The Gideon Trilogy
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"For kids who love Harry Potter" (There, I fixed it for you.)
—EntertainmentWeekly.com
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The Gideon Trilogy aka The Enlightenment of Peter Schock aka The Time Quake Trilogy is a young adult historical sci-fi series by British author Linda Buckley-Archer. They concern the adventures of Kate Dyer and Peter Schock, who suddenly find themselves transported back to the 18th century after an incident involving an experimental anti-gravity machine and a dog named Molly. Not minutes after waking up over two centuries into the past, they meet the Tar Man (no, not that one), certainly the villain of our story, and the titular Gideon Seymour, gentleman cutpurse. What starts out as a basic "get back to the future" story soon morphs into a mad race to stop the fabric of time and space from unraveling, to say nothing of the many alternate universes and the fact that time travel is hazardous to one's health. Combine all that with mankind's poor foresight regarding matters scientific, and what you have is The Gideon Trilogy.
The trilogy comprises the following books:
- Gideon the Cutpurse aka The Time Travelers
- The Tar Man aka The Time Thief
- Lord Luxon aka The Time Quake
- Alternate Timeline: To the point that extensive charts and graphs must be drawn up.
- Bad Future: Who would have thought that your machinations to make America remain a part of the British Empire would result in it becoming a backwater hole-in-the-wall, thus rendering your 18th century investment in New York City more or less worthless?
- Changed My Jumper: Mostly averted, no matter how inconvenient it is.
- Complete Monster: The Tar Man gets traces of this. Oh, he is compassionate at points, but when you start dragging kids back in time after they spent a book and a half trying to get out of it just because you can, you tread the moral line a little bit.
- Death by Falling Over: Happens to Tom in The Time Thief, courtesy of the boy who keeps assaulting Anjali.
- Fish Out of Temporal Water
- Tell Me About My Father: Played in both directions when Mr. Schock meets older Peter. Peter himself wants to hang out with his father while he still can and learn everything about him, while his father, thinking Peter is Joshua Seymour, asks him how Peter grew up and what he did with his life.
- Time Paradox: And how.
- Time Travel: Whether you want to or not.
- Mugging the Monster: When The Tar Man ends up in the 21st century, people think he's a bit outlandish, but generally don't think he's a bad guy... until they get in his way, at least.