Sci-Fi/Fantasy - Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier #1

Andie · 03-26-2012, 04:01 AM

1. Ruby Red

Gwyneth Shepherd's sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!

Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon--the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.

2. Sapphire Blue

Gwen’s life has been a rollercoaster since she discovered she was the Ruby, the final member of the secret time-traveling Circle of Twelve. In between searching through history for the other time-travelers and asking for a bit of their blood (gross!), she’s been trying to figure out what all the mysteries and prophecies surrounding the Circle really mean.
At least Gwen has plenty of help. Her best friend Lesley follows every lead diligently on the Internet. James the ghost teaches Gwen how to fit in at an eighteenth century party. And Xemerius, the gargoyle demon who has been following Gwen since he caught her kissing Gideon in a church, offers advice on everything. Oh, yes. And of course there is Gideon, the Diamond. One minute he’s very warm indeed; the next he’s freezing cold. Gwen’s not sure what’s going on there, but she’s pretty much destined to find out.

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 04:08 AM

I'm just in aw of those covers, but it sounds pretty good.

Andie · 03-26-2012, 04:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stay to the Lights (View Post)

I'm just in aw of those covers, but it sounds pretty good.

It is!

You should really add those to your list, Jen.

The covers are very pretty - so are all the international covers to be fair. You interested?

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 04:14 AM

I might be

You read the first book I see... how was it? Would be something I would like?

Andie · 03-26-2012, 04:18 AM

I think you would like it - time travel, romance and it's young adult.

Totally your style.

French covers -

Looking for the others now

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 04:21 AM

Oh, they are pretty

I added it to TBR

Andie · 03-26-2012, 04:26 AM

Cool!

You'll love the characters, especially the secondary characters are so very unique. Not to mention sidekick!

German Cover for the first one - I linked it considering the fact that it's hugeeee.

They are making a movie as well

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 04:37 AM

They are? What stage of production are they are? Or is it something that was just announced?

Andie · 03-26-2012, 04:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stay to the Lights (View Post)

They are? What stage of production are they are? Or is it something that was just announced?

Filming - they started in February apparently.

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 05:42 AM

Oh really? Is there a release date?

Andie · 03-26-2012, 05:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stay to the Lights (View Post)

Oh really? Is there a release date?

They are aiming for a 2013 release.

Stay to the Lights · 03-26-2012, 06:28 AM

Oh thats good.

I couldn't find it on IMDB

Who did they cast?

Avatar · 03-26-2012, 11:39 AM

Thanks for the new thread, Andie.

I got the first book today and wanna check it out at some point.

Andie · 03-28-2012, 10:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stay to the Lights (View Post)

Oh thats good.

I couldn't find it on IMDB

Who did they cast?

I don't know them

Do you wanna see a pic?

And a review for Ruby Red -

Quote:

The Time Travel Gene
By SUSAN BURTON
Published: May 12, 2011

Already a phenomenon in Germany, where it was published in 2009, “Ruby Red,” the first installment in a time travel trilogy by Kerstin Gier, is now making its American debut. “Ruby Red” has the kind of fans who upload videos of themselves performing scenes from the book on YouTube (as part of a casting contest for a film in preproduction). One amateur translation attempt posted online, while less expert than that of the book’s award-winning translator, Anthea Bell, was somehow more stirring: I pictured a teenage girl sitting at a desk in her bedroom, holding her copy of “Rubinrot” open in one hand, mouthing a few words, then turning to her keyboard to share it with the world. What is it about this book that inspires such enthusiasm?

The best answer is that “Ruby Red” is both suspenseful and comforting. Neither cerebral like Madeleine L’Engle’s time travel classic “A Wrinkle in Time” nor literary like last year’s Newbery Medal winner, Rebecca Stead’s “When You Reach Me,” this is more like chick lit sci-fi.

Gier also writes best-selling women’s novels with titles like “Men and Other Disasters,” and her genial, comic sensibility informs “Ruby Red.” Time travel, Gier style, is something to be discussed on the cellphone while standing in the yogurt aisle at the supermarket. It’s about journeying back to the past with a really hot guy. Knotty technical questions only elicit bewilderment: “The longer you thought about this time travel stuff, the more complicated it got.”

This is not to make “Ruby Red” sound inane. The storytelling is fluid, and Gier is both clever and funny: “There was always some horrible thing lurking” in the past — “war, smallpox, the plague.” It’s just that quantum physics isn’t the point. This is a story that builds to the kiss.

The book opens with Gwyneth, a 16-year-old London schoolgirl, overlooked and a little clumsy, spilling her lunch on her shirt. This is not the first time her uniform has “been drenched in sauce, juice or milk.”

Gwyneth lives in a mansion with her extended family, including an elegant cousin, Charlotte, who is being groomed for a future imagined as “dancing with Mr. Darcy at a ball, falling in love with some sexy Highlander.” Charlotte, the family believes, has inherited a gene for time travel, while Gwyneth is “exiled from the world of mysteries.”

But after an overlong preamble in which Gwyneth keeps getting sucked out of her present-bound life and landing, with a thud, in the past, the characters grasp what the reader has known from the start: Gwyneth, not Charlotte, carries the gene.

Once this confusion is resolved, the story gets moving, though it means leaving the more intriguing of the cousins, Charlotte, behind. Charlotte is the girl who starts out special but finds out she is not, whereas Gwyneth is the more recognizable Y.A. lead: the ordinary teenager who realizes she’s actually extraordinary. (In the German version, she is the no-frills “Gwen.”) She is a perceptive narrator, if, for a heroine, overly mild.

Gwyneth’s mission to the past involves a family mystery, with a teenage polo player named Gideon as her companion. Like many Y.A. novel hot guys, Gideon has green eyes. Unfortunately, this is one of his few distinguishing characteristics; he is otherwise so flatly drawn that the romance between him and Gwyneth is less than transporting.

Adolescence is characterized by questions of identity, and Gwyneth is forced to reassess hers as she — literally — explores her family’s history: “We followed my great-great-grandmother up the stairs to a room on the street side of the house.” But the ancestral drawing rooms are dangerous places. One afternoon in the year 1782, an evil count gets inside Gwyneth’s brain. Just as Meg in “A Wrinkle in Time” drowns out IT by reciting the Declaration of Independence, Gwyneth denies the count access by screaming “God Save the Queen” in her head.

Mental screams aside, “Ruby Red” is not a thinky classic like “Wrinkle,” but Gier succeeds on her own terms, keeping the reader moving along, forward and backward in time, and ending with a revelation and a cliffhanger. Both will leave readers anticipating the publication of the next installment, “Sapphire Blue.” Of course if it’s too hard to wait, there’s always the chance that a teenage translator in Berlin will get to “Saphirblau” first.

Source: New York Times

Stay to the Lights · 03-29-2012, 12:21 AM

Sure. Show me.

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Fan Forum > General Discussion > Sci-Fi/Fantasy > Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier #1