Dark Shade

Rating:
Summary: DARK SHADE
Review: Dark Shade is about a girl named Maggie Gilmour and how she fells into a hole that goes back in time when there was Indian tribes.It was summer when this all happen.Maggie was 16, in school she takes American literature program that will prepare her to study veterinary medicine, like her dad. In class with her is Kip, a childhood companion,who is now a silent presence, ever since a fire that left him scarred physically and emotionally. She follows Kip into the forest near their western Pennsylvania home.Kip fell into a hole Maggie thought Kip lost her. Maggie falls into the same hole Kip falls in and she notices that every thing is differant from the place she was before she fell into the hole.It is a dark forest and there is lots of trees. Maggie founds out she has falling into time. She sees indians tribes and Kip. he does not want to leave the tribe, but Maggie does want to leave and go back home.Maggie finds she must save a Scots soldier of the War and find a way to free her friend Kip from the Lenape Indians, so they cound go home. At first Kip wants to stay, but every thing started getting rough, like war between the Indians and the French. They get away and they never forget that day they fall in time.

Rating:
Summary: Tentative time travel story
Review: The combination of its story about time travel to the French and Indian War and the Indian adoption of a white teen is what led me to read "Dark Shade." Overall, I was a little disappointed in the book, mainly because I didn't like how tentative the main character, Maggie, was about her time travelling adventures. I think it would have been a more intriguing story if Maggie had been allowed to more fully explore the 18th century world she stumbled in upon. Instead she only makes hestitant steps into it. Maggie's tentative reaction is probably a realistic one, but, since time travel stories are pure fantasy anyway, her reaction is not a particularly interesting one. Also I thought the sudden appearance of romantic feelings between two characters, who barely interact with each other throughout the book, came across as tacked on and contrived.

However, "Dark Shade" does have one great strength- the author's wonderfully detailed description of the primeval forest that once stretched across Pennsylvannia. Thanks to Ms. Curry's description, the reader can almost see, smell, and feel that dark, ancient, and never-ending forest. Also the author reminds the reader that people in the 18th century weren't so big on bathing so that their aroma must have been rather pungent.