Edge of Time by Thalia Kalkipsakis

Edge of Time by Thalia Kalkipsakis is the third and final book in the Lifespan of Starlight trilogy. It brings a long-awaited conclusion to the story that I started reading two years ago, with Lifespan of Starlight and the second book Split Infinity. After the cliffhanger at the end of the second book, two years was a long time to wait for the third book. Now that they're all out, I highly recommend reading them all in a row. Because it's an excellent series.

On the run from the government, Scout's decades-long disappearance is about to catch up with her …

When Scout returns from her longest time-jump yet, she finds that nothing has gone to plan. Her friends have been captured by the authoritarian regime, Mason is nowhere to be found, and something strange is happening each time she skips.

Then, deep in the city, a citizen is discovered whose chip exactly matches the first ever time-skipper. Who is she? How did she learn to time-skip? And could she hold the key to travelling backwards in time?

Uncovering the truth could offer Scout a chance to shape a new future – if she can let go of her past.

It took me a little while to orient myself at the start of this book after the gap in time (lol) since I read the previous book. The opening of Edge of Time is not overly burdened with reminders of the earlier books, but there were enough that I was able to get my bearings. I think I would have been sucked into the story more quickly if I had not had to wait so long before reading it. On the other hand, that's pretty much my biggest criticism of this book.

After Scout jumps into an unfamiliar future, the world is not magically a better place, alas. Instead, the dystopian future she started out in only keeps getting worse. (Poor future-Melbourne.) Also, all the plans laid by her and her friends go awry one way or another, leaving Scout dissatisfied with the world she's living in, when she has time to not be terrified of whatever the latest disaster is.

One aspect I found really interesting about the narrative structure is that there were several possibilities presented for how the book could end, but none which would simultaneously satisfy Scout and make a good ending for the series, right up until the actual ending started happening. Which was delightful. After a bit of uncertainty on my part that the ending would do the series justice, I was really pleased with how Kalkipsakis brought the book to a close.

I really enjoyed this series and I highly recommend it to fans of any combination of YA, dystopias and time travel. (Also, the covers are really pretty.) I recommend starting with the first book, Lifespan of Starlight, however, since this series is very much one continuous story (with cliffhangers) and not at all standalone chunks. It's three acts of the same story that don't work without the proceeding parts. I will be keeping an eye on any (YA) SF that Kalkipsakis writes in the future.

5 / 5 stars

First published: June 2018, Hardie Grant Egmont
Series: Lifespand of Starlight book 3 of 3
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Kobo

Interview with Thalia Kalkipsakis (Snapshot 2016)

This interview is one I conducted as part of the 2016 Australian Speculative Fiction Snapshot. You can read and introduction to the project here and follow the rest of the reviews that will be posted over the first two weeks of August at the Aus SF Snapshot blog.

Thalia Kalkipsakis is the author of twenty books for children and young adults. In May 2016 she released the second instalment of the Lifespan of Starlight trilogy, which follows a group of teenagers who discover the secret to time travel. She lives in north-east Victoria with her husband, their two children and two black cats.

The Lifespan of Starlight series is the first novel-length science fiction that you've written. After writing children's books and contemporary YA, what was it like switching into science fiction mode?

It felt hugely freeing and slightly terrifying – like driving on my own for the first time, with the full awareness that I might crash. The first story I ever pitched, eons ago, had hyper-natural elements (in that, I’d started with the natural world and extrapolated into supernatural from there). It was rejected, but that led to the opportunity to write contemporary children’s books. So, right from the start I was working outside my chosen genre. In hindsight it was the best thing that could happen to me because I was forced to develop character and pacing to get the story working, rather than pull out any writerly ‘sonic screwdrivers’ so to speak.

Some of the contemporary stories I pitched during that stage were rejected as being too plot driven – so the urge never left me – but I’m definitely better at drawing characters now than if I hadn’t had the time writing contemporary fiction. Even while writing Lifespan of Starlight the plot twists and action scenes almost felt too much fun, like I was cheating in some way. Although, of course, what’s the point of twists and turns if you don’t care about the characters living through them.


Having written books for a few different age ranges, do you have a favourite? Are there any age groups you haven't tried that you would like to have a go at?

Coming-of-age stories are endlessly fascinating for me – that moment when a young person is given the freedom to make their own way, to determine who they are, or perhaps who they would like to become. That said, however, I don’t see YA as a genre simply for teenagers. Adults who read YA are making a conscious decision to do so, whereas the same distinction doesn’t seem to exist in cinema – think Star Wars and Back to the Future. Adult cinema-goers don’t think, ‘I won’t see Back the Future because Marty McFly is a teenager.’

In terms of age range, I’m more likely to start with the story concept and then write it in the genre that best suits the idea – so it depends where my ideas take me.


Are you working on any other speculative fiction books, besides the concluding volume in the Lifespan of Starlight Trilogy? Either way, what can readers expect to see from you next?

My husband teases me because I’m constantly saying that I’m going to take a break from writing after I’ve finished the current project – and then after a few weeks without writing I’ll begin tinkering with something new. At the moment I can’t see past the end of the Lifespan of Starlight Trilogy, but I do have an idea bubbling at the back of my mind. It has elements of The Mosquito Coast but set on a space ship or somewhere equally claustrophobic.


What Australian work have you loved recently?

I admit, it wasn’t ‘love at first chapter’ but Clade by James Bradley really came to life for me as the story progressed. It follows a family over three generations, with climate breakdown as a backdrop – it’s raw and achingly real with an authentic sense of hope.


Which author (living or dead) would you most like to sit next to on a long plane trip and why?

George Orwell, without a doubt. I wouldn’t be rude enough to quiz him on all this if it we were on a plane for real, but I’d love to hear his take on the contemporary world: populist democracy, class structure in the technological age, capitalist marketing machines and the state of the media … Our accelerating world needs another George Orwell.

Split Infinity by Thalia Kalkipsakis

Split Infinity by Thalia Kalkipsakis is the second book in the Lifespan of Starlight trilogy, following on from book 1, Lifespan of Starlight, which I read and reviewed recently. I really enjoyed this sequel, and it made me realise that the only reason I didn't give Lifespan of Starlight 5 stars (I gave it 4.5) is because reading bad goodreads reviews before reading the book had me anticipating it taking a turn for the crappy, which it didn't. Split Infinity continued on in the same trope-avoiding way as the first book. Oh, also, the blurb and this review contain MAJOR SPOILERS for the first book.

A split-second decision, a single time-skip. The world that you know, gone in a blink.

Now a sharp and adept time-skipper, Scout jumps years ahead to find the world transformed. Technology has accelerated and the people she knows have grown up, or disappeared. Most pressing, the government that she was trying to escape has used the time to prepare for the return of the time skippers. Caught between finding the mother she left behind and time-skipping ahead with Mason, a series of events lead Scout deeper into the tunnel than ever before.

The only way out is by the strength of her love and the power of her mind. The illusion of time has one more surprise, one with the power to change everything.

As you probably gathered from my preamble, I enjoyed this book a lot. One of my favourite things about it is that Scout, the main character, is pretty smart and doesn't make stupid decisions for no better reason than to further the plot (a YA pet peeve of mine). In fact, whenever I thought "she should do blah" to solve whatever problem she was facing, she generally did or did something even more clever. That's not to say that the book was predictable, just that obvious smart courses of action weren't conveniently ignored by the protagonist.

I mentioned in my review of the first book that I didn't think the government quite counted as dystopian because almost everyone (who wasn't in Scout's position) was basically doing OK. In this book, which is mostly set a bit further in the future than we see in the first book, the repressiveness of the government took a turn for the worse and definitely feels more dystopian. Whether or not Scout (and friends) will be directly addressing that beyond just trying to keep themselves safe is unclear. Although it's more dystopian than the first book, it's not following the obvious beats of a YA dystopia (yet — I suppose the third book could change that).

On the topic of not following obvious beats, there were a few time travel beats that I thought this second book might end on and to be honest, until the very end I kind of wanted it to end that way. But once the end game was playing out, it became clear that the book wasn't going to end quite the way I expected. There is another cliff hanger, though (that bit I did expect).

In my review of the first book I didn't talk much about time travel because I didn't want to give that aspect of the story away. This second volume is very much more of a time travel narrative, so I think it should be mentioned. One of the things that I think makes this series so successfully compelling is that it took two unrelated, solid ideas — everyone being chipped and time travel — and combined them to make a story greater than the sum of its parts. It helps that the portrayal of being chipped is done in a relatively fresh way (like when Scout has trouble crossing the road without a chip), and that the method of time travel is novel and both constrained (jumping forward, not moving from where you were and arriving naked) and liberal (anyone can learn to do it).

Finally, Scout has a very close relationship with her mother, which doesn't change when the whole time travel thing starts. Scout's mother isn't conveniently out of the way or kidnapped, does worry about her, and is a motivator for Scout to do various things. Her mother's strong presence is balanced by the fact that Scout has a lot of freedom, especially for a 14 or 15 year old, but I appreciate her not being orphaned or neglected from the outset.

To reiterate, I enjoyed Split Infinity a lot and would whole-heartedly recommend it and the first book to fans of character-driven YA and science fiction. Although there is a romantic element in the books, it was actually stronger in the first book than the second, and isn't very prominent overall (and wow did I appreciate the fact that Scout didn't do anything to stupid for cute boys). I am eagerly awaiting the last book in the series, alas I think I'll be waiting about a year to read it.

5 / 5 stars

First published: May 2016, Hardie Grant Egmont
Series: Lifespan of Starlight book 2 of 3
Format read: Paper!
Source: Purchased (from Big W...)
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge, Aussie Science Fiction Reading Challenge

Lifespan of Starlight by Thalia Kalkipsakis

Lifespan of Starlight by Thalia Kalkipsakis is a YA science fiction novel I picked up from the library after it caught my eye in a bookshop. I went into it with some trepidation, having also read some less favourable reviews on Goodreads, but I ended up quite enjoying it.

In 2084, three teenagers discover the secret to time travel. At first their jumps cover only a few seconds, but soon they master the technique and combat their fear of jumping into the unknown.

It's dangerous. It's illegal. And it's utterly worth it for the full-body bliss of each return.

As their ability to time jump grows into days and weeks, the group begins to push beyond their limits, with terrifying consequences. Could they travel as far as ten years, to escape the authorities? They are desperate enough to find out.

But before they jump they must be sure, because it only works in one direction.

Once you trip forwards, there's no coming back.

Lifespan of Starlight is set in a near-future dystopian Melbourne, where everyone is chipped and these chips give them access to everything from food and water rations to safe road crossings. Scout (or Coutlyn) is an illegal. She wasn't chipped as a baby because her mother was supposed to have aborted her. Instead she bribed a doctor to keep quiet and has been sharing her own, not overly-plentiful, rations with Scout. Existing as a non-person has also taught Scout how to code and hack to get around the system. This is especially useful for things like triggering traffic lights to let her cross.

Scout's being illegal is a key element of the story, but one not mentioned in the blurb, for some reason. The blurbed part of the story — the time travel aspect — begins when Scout is moping in her cave and a dying woman suddenly appears in front of her. As in turns out, that woman was a time traveller and, when Scout steals her chip and hacks it to make it her own, she inadvertently falls in with some teens trying to learn to time travel.

The time travelling is a side-aspect of Scout's story, although it is the pivotal element. Most of Scout's time is taken up with trying to legitimise herself in the eyes of society. With her new chip she even gets to apply to go to a good school. Much of the story explores the difficulties Scout faces in being illegal, in pretending not to be illegal and what happens when her friends find out the truth. There was a poignant moment when her friends point out which "real citizen" her actions most affected, as though being a real citizen is more relevant than being a real person.

This is a fairly character-driven story. There is no world to save, no government to overthrow (well, I mean, there is because life is a bit dystopian, but none of the kids are  trying to fix that through rebellion or anything). Their problems are less grand and more personal, but still culminate in an exciting semi-cliff hanger ending.

I recommend this book to fans of science fiction more than YA. I felt that it had more SF tropes and ideas in it than YA-spec fic tropes. It's not an action-packed story, but I still found that I wanted to come back to it every time I put it down. I am looking forward to reading the next book and finding out what happens in the next chapter of Scout's life.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2015, Hardie Grant Egmont
Series: Yes. Book 1 of 2 so far of a planned trilogy
Format read: Paperback!
Source: Borrowed from the library
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge, Aussie Science Fiction Reading Challenge