BOOK REVIEW: Time Riders (Alex Scarrow)

Book:  Time Riders

Author: Alex Scarrow

Rating: 7.5/10

Recommended Age: 11-16


Wonder what happens when mankind invents time travel. Everything goes wrong. Supposed do-gooders travel back and make things worse. the whole of history is affected. What can be done to stop this?
A secret agency without a name, whose operatives are tasked  with watching out for time shifts and correcting history when it goes wrong. These people are known as Timeriders.


Liam O'Connor should have died when the Titanic sunk at sea in 1912 trapped on deck E as she fills with water and buckles. But then he See's the man offering him a way out.


Maddy Carter should of died in 2010 in a plane crash. But then She sees the man offering a way out.

And Sal Vikram should of died in a fire in 2026. Then she See's the man offering a way out .


They have been recruited into the Timeriders agency tasked to protect time and stop time travel from changing and destroying the world. They are trained by the man Foster, the one who saved them into their 3 roles. Sal needs to spot changes, Maddy locate them and Liam travel back to fix them. Transported into a time bubble at New york the day before and after the Twin towers terrorist attack so that no one will pay them any undue attention.

Here they are trained using a point in time where anything they will do will correct itself . Liam goes in with foster and changes history, then Maddy and Sal have to work out where and what's changed.

Meanwhile in the year 2066 in a world dying through over population,smog and global warming. A person called Kramer is trying to track down the original time machine, then one supposedly destroyed by it's creator after he realised the danger of time travel and the international law banning it was brought into place. In a museum archive Kramer and his  troops search for the machine with armed police closing in all the time.

When they do find it they hasten back in time and space to  Der Kehlsteinhaus in 1941. Also known as Hitlers bunker the Eagles Nest. Their he fights his way into Hitlers chambers before the garrison  is awoken and 300 troops come storming at them and advises Hitler on how to win the war.

Back in New york suddenly everything changes. The city changes into part of a greater Reich under the command of Kramer. he deposed Hitler and conquered all of Europe and America. Now it's the first chance for the team to work together to fix history.

Liam is sent back in time to 1956 with a humanoid AI support unit named Bob who has all the data necessary to travel in Germany and return to their time. But when they arrive in America for a information gathering mission they find the white house under attack from the Nazis, and the last American Resistance fails under the onslaught of  Kramer's troops. They find out that history was changed over 10 years earlier with Kramer's arrival and his ascension to Fuhrer status in the Greater Reich. So they need to go back another 10 years. But when Liam is captured and they miss the return time window. Bob changes his orders. He needs to rescue Liam and he starts doing that by raiding prison camps looking for him and releasing the other prisoners. With his Ai mind and body he takes a lot of shots before getting damaged and can heal himself over time. This makes him a perfect symbol of resistance and is soon followed into his raids by those he saves.

Kramer on the other hand is slowly going mad and is convinced that someone is going to stop him from changing the world. He realises that it would be a kindness to end the world now to stop it from  becoming the smog-filled ,over populated Hell it will become in the future. he joins an atomic bomb to a newly designed time frame to magnify it's power and boom.
In the future there is another shift as New York is turned into  a post apocalyptic hell filled with mutated creatures who cannibalise themselves. It's now a race against time for Bob to find Liam and bring back the information needed to stop this from happening. The power is running out in the time bubble of operations and the creatures are closing in.

With limited power, a member captured in the past, the information required to fix things searching for him and a load of flesh hungry mutants. can they pull of the operation to fix history. or is the world doomed to be a hell filled with cannibals ?


Read this book to find out




This book is the first of what looks like a very promising series. It's almost a mixture of sci-fi,action and horror. The confusing workings of time and the effect of things in the past makes you have to think quite carefully and I found it to be a very interesting and enjoyable book.

Hope you found this review helpful,
The Devonian Book Reviewer

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