s not just the sum of his mistakes. There’s something very hopeful about that.
Peter had once thought that he was a reasonably satisfactory person. He had been quite content in the conviction -- as he had been in the conviction that he did not make mistakes when it came to logic, magic or mechanics. The only mistakes he made, as he had thought, were those carefully calculated ones in his experiments.
Perhaps he was more akin to his project in their experimental stage than the finished product: a series of considered trials and errors that took him ever close to the finished project -- a series of considered trials and errors without which the final product could never exist.
I also really enjoyed seeing more of Poly and Luck (from Spindle), and getting to know Glenna.
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DDC/MDS
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