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The Leap Cycle #2
The Time-Thief
Elle is back! This time she's leaping almost three whole centuries back in time, to catch a thief, help her friend and save our future
It's mid-summer's day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle's friend and fellow Infinite, MC² is arrested for the crime!
To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it's too late?
It's mid-summer's day and thirteen-year-old Elle and her Leapling classmates are visiting the Museum of the Past, the Present and the Future. But on the day of the school trip, disaster strikes, and the most unique and valuable piece in the museum, the Infinity-Glass, is stolen! And worse still, Elle's friend and fellow Infinite, MC² is arrested for the crime!
To prove his innocence Elle must leap back centuries in time, to a London very different from today. Along the way she will meet new friends, face dangers unlike any she has ever known, and face an old enemy who is determined to destroy her. Can Elle find the missing Infinity-Glass and return it to its rightful home before it's too late?
256 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2021
5 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
About the author
Patience Agbabi
20 books42 followersPatience Agbabi (born 1965) is a British poet, author and performer. In 2017 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Patience Agbabi was born in London to Nigerian parents, and from a young age was privately fostered by a white English family, who when she was 12 years old moved from Sussex to North Wales, where Agbabi was raised in Colwyn Bay. She studied English language and literature at Pembroke College, Oxford.
She earned an MA in Creative Writing, the Arts and Education from the University of Sussex in 2002, and in September that year was appointed Associate Creative Writing Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Agbabi was Canterbury Festival's Laureate in 2010. In 2018 she was Writer In Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
Patience Agbabi was born in London to Nigerian parents, and from a young age was privately fostered by a white English family, who when she was 12 years old moved from Sussex to North Wales, where Agbabi was raised in Colwyn Bay. She studied English language and literature at Pembroke College, Oxford.
She earned an MA in Creative Writing, the Arts and Education from the University of Sussex in 2002, and in September that year was appointed Associate Creative Writing Lecturer at the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Agbabi was Canterbury Festival's Laureate in 2010. In 2018 she was Writer In Residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
March 12, 2021
What happens when you are witness to a crime that takes place in both the past, present and future? You call on the Infinites! In this swift, smart sequel, Elle and her fellow time-travelling sleuths must track down the stolen Infinity-Glass and return it to its right place before the shadowy group known only as The Vicious Circle can use it to tear apart the thin threads of space-time. From 2021 to 2048 to 1752, the chase is on and Elle must out-wit and out-smart her adversaries whilst dodging flying cars, escaping future criminals and wrestling words with Dr. Samuel Johnson, the creator A Dictionary of the English Language. A triumphant return from Patience Agbabi who weaves poetry and pace around science and fiction into a story that is as quick-witted and wise as it is thrilling and fun.Compulsive, electric reading!
May 2, 2024
I picked up The Time-Thief by Patience Agbabi from the library, having heard her on a BBC podcast talking about Samuel Johnson and his fictional depiction in this book. It’s the second book of four, so some of the difficulties I had with the book may have been covered in the first - I presumed, as a children’s book, I’d pick the world up as I went along.
The books is about leaplings, a tiny subsection of people born on the 29th February who have the ability to jump backwards and forwards in time. The protagonist, Elle is one such person who is also a member of a secret group called Infinity. Their job is to secure the future against unscrupulous leaplings known as the Vicious Circle and headed by the evil Millenia. In this book, an item is stolen from the Museum of Past, Present and Future and her friend is framed. She must go back in time to learn about the item so she can clear her friend’s name.
Luckily for me, as a Johnson fanatic, the item was an hourglass given by Samuel Johnson to Francis Barber, so Elle meets Johnson, Barber and Anna Williams when they are living at Gough Square in 1752. It’s partly this provenance that makes the hour glass worth so much, as anything Johnson related is worth three times as much in the leapling world.
Elle doesn’t go back until the middle of the book and the first person she meets in Johnson’s household is Anna. She’s incredibly rude and slams the door on them but eventually opens it up and apologies. Elle understands, she’s told that Anna is almost blind and sympathises with how difficult she must find things in a world that ignores her needs. Indeed, when Johnson lived at Bolt Court later in life, neighbours found it irritating how many people asked them for directions to Samuel’s place.
In the acknowledgements at the end, Agbabi thanks Helen Woollison, former Deputy Curator at Dr Johnson’s House. I went to many events run by her and also volunteered in the house under her supervision for a while and she is a knowledgeable and helpful person. It’s clear she helped Agbabi, the description of the garret on page 96 is really good, depicting the long table with teetering piles of books. Describing the books as being a little shabby, rather like Johnson’s clothes and marvelling at all the little slips of paper. She talks with an amanuensis about how Johnson is using quotations, including poetry to define the words and bring them to life. It’s a really nice moment.
I also liked a lot of how Johnson himself is portrayed. Many people, when writing him, choose to make him speak Boswell quotes at all times. This relieves them of the pressure of having to invent something Johnson might say but it is rather jarring to someone who knows that those quotes happened years apart. While there are some nods to some quotes, Agbabi writes her Johnson whole and makes him a figure who is strange and a little alarming at first but ultimately warm and likeable. He might not always sound like the Johnson we know, but at least he’s not just a Bozzy-spouting automaton.
One of the first things Elle notes about him is the smell of his sweat, then his shabby clothes and constant movements. She wonders if he’s stimming, a concept we were giving a page-length description of earlier, when a person repeats a repetitive action (such as rocking, clapping or blinking) to self-soothe. She’s later informed that Johnson has Tourette’s, that his movements are not a balm to him but an impulse he can’t repress. The person informing her then says,
“His supreme intellect and extreme challenge stem from the same source.” It’s an interesting idea, and one I recently read discussed in Robert DeMaria Jr’s The Life of Samuel Johnson: A Critical Biography. While I am very wary of attributing Johnson’s exceptional qualities to his (probable) neurodivergence, I am interested in how that helped shaped him.
The character of young Francis Barber is also handled well. It’s clear that Agbabi has read Michael Buncdock’s The Fortunes of Francis Barber, as it reveals his real name, Quarshy, and talks about how he was Colonel Cathcart’s slave in Jamaica but was now in a strange, in-between state, living with Johnson. I liked the little jokes about how he was officially a servant who didn’t do all that much servanting and the chance to see him as a free-spirited young man.
One big element of this book I haven’t much touched on is autism. Maybe it was explained in the first, but the 0.007% of people born on 29th February who can leap in time are all neurodivergent in some way or another. There are six characters with autism, one non-verbal, one character with ADHD and then Johnson with his possible Tourettes. Is it diversity if almost everyone in the book is autistic? The book frequently stops to describe some aspect of autism, sometimes it’s just the narration that stops to explain it but sometimes the whole narrative itself.
At one point, Elle and her fellow autistic leapling, Big Ben, almost fail to jump in time and follow the bad guys because they worry their disguises might be too itchy. Elle herself is a character who shuts down because she is over-stimulated if offered food any other colour than white, but finds the strength to cope with London in 1752. The lovely description of the dictionary garret then goes into a paragraph about how Big Ben is dyslexic and would find the handwritten notes difficult to read - but he doesn’t need to read them. Elle sympathises with Anna Williams’s blindness because, “she must find everything tricky if she’s blind just like I find things challenging because I’m autistic.” It’s about a hundred pages in at this point, we know.
Ultimately, I did not enjoy The Time-Thief because I really didn’t like the writing. Occasionally it flowed but generally it was stiff and awkward. Whenever Elle had been on a little adventure, she’d return to her friends and retell exactly what the reader had already read and then told the reader all the implications of the new information. Everything was stated and re-stated, plainly, baldly and obviously. They talk about an alibi, so then need to have a few sentences explaining, plain, clear and boringly what an alibi is. This is partly why the references to autism became such a hurdle to the telling of the story, because the book wouldn’t let something play out without a flat explanation of it. A character couldn’t stim without the narrator giving a flat description of what stimming is. She couldn’t shut down without explaining what a shut down was and why she was doing it.
This is an especial problem when the book is supposed to be a fast-paced, time travelling mystery adventure. The book would describe an event happening, then state what had happened and then a character would come up and restate it and another restate it upon that. Then, later on, the character would have to restate that event again in case we’d forgotten before another would state the significance of that restating.
I’ll end with a quote. Francis Barber, Elle and Big Ben are walking through London in 1752. They see people in sedan chairs and Elle asks if the occupants are disabled. This is Francis’s completely natural reply;
“No they are not, The sedan chair is a common transportation for hire but take note: those adorned with gold and brocade belong to the monied class who wish to be seen but contribute little to society.”
Right on with the anti-rich people sentiment, shame about the prose.
The books is about leaplings, a tiny subsection of people born on the 29th February who have the ability to jump backwards and forwards in time. The protagonist, Elle is one such person who is also a member of a secret group called Infinity. Their job is to secure the future against unscrupulous leaplings known as the Vicious Circle and headed by the evil Millenia. In this book, an item is stolen from the Museum of Past, Present and Future and her friend is framed. She must go back in time to learn about the item so she can clear her friend’s name.
Luckily for me, as a Johnson fanatic, the item was an hourglass given by Samuel Johnson to Francis Barber, so Elle meets Johnson, Barber and Anna Williams when they are living at Gough Square in 1752. It’s partly this provenance that makes the hour glass worth so much, as anything Johnson related is worth three times as much in the leapling world.
Elle doesn’t go back until the middle of the book and the first person she meets in Johnson’s household is Anna. She’s incredibly rude and slams the door on them but eventually opens it up and apologies. Elle understands, she’s told that Anna is almost blind and sympathises with how difficult she must find things in a world that ignores her needs. Indeed, when Johnson lived at Bolt Court later in life, neighbours found it irritating how many people asked them for directions to Samuel’s place.
In the acknowledgements at the end, Agbabi thanks Helen Woollison, former Deputy Curator at Dr Johnson’s House. I went to many events run by her and also volunteered in the house under her supervision for a while and she is a knowledgeable and helpful person. It’s clear she helped Agbabi, the description of the garret on page 96 is really good, depicting the long table with teetering piles of books. Describing the books as being a little shabby, rather like Johnson’s clothes and marvelling at all the little slips of paper. She talks with an amanuensis about how Johnson is using quotations, including poetry to define the words and bring them to life. It’s a really nice moment.
I also liked a lot of how Johnson himself is portrayed. Many people, when writing him, choose to make him speak Boswell quotes at all times. This relieves them of the pressure of having to invent something Johnson might say but it is rather jarring to someone who knows that those quotes happened years apart. While there are some nods to some quotes, Agbabi writes her Johnson whole and makes him a figure who is strange and a little alarming at first but ultimately warm and likeable. He might not always sound like the Johnson we know, but at least he’s not just a Bozzy-spouting automaton.
One of the first things Elle notes about him is the smell of his sweat, then his shabby clothes and constant movements. She wonders if he’s stimming, a concept we were giving a page-length description of earlier, when a person repeats a repetitive action (such as rocking, clapping or blinking) to self-soothe. She’s later informed that Johnson has Tourette’s, that his movements are not a balm to him but an impulse he can’t repress. The person informing her then says,
“His supreme intellect and extreme challenge stem from the same source.” It’s an interesting idea, and one I recently read discussed in Robert DeMaria Jr’s The Life of Samuel Johnson: A Critical Biography. While I am very wary of attributing Johnson’s exceptional qualities to his (probable) neurodivergence, I am interested in how that helped shaped him.
The character of young Francis Barber is also handled well. It’s clear that Agbabi has read Michael Buncdock’s The Fortunes of Francis Barber, as it reveals his real name, Quarshy, and talks about how he was Colonel Cathcart’s slave in Jamaica but was now in a strange, in-between state, living with Johnson. I liked the little jokes about how he was officially a servant who didn’t do all that much servanting and the chance to see him as a free-spirited young man.
One big element of this book I haven’t much touched on is autism. Maybe it was explained in the first, but the 0.007% of people born on 29th February who can leap in time are all neurodivergent in some way or another. There are six characters with autism, one non-verbal, one character with ADHD and then Johnson with his possible Tourettes. Is it diversity if almost everyone in the book is autistic? The book frequently stops to describe some aspect of autism, sometimes it’s just the narration that stops to explain it but sometimes the whole narrative itself.
At one point, Elle and her fellow autistic leapling, Big Ben, almost fail to jump in time and follow the bad guys because they worry their disguises might be too itchy. Elle herself is a character who shuts down because she is over-stimulated if offered food any other colour than white, but finds the strength to cope with London in 1752. The lovely description of the dictionary garret then goes into a paragraph about how Big Ben is dyslexic and would find the handwritten notes difficult to read - but he doesn’t need to read them. Elle sympathises with Anna Williams’s blindness because, “she must find everything tricky if she’s blind just like I find things challenging because I’m autistic.” It’s about a hundred pages in at this point, we know.
Ultimately, I did not enjoy The Time-Thief because I really didn’t like the writing. Occasionally it flowed but generally it was stiff and awkward. Whenever Elle had been on a little adventure, she’d return to her friends and retell exactly what the reader had already read and then told the reader all the implications of the new information. Everything was stated and re-stated, plainly, baldly and obviously. They talk about an alibi, so then need to have a few sentences explaining, plain, clear and boringly what an alibi is. This is partly why the references to autism became such a hurdle to the telling of the story, because the book wouldn’t let something play out without a flat explanation of it. A character couldn’t stim without the narrator giving a flat description of what stimming is. She couldn’t shut down without explaining what a shut down was and why she was doing it.
This is an especial problem when the book is supposed to be a fast-paced, time travelling mystery adventure. The book would describe an event happening, then state what had happened and then a character would come up and restate it and another restate it upon that. Then, later on, the character would have to restate that event again in case we’d forgotten before another would state the significance of that restating.
I’ll end with a quote. Francis Barber, Elle and Big Ben are walking through London in 1752. They see people in sedan chairs and Elle asks if the occupants are disabled. This is Francis’s completely natural reply;
“No they are not, The sedan chair is a common transportation for hire but take note: those adorned with gold and brocade belong to the monied class who wish to be seen but contribute little to society.”
Right on with the anti-rich people sentiment, shame about the prose.
December 10, 2021
it was very suprising and funny and i couldn't find out enything!
May 12, 2021
Patience Agabi has done it again, and I for one couldn't be happier about it! After reading The Infinite last year and absolutely loving it I was delighted to hear that The Leap Cycle books were going to be a series and I devoured The Time Thief, I'm still trying to get over that I have to wait until 2022 for Book 3.
Elle is back and she's smarter and braver than ever. Along with her Leapling friends she's ready to solve the crime of who really stole the most treasured item The Infinity-Glass after a school trip to The museum Of The Past.
After MC² one of her closest friends is accused of the theft it's down to Elle and her partner in crime Big Ben to prove his innocence, no small undertaking as they will need to leap back centuries in time and who knows what danger lies ahead.
As a parent of an Autistic child and just somebody in general who believes so strongly in reprensation for all children in books Patience Agabi writes in a way that is spectacular. The protagonist of this book is a young black girl with autism and she's flipping marvellous but we also have non verbal characters, and characters with adhd, and they are all heroes! The thing I love most about The Leap Cycle books is not just that they include neuro divergent characters but that terms used such as, meltdowns, stimming, sensory processing issues are explained.
I love The concept of The Time-Thief, It's so imaginative and fun and I honestly couldn't put it down. An action packed, often funny heartwarming story of friendship and love but one where the baddies are also fun to read and tbh I kinda like them best!
Patience Agabi has cemented herself as one of my favourite children author's and I honestly couldn't recommend her books more.
Elle is back and she's smarter and braver than ever. Along with her Leapling friends she's ready to solve the crime of who really stole the most treasured item The Infinity-Glass after a school trip to The museum Of The Past.
After MC² one of her closest friends is accused of the theft it's down to Elle and her partner in crime Big Ben to prove his innocence, no small undertaking as they will need to leap back centuries in time and who knows what danger lies ahead.
As a parent of an Autistic child and just somebody in general who believes so strongly in reprensation for all children in books Patience Agabi writes in a way that is spectacular. The protagonist of this book is a young black girl with autism and she's flipping marvellous but we also have non verbal characters, and characters with adhd, and they are all heroes! The thing I love most about The Leap Cycle books is not just that they include neuro divergent characters but that terms used such as, meltdowns, stimming, sensory processing issues are explained.
I love The concept of The Time-Thief, It's so imaginative and fun and I honestly couldn't put it down. An action packed, often funny heartwarming story of friendship and love but one where the baddies are also fun to read and tbh I kinda like them best!
Patience Agabi has cemented herself as one of my favourite children author's and I honestly couldn't recommend her books more.
October 12, 2021
The concept of this book was interesting, but unfortunately I couldn't get past the writing style and lack of excitement. For me middle grade books are fast paced, exciting, have great characters and a well build story, but even though this book was only just over 200 pages it felt like a slog to get through.
I do really appreciate the author showing a diverse range of characters. Elle, our main character is Black and autistic, her best friend Big Ben is also autistic, and another of her gang of time travellers uses their own special sign language because they're non verbal. Throughout the book Elle explains Ben's stimming, her own need for a cool down space when she gets overwhelmed, and there are instances of confusion leading to irritability. This is the best aspect in the book, as we need more books for children and adults that destigmatise and normalise disabilities and differences.
Unfortunately the rest of the contents of the book fall short for me personally. The story meanders along and decides to rely on a big monologue from Elle to explain everything that happened and how she got to the conclusion in the last few pages of the book, instead of showing us through interesting, well written story telling. Also, there are two characters - sisters - who are called Anon and Anno, and even I as an adult struggled to remember which one was which.
The writing style just didn't grab my attention, and I felt like I was forcing myself to get through the book, which isn't ideal. Maybe others will really enjoy The Time-Thief, but I can definitely say this one wasn't for me.
I do really appreciate the author showing a diverse range of characters. Elle, our main character is Black and autistic, her best friend Big Ben is also autistic, and another of her gang of time travellers uses their own special sign language because they're non verbal. Throughout the book Elle explains Ben's stimming, her own need for a cool down space when she gets overwhelmed, and there are instances of confusion leading to irritability. This is the best aspect in the book, as we need more books for children and adults that destigmatise and normalise disabilities and differences.
Unfortunately the rest of the contents of the book fall short for me personally. The story meanders along and decides to rely on a big monologue from Elle to explain everything that happened and how she got to the conclusion in the last few pages of the book, instead of showing us through interesting, well written story telling. Also, there are two characters - sisters - who are called Anon and Anno, and even I as an adult struggled to remember which one was which.
The writing style just didn't grab my attention, and I felt like I was forcing myself to get through the book, which isn't ideal. Maybe others will really enjoy The Time-Thief, but I can definitely say this one wasn't for me.
May 14, 2021
This is the second instalment of ‘The Leap Cycle’ series and it was every bit as delightful as the first! Elle is a Leapling, a child born of the 29th February who am travel through time. In this book we see her and her friends leaping though time to find the stolen Infinity-Glass before it’s too late.
The cast of characters in these books are brilliant! We have diverse representation in this book that is makes it brilliantly inclusive and a great read for everyone. Elle, the protagonist of the book is a young black girl with autism and what an amazing character she is! The book is written from her point of view and I love how it reads like the thoughts in her head. The book also includes others with ADHD, Tourette’s and non-verbal characters too. I love how Patience Agbabi includes them all and shows how brilliant these children are - they are all heroes in this book!!
The plot of the book is great, lots of simple twists and turns for a middle grade read but one that keeps you wondering what will happen next. Agbabi has a great way of describing the places in her book and you can really visualise the story. That along with her excellent character description makes this a brilliant read!
Patience Agbabi has pulled off a great series of books, not only do they have a great idea running through them all, but she represents those characters not often found in literature and this is something that should be celebrated and shared far and wide!
The cast of characters in these books are brilliant! We have diverse representation in this book that is makes it brilliantly inclusive and a great read for everyone. Elle, the protagonist of the book is a young black girl with autism and what an amazing character she is! The book is written from her point of view and I love how it reads like the thoughts in her head. The book also includes others with ADHD, Tourette’s and non-verbal characters too. I love how Patience Agbabi includes them all and shows how brilliant these children are - they are all heroes in this book!!
The plot of the book is great, lots of simple twists and turns for a middle grade read but one that keeps you wondering what will happen next. Agbabi has a great way of describing the places in her book and you can really visualise the story. That along with her excellent character description makes this a brilliant read!
Patience Agbabi has pulled off a great series of books, not only do they have a great idea running through them all, but she represents those characters not often found in literature and this is something that should be celebrated and shared far and wide!
July 6, 2023
Neurodiverse personages zijn altijd een bonus, en dat het boek daar niet over gaat al helemaal.
Er zijn tijdsreizen, een diefstal, een mysterie en nog meer. De personages zijn goed uitgewerkt, het audioboek met de verschillende stemmetjes werkte en gaf het wat extra realisme. Al maakte dat laatste het tegelijkertijd ook ietsje lastiger om ernaar te luisteren.
Er zijn tijdsreizen, een diefstal, een mysterie en nog meer. De personages zijn goed uitgewerkt, het audioboek met de verschillende stemmetjes werkte en gaf het wat extra realisme. Al maakte dat laatste het tegelijkertijd ook ietsje lastiger om ernaar te luisteren.
March 17, 2022
Looking forward to the third book in this serie.
January 3, 2023
Yet another weirdly, wonderful addition to the series. Can’t wait to read the next one!
March 23, 2023
It is a lovely book that is perfect for people aged 10+
Its diversity will spark joy in so many people, and the characters and storyline are easy to follow.
Its diversity will spark joy in so many people, and the characters and storyline are easy to follow.
January 15, 2022
The second book in the Infinites series is another action packed adventure. When an hourglass from the very special leap year of 1792 is stolen and Elle's fellow Leapling is arrested, the Infinites get on the case. But all is not straightforward as a mystery organisation run by a familiar enemy are out to stop them. Love the way Elle and Big Ben's autism is woven into the story, showing their difficulties but also how they are overcome.
December 21, 2023
Liked it.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews