Timefire by Nean McKenzie

Title: Timefire

Author: Nean McKenzie

Genre: Dystopian

Publisher: MidnightSun Publishing

Published: 1st July 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 199

Price: $17.99

Synopsis: In the scorching summer of 2033, Gilbert Black is accused of being a firebug, just like his mother was thirteen years previously. That night a fire starts on his family’s farm. A fire with a tunnel in the centre of it. And that’s when things start to get really weird.

Pulled repeatedly back and forth through time, Gil finds himself at all the big Australian bushfires from the last two centuries. He searches across the years, determined to unlock the secret to his family’s legacy.

Gil can’t change the past, but can he learn from it in time to return home and save his family from the biggest inferno ever known?

~*~

In the not-too-distant future – 2033 – Gil is living in regional Victoria, in anohter hot, fire-plagued summer. Gil has been accused of being a firebug and lighting the fires that are starting to devastate the district. Thirteen years ago, during the Black Summer fires that destroyed many lives, homes, and areas of land across Australia. As Gil is about to be sent to boarding school in Melbourne, a mysterious figure called Vargo appears, and leads him down a fire tunnel that catapults Gil back and forth through time, across one hundred and eighty years of bushfires, including some of the biggest ones Australia has ever seen: Black Thursday in 1851, Black Friday in 1939, Ash Wednesday in 1983, and Black Saturday in 2009 – all in attempt to find out about his family, their legacy and connection to the bushfires that have destroyed so many lives.

As he travels through one hundred and eighty years of Australia’s past, Gil learns that he can’t change the past, and he can’t leave anything from the future behind, nor can he visit his own timeline – the basic rules of time travel. Yet he is there to learn from it so he can save his family. Part time travel, part dystopian, Gil’s story is real and relatable. Most readers will remember Black Summer – whether they were at Mallacoota or somewhere else the fires rushed through, whether they prepared to leave if they had to, or whether, like so many, we watched helplessly as the fires destroyed homes and lives in the months leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Gil’s journey takes him into dangerous times as fire ravages the land, as war starts to creep up, and as he encounters past generations of his family. All Gil wants to do is find out what happened to his mother and get home and find out who has really been lighting the fires he is being blamed for and why. So going into the past is the only way he can do this.

The reality of Black Summer and the past fires is very real – they’re still talked about and I remember the Black Saturday fires, and the fires in 1994 that ravaged Sydney and its surrounds and the fear of evacuation and being separated from family – so this timely novel acknowledges these fears and memories, in particular of Black Summer and the fires mentioned above throughout Victoria’s history – all of which were said to have been the worst that the state would ever see. Gil also lives in an eerie future filled with fire and the ravages of climate change, and as he travels into the past, he marvels at some of the food Jenny and Sarah have – Twisties and Weetbix – that no longer exist in his timeline, and the technology – some of which is the same, but different at the same time, illustrating how fast things have changed in Gil’s short life. I liked the way this was handled and when we were told – it allowed Gil’s time travel to show how he reacted to all the differences and where he worked out how he had to fit in with each time and place, so he didn’t stand out.

This timely and relevant book is enthralling, chilling, and one that I found I could not put down – I read most of it in one sitting, because I had to find out what was going to happen, and I think for readers who lived through Black Summer in some way, or who also know about or lived through Black Saturday, will feel a connection to this novel, because bushfires are something that everyone in Australia has experienced in some way or witnessed. We’ve all been affected by the fires and Nean’s book reflects these experiences, and the way fires destroy everything, and how climate change is influencing the behaviour of fires. Because this is set in a very near future, it is possible that Gil’s 2033 experiences could become a reality. I did hope he would be able to change climate change pre-2033, but that would have broken the rules of time travel. The power in this book is to educate and show that fire has always been part of Australian life, and that it has been getting worse throughout the decades, and what can be done to prevent future fires, so it gives readers something to think about. It is aimed at readers eight and older, yet I think older readers will also get something out of it as well. It is familiar and different at the same time – a story that has something for all readers, and one that has a special place as it takes current experiences and allows readers to deal with them through fiction and find ways to talk about it and make any changes that they are able to make in their lives.