Timelock: The Caretaker Trilogy: Book 3

by David Klass

Overview

In Timelock, the thrilling finale to the Caretaker Trilogy, the end of life as we know it has arrived, and history will be made — or lost — at the hands of one young hero.

Jack Danielson has spent the last year saving the oceans and the Amazon, attempting to fulfill a prophecy that was written before his birth. Now he's more than ready to get back to life as a typical teenager and spend some quality time with his girlfriend, P.J. Too bad the world has other plans.

Wrenched away once more from those he knows and loves, Jack is thrust through time to the fiery deserts of the future and the frozen tundra of the Arctic, battling cyborgs, zombie warlocks, and scorpions the size of tanks. At least he has Gisco — everyone's favorite surly telepathic canine — to keep him company, not to mention the Ninja Babe, Eko. And he will finally be reunited with the parents who abandoned him so long ago, in order that he might save their dying planet.

But it isn't only a race to save Earth. As the clock ticks down before the final confrontation with the dreaded Dark Lord, Jack must decide once and for all who he really is — prince of the future or humble human of the present — and choose between the two women who love him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312608637
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	05/25/2010
Series:	Caretaker Trilogy Series , #3
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)
Lexile:	830L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

David Klass is the author of many young adult novels, including You Don't Know Me, Losers Take All, and Grandmaster. He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including Kiss the Girls, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd; Walking Tall, starring The Rock; and Desperate Measures, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia.

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions for timeloCk: the Caretaker trilogy, Book 3
1. Where does he belong, in the present or the future? That is the conundrum for Jack Danielson, aka
Jair Dann. His feelings waver throughout Timelock. As you read the book, keep track of the things he says and thinks that help him make his decision. Which choice would you have made?
2. It's disappearing . . . melting at an accelerating rate for the past few decades . . . Even if the Dark
Lord hadn't decided to lend a hand, the Arctic Ocean would have been completely free of ice in a few decades. [p. 181]
· Gisco delineates a doomsday scenario with the melting of the polar ice cap due to global warming. Have you been keeping up with the issue of climate change in newspapers, books,
TV programs, and school? Is Gisco's fatalism universally accepted by the scientifi c and political communities? Can the polar ice cap really disappear?
· It has been said that the Arctic is global warming's "canary in the coal mine." Discuss the meaning of this phrase.
An excellent resource for you to use when formulating your opinions is the Natural Resources
Defense Council. You can access their Web site at: www.nrdc.org
3. "Beacon of Hope, you're the one who needs to help us," the bald fl orist says.
I look back at the florist. Shake my head, "No."
"Yes," he insists. "Terrible things have happened. There's no time to lose."
"NO!" I scream . . . "Find someone else. I'm out of here." [pp. 14–15]
Jack is conscripted against his will and sent to the future to continue fighting the Dark Army. There he encounters an array of odd creatures that have evolved over the millennium: Gorms, wurfles,
giant nematodes, glagour, and giant scorpions, to name a few. Creatures like these populate science fiction. How are these creatures like others you have come across in books and movies such as Star
Wars and Star Trek? Which creature is the most disturbing?
4. Jack is open to a family reconciliation, but when his father asks Jack to trust him, Jack says: "Why should I? . . . You've never been a father to me." [p. 149]
Then his mother implores, "Come over here and join us. Let us be a family this last time."
Jack yells to his parents, "No, I won't join you . . . We've never been a family, so why start now? . . .
I'll die as I lived, alone . . . I'll never forgive you." [p. 153]
Even in the face of danger and certain death, Jack refuses to cut his parents any slack. In the end,
he joins them out of necessity. Do you think his anger is justified? How does he finally resolve his feelings?
5. "The King of Dann is dead. Long live the King . . . Destiny, Jair . . . Destiny . . . and duty." [p. 229]
Jack's father's dying words reiterate the burden children of royalty have to bear—destiny and duty.
For Jack's father, there was never a choice. What choice did Jack have? Often, children are expected to follow in their parents' footsteps or to live out their parents' dreams. Talk about this family imperative in your own life.
6. To prevent the Dark Army from returning to the present, Kidah will lock time. He tells Jack, "The past will feed into the future in a one-way stream, as it was meant to do." [p. 235] This return to the normal progression of time assumes that people in the present and succeeding generations will make the correct decisions about the environment. What evidence is there to support that view?
7. Timelock closes the Caretaker Trilogy, but not the story of Jack and Eko. What do you think will happen next?

Editorial Reviews

"The author's style is perfect for the genre: fast-paced and suspenseful . . . Call it ‘Raiders of the Lost Earth.' ” —The New York Times Book Review

“Breakneck pacing and ecological earnestness . . . From ravaged, polluted wastelands to sublimely majestic glaciers, the settings are vivid and evocative.” —Kirkus Reviews"

“Another fantastic fast paced Caretaker book . . . Gripping.” —Jacob, 13"

From the Publisher

The author's style is perfect for the genre: fast-paced and suspenseful, with a palpable delight in the gross-out. He clearly loves inventing the monsters that bedevil his hero, from sentient, flame-shooting computers to a type of predatory living pollution known as glagour…The emphasis is…on the likes of freshly hatched flying snakes and the heroics required to combat them. Call it "Raiders of the Lost Earth."
—The New York Times

Regina Marler

Gr 8 Up—Back in New York after a year of breathtakingly dangerous adventures in which he saved the Earth's oceans in Firestorm (2006) and the Amazon in Whirlwind (2008, both Farrar), Jack Danielson hopes to blend in with the crowds in Manhattan, where he has taken a job as a construction worker and resumed his relationship with his girlfriend P.J., now a student at Barnard. Unfortunately, his destiny as Prince of Dann a thousand years in the future makes life as an ordinary 21st-century teenager impossible. He soon finds himself kidnapped and whirled away into a future where much of the Earth is desert and the Arctic has been almost completely destroyed. In this world, Jack's real father, the king, is about to be executed by the forces of the Dark Army, and his real mother is waiting to join Jack on a death-defying quest to free his father from a seemingly impenetrable fortress, defeat the Dark Lord, and save the dying planet. Every bit as fast paced, thrilling, and similar to a gripping computer game as its predecessors, this final volume in the trilogy will keep readers absorbed while presenting them with a valuable warning about the need for environmental awareness.—Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA

School Library Journal

Breakneck pacing and ecological earnestness supplant coherent storytelling in the over-the-top culmination of this time-travel trilogy. Jack and his pals have saved the oceans and the rainforests, and now he just wants a normal life. But that pesky Destiny can't leave a "beacon of hope" alone. Soon Jack's on the run again, this time to the ecologically devastated future, helping his warrior-Queen mother bust his father out of the Dark Lord's dungeons. Whoops! Time to hurtle back to the present to save the Arctic ice cap from a genocidal cyborg! From ravaged, polluted wastelands to sublimely majestic glaciers, the settings are vivid and evocative. Jack is likable enough but does little to justify the universal devotion and awe he's accorded. Secondary characters grate, coming off as sexist, sanctimonious or simply strange. The barrage of Too Much Stuff, intriguing in concept but seemingly pulled from nowhere to keep the plot moving, thunders to a ludicrous climax and bathetic epilogue, subverting any message of responsible environmental stewardship. Sheer fluff and nonsense, but if the first two are popular, this one will rocket off the shelves. (Science fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews