Title: If You Have Time

Author: Norman Gilliland

Reviewer: John Krause

Genre: Middle-grade fantasy/adventure

Publisher: NEMO Productions, 2023

If You Have Time will sweep you off to a far-away land in the distant past. Or maybe it's the present. Possibly the future. Time itself means everything and nothing in this engaging middle-grade adventure by Norman Gilliland.

Four friends, Drew, Jasmine, Joy, and Lila, mysteriously find themselves transported to a strange land in an era full of ruthless pirates, humble ranchers, flame-throwing dragons, brave knights, and even marooned spacemen. History, and the universe itself, overlaps in a literal race against time to recover a stolen heirloom watch that ticks away the seconds in ways the kids could never have imagined.

Gilliland paints vivid images of life on a pirate ship full of rag-tag rapscallions up to no good. Equally picturesque is a lush island populated with hardworking farmers and shrewd politicians. A world in which the unexpected is the only thing one can rely on.

The author skillfully weaves elements from the friends' present-time, such as a missing volleyball and tire pump, into the past which strengthens the premise that this world is unlike any encountered in comparable novels in this genre.

The novel switches between omniscient point-of-view and close point-of-view from the different friends. The narrative would have been better served to keep the story in the head of only one or two of the main characters. Although the story does move forward in a logical sequence of events, the pacing does get slow at times. In one or two instances, just as the action is heating up, the characters get into a long discussion or argument that has little to do with the plot.

If you wish to escape to a world both orderly and chaotic, full of both misfits and heroes, where time both stands still and speeds up, grab a copy of If You Have Time.