Reginald Pepper is Out of Time

by Neil Sorenson

"No summoning the spirits of the dead on a schoolnight!" Being the son of a world-famous paranormal troubleshooter isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just ask Reginald Pepper. Sure, he'd say there's fun to be had chatting with ghosts in moldering crypts or tinkering with preternatural gadgetry in his dad's lab, but he'd also be the first to admit that meddling in the realm of the supernatural can have nasty consequences. And being yanked 100 years into the past would certainly qualify as a nasty consequence. When Reginald uncovers a strange family secret hidden in a forgotten well, he and his older sister are plunged backward in time to the year 1905, where they find themselves in a desperate race to thwart the tangled schemes of a vengeful vampire. Time is running out for them to fix the disasters of the past and decipher the mystery behind the leering crystal skull that holds the key to their family's future.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

Reviews

[Sarah Schanze · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cute story that certainly wasn't what I was expecting. It combined a lot of fun things I really enjoy reading about, like time travel and history, with twists on established ideas like vampires that didn't make me want to cringe. The treatment of the infamous crystal skulls is better than whatever Indiana Jones did, and the vampires are given an interesting twist that doesn't shy away from some of their grosser aspects.

There were times it felt like it dragged a little, especially since some of the stuff they did the reader already knew they had to do because of Time Travel Reasons. They probably could have been glossed over or just summarized. But overall I thought it was well written, and it had a lot of good metaphors and descriptions too.