I started watching Booktube in 2012, a year after Ruby Red was released in English, and it was EVERYWHERE. At that time, if you exclusively watched ‘big’ Booktubers, you were guaranteed to see the same 20 or so titles spoken about on a rotational basis. This series was one of them. I somehow got it into my head that it was a medieval fantasy – I definitely blame the title; I was ardently convinced it was a Red Riding Hood retelling – which intrigued me. Not enough for me to go to the effort of ordering the book. Or, indeed, accurately noting the synopsis. But enough that the title and author curled up in some cobwebby corner of my mind like a cat having a snooze, waiting for the day I stumbled across it in a used bookstore or the library.
Fast forward almost a decade to me frantically scrolling through Overdrive in an attempt to find something to listen to on my way to work, and that cat slowly stretching and yawning as Ruby Red popped up on my screen.
Has this simile become convoluted enough yet?
What is Ruby Red about?
Sixteen year old Gwyneth Shepherd has a pretty normal life considering she is descended from a long line of time-travelers. Luckily for her, the time-traveling gene has skipped over her and bestowed itself on her practically perfect cousin Charlotte. She has mastered lessons in history, dancing, and 19th century etiquette since she could walk and talk. Gwen has spent her adolescence watching films, reading magazines, and hanging out with her best friend, Lesley.
So she is more than a little surprised when she finds herself a few hundred years in the past.
Suddenly she’s doing homework in cellars in 1953, wearing lavish ballgowns while dancing quadrilles, and risking her life to fulfill an ancient prophecy and save the world by finding the Philosopher’s Stone. All this while falling for Gideon, her gorgeous, cranky time-traveling companion.
Characters
Gwen is not the strongest main character. Admittedly, she seems more like a caricature of a teenage girl than a real teenage girl. It’s also important to note that this whole trilogy takes place over the course of about two weeks. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for character development. In fact, this series made me realise that all you need to do is give me a dreamy bastard with dark hair and green eyes and I’ll be obsessed with him even if his only character traits are sarcasm and grumpiness.
Writing
…is not great. Though it’s important to note that these books were originally written in German. Therefore I have no way of knowing if the less than stellar descriptions are the fault of Kerstin Gier or a sub-par translation. That being said, it’s also not terrible. It was simply fine. Not good enough to impress me, but not so bad that it distracted from the story.
Which brings me to…
Plot
There’s not a lot of it. But it’s a great ride all the same. Our overarching plot of Gwen’s mission to save the world takes us across all three books, with very little in the way of subplots, except for the budding romance between Gideon and Gwen, and the mounting animosity between Gwen and Charlotte.
Despite the fact that nothing much happens until the end of the third book, these books are remarkably fast-paced. I thoroughly enjoyed all of Gwen’s teenage angst and the romantic yearning. These books reminded me how FUN YA can be when it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
But there was one issue that popped up a couple of times, and I had strong feelings about it:
Time travel
Now, I’m not going to pretend that I fully understand the physics of theoretical time travel, but the approach to it in this series is… confusing the say the least.
It’s said early on in Ruby Red that you can only travel to the past, not the future, because that hasn’t happened yet. This seems to suggest that time in this universe is linear, rather than being – as we all know it truly is – ‘a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff’. Fine. I’ll take that. But then some stuff happens that definitely suggests that time is circular.
For example, there’s a scene in which a character travels back to a point that he has previously travelled to and encounters himself. Our present day version of him – let’s call him Person A – knocks out his earlier self – we’ll call him Person A 2.0. However, when Person A 2.0 originally travelled back to that point, he was knocked out, presumably by Person A. Which is how Person A – in the current timeline – has the brainwave to knock Person A 2.0 out in the first place. In this case, time must be circular! Because future events have impacted what’s happened in the past.
And that’s not the only moment something like this happens.
Then again, this is not intended to be hard sci-fi, and I would imagine that most of the intended target market doesn’t have the same standards for the mechanics of time travel as I do. I’ve watched Donnie Darko. A LOT.
Verdict on Ruby Red?
On the whole, I really enjoyed these books. On a technical level, they definitely weren’t the best, but I had so much fun listening to them. I probably would have been obsessed with these if I’d read them when I came out. I just have slightly higher standards now. If you’re just looking for a fun time-travel fantasy with romance and teen angst, I would definitely recommend it.
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