The Navigator

by Eoin McNamee

Book Overview

Time travel adventure in which a boy joins a rebel uprising against a sinister enemy - 'The Harsh' - in order to repair the fabric of time. Owen's ordinary life is turned upside-down the day he gets... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375839100
• ISBN13: 9780375839108
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.9" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Teens Read Too

Owen is ostracized by the other children around him for his father's death long ago, a presumed suicide that resulted in his mother being thrown into a haze of depression from which she cannot escape. By his young teens, he's quietly self-reliant, managing the house on his own and taking care of his mother who is forgetful and not always lucid. He spends his time wandering around the terrain outside of his house, by a river and an abandoned old building that was once a workhouse. One day, Owen meets a strange man near the river right before witnessing a strange flash of darkness. The man, who introduces himself as the Sub-Commandant, explains to Owen that the mysterious flash signifies that a group of creatures known as the Harsh have succeeded in turning back time to before human habitation, so that they can live alone in solitude and turn the Earth to a barren, ice-encrusted waste. Owen does not believe the Sub-Commandant at first, but when he runs away to find his home, he is faced with nothing but ruins. The Sub-Commandant brings Owen back to the Workhouse, which Owen learns is situated on an "island in time" that the Harsh cannot touch, and home to the Resisters, a rag-tag fighting force whose purpose it is to defeat the Harsh and prevent them from tampering with Earth's timeflow. Owen quickly becomes swept up in the affairs of the Resisters, who do not understand why he did not disappear along with all of the other people and signs of human life in the world. Some even suspect that he is a Harsh spy, and mistrust him. Along the way he meets with several compelling characters, including Cati, the Sub-Commandant's daughter, and Dr. Diamond, an expert in the science of time. While with the Resisters, Owen learns things about time that he can barely believe, and begins to delve into the secrets of his past and his father's connection to the strange object known as the Mortmain that will allow the Resisters to defeat the Harsh once and for all. The concept for this book was quite inventive, and I enjoyed the author's concept of a world in which time itself is in danger from antagonistic forces. The action moved along at a good pace, and although some of the scenarios were initially confusing, the reader learns more about the situation as Owen does, and things start to fall into place, leading up to a conclusion that closes up enough loose ends to be satisfying but leaves enough new possibilities open to be interesting. Reviewed by: Candace Cunard

I love Irish Storytellers!

This is a book I HAD to finish reading before I could go to bed last night. Owen is different. He doesn't fit in at school and his mother is suffering from a mysterious mental disorder. Owen's father commited suicide and he hears people in town say, "Like father, like son," "He'll go the same way." Owen does suffer a crippling phobia of water. The sight of the harbor or a river makes him tremble. He finds refuge in his "den," a small clearing in the woods where he has built a fort with odds and ends of furniture and items he scavenged from the town junk yard. He is in his den one afternoon when the light in the sky changes and in a flash, Owen's world disappears. He encounters a person calling himself Sub-Commandant who is part of the Resisters and who has called the Sleepers to wake up because The Harsh have caused Time to start moving backward and are getting ready to attack. Wha-huh? Well, think how Owen feels! This was a terrific adventure story. There is a missing artifact, an epic journey and the hope that "The Navigator" will appear to restore the flow of Time and get the world back on track. Three young ones and a world to save--great stuff. The fantastical apparatus of this world such as the power source "Magno," the brass observation tower "Skyward," the "Q-Car," and goggled bad guys operating dragonfly-styled flying machines put me in mind of Flash Gordon serials. Illustrator, Jon Goodell has done a lovely service illustrating some of these technological wonders. There was still an unresolved mystery in my mind about a minor character in the beginning of the book. I think this means more stories are coming. I love Irish storytellers.

The Navigator

I thought the book was great after I read it! If you have not read this book I suggest you read because it is really good.

A fine pick middle school collections will find popular.

Eoin McNamee's THE NAVIGATOR (0375839100, $15.99) tells of Owen's world, which suddenly changes when time flows backward and his family and home vanishes. It's up to him to become involved in a battle between the Resisters and their old enemies the Harsh. A powerful fantasy for middle school leisure readers builds swift action upon strong characterization: this plus vivid cover art makes it a fine pick middle school collections will find popular.

I navigated my way through this book in one day!

The Navigator is a very good book. I really enjoyed listening to it; I listened to it in one day. The descriptions are very good and I feel like I'm living it. The Navigator is about a boy named Owen who meets these people called the resistors who are resisting against the Harsh who are trying to take the world back to before their where people at all. Overall it was a very good book and I can't wait for the next one in the series!