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Charlie Watts And The Rip In time by Marcus A. Eden-Ellis
01/02/2006 . Source: Paul Skevington 
pub: Roobee Publishing/Trafford Publishing. 265 page paperback. Price: £13.00(UK), $22.50(US), $26.53(CAN). ISBN: 1-41205460-5). Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.trafford.com
Print on demand. Good idea? Well sometimes, yes. As a format it is responsible
for allowing novels to be published that might not otherwise have seen the light
of day. Brilliant!
Unfortunately, it also enables other novels to be inflicted upon the world, books
of such nightmarishly poor quality that they make picking up a bad case of the
bubonic plague seem preferable in comparison. Yes, ladies and gentleman, 'Charlie
Watts And The Rip In Time' is indeed one of those books.
It concerns a young lad named Charlie. He's a studious, pleasant sort, who is unfortunately the target of his school's resident bully Mick. Rather than using a machete, Mick is inclined to only use his fists on Charlie, which I think is quite thoughtless considering a large bladed weapon introduced early into the narrative could have saved me a couple of hundred pages of pure misery. But I digress.
Charlie has two friends, named Ron and Hermione. Whoops, no, make that Jerry and Emma. If you would like to get a good idea of how their group dynamic works, I would suggest that you try and catch one of the four quite popular magic-school based films that have come out in the last few years. The author doesn't seem to be too keen to keep these two around for long, though. Charlie quickly ditches them when he visits his Grandfather in the summer holidays. An unconvincingly contrived accident draws Charlie's attention to a magic wardrobe. When he steps into it he finds himself in a fantastical land of fauns and lions, witches and...damn it, I've done it again. That doesn't happen at all.
He actually discovers a secret door to his grandfather's cellar, which features
a convenient en suite magic portal into the past. Again, the novel misses an opportunity
to kill this annoying character by having him arrive so far back in time that
he chokes on the poisonous atmosphere of the planet or burns to death in molten
rock. Disappointingly, he arrives in 1140 during the reign of King Stephen, who
is currently at war with his evil cousin, Matilda. He comes to be a resident at
the castle where King Stephen is staying and, as chance will have it, uncovers
a plot by Matilda to kidnap the King so that she can claim the throne. Hours of
tedium later, everything's all wrapped up and Charlie is, most stubbornly, still
not dead.
I hate everything about this book and as I can find absolutely nothing positive
to say about it, it seems almost pointless to list its defects. Let's do it anyway
though.
First we have the consistent grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, accompanied
by the most comprehensive mangling of the English language since somebody threw
a case full of blood-smeared English dictionaries into the lion enclosure. Here's
a great example, 'Charlie did not know exactly how old Gramps was but you could
swear that no matter what age he turned out to be, he was actually a lot younger.'
Say what?
We then quickly move onwards to a rousing display of questionable maths. Charlie enters the time portal and travels 'over nine hundred years into the past'. He arrives in the year 1140. I could be wrong, but travelling back nine hundred years from the book's 2005 publication would make it 1105 at the latest wouldn't it?
The book also gains the implausible time-travel award for the most confused logic
in this particular area that I have ever encountered. For instance, Charlie's
grandfather is worried that Charlie's presence in the period may be derailing
history from its predestined course. Despite this, he sees no problem in ruthlessly
butchering anyone who gets in his way. The novel's hilariously bad grasp on its
central theme leads to a great scene where Charlie's grandfather gives a badly
injured man a bag of sweets and some water to help him recover. He then proceeds
to check his magic time-travel device to see if he's buggered up history by doing
this. It left me wondering what he was going to do if he found out that he had
indeed made a mistake. Probably stick a sword through the guy and take the sweets
back!
I found the novel's twisted version of history mildly offensive, too. The evil
usurper Matilda is ugly and hideous, with bursting boils on her face and a cruel
temperament. King Stephen is good and just and we're all supposed to cheer when
he wins in the end.
A quick search of www.Britannia.com shows that in reality, whilst being a reportedly
pleasant kind of guy, Stephen had previously 'promised to recognise his cousin
as lawful heir', before summarily disinheriting her. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle
states of his reign, 'it lasted for nineteen years...till the land was all undone
and darkened with such deeds, and men said openly that Christ and his angels slept.'
Hooray for King Stephen! The only element of history that this novel is good for,
is being it.
The author is currently working on a sequel. Never mind though, there's always the off chance that Charlie might get disembowelled in the next instalment.
I feel better already.
Paul Skevington
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