The Spartan Sacrifice (A Jump in Time, 4)
This fourth in a series of time-jumping novels takes 17-year-old Dan Renfrew to the year 480 BC, just in time to witness the most stunning battle he’s ever heard about: Thermopylae, when 300 Spartans stood heroically against the Persians. Dan’s responsibility as a time-jumper is to respond when there’s a “glitch” in the stream of history that could change all of it; mend the glitch, and he can go home. But when mending this one demands that he step into a bloody and overmatched battle himself, going home afterward isn’t a likely option—especially when his time-jumping partner Sam, aka Samantha, with her beauty and her refusal to let him love her, gets furious and puts him into more deadly danger at a critical moment. The real point of all his efforts, when he’s not actively mending a glitch, is to stop psychopath Victor Stahl from taking over the past-and-present world in order to install a new world order that lets the wealthy and unscrupulous own and run everything. (Book 1 of the series came out in March 2023, so draw your own conclusions about political coincidence.)
Dan’s efforts to stop Victor take him across several “red lines” of his own morality in this book, and self-forgiveness isn’t guaranteed to follow self-knowledge for him. No need to read the earlier titles first, as Varga’s lively, accessible writing and quick historical backgrounding pull everything together (aimed at teens, and appealing to adults as well). But because the deepest values at stake here are love, loyalty, and courage for Dan and his closest friends, waiting a year for book 5 to follow this highly recommended adventure may be the toughest part.
