A Time of Fire
Robert Westall
Published by Piper
0-330-33754-8, £3.50 pbk
This has the setting and background of The Machine Gunners and is a strongly emotional and physical story. When Sonny's mother is killed in an air-raid, his father joins up determined to get revenge and Sonny is cared for by his grandparents. Physical anger runs through Westall's books and there's violence here in the killing, a fight, the guns and the helpless fury of the survivors. Justice is what the book seems to ask for and the ending, wonderfully dramatic, provides it with an unexpected twist. This apparently effortless storytelling will delight many readers.
Reviewed in BfK No. 93 (July 1995) by Adrian Jackson (AJ)
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