Book Reviews, Teen fiction

The Unlikely Intrusion of Adams Klein

by John Greco 2025 / 288 pages Rating: good/GREAT/gift Adams Klein is a pretty ordinary 14-year-old, except, maybe for that "s" at the end of his first name.... and that he's from the future. He's been sent back 200 years, to our modern day, for his protection. In the future the dictator wants to kill Adams, but now that he's back in the past, he's safe, right? Well, so long as he doesn't get noticed. If he pops up in a newspaper, then the future's dictator can figure out where he is, and when, and send his killer robots back in time to get him. So Adams keeps a low profile, hiding in the woods in the middle of the winter. But how long can a boy do that without the loneliness getting to him? Then, when he sees a girl, Emma Bloom, fall through the ice, he springs into action and saves her, and that gets him noticed! Are the killer drone robots on their way? You bet. But saving Emma also got Adams friends: Emma, and a boy named Clay Danvers. Together they'll take on the Marshall and change the future! Cautions There is some violence, but mostly talk of it, rather than anything detailed. But some talk of people getting killed is inevitable in a book about a future really evil tyrant. Maybe the freakiest bit is someone being threatened with having his vocal cords removed and implanted in a drone. I've read the sequel too, and while I don't want to give many spoilers, but I'll share one that's... symptomatic. At one point a robot basically becomes a moral creature – it's like it now has a soul. If this was a secular book I'd maybe have a problem with that, as the evolution-pushing materialist world says we are just meat computers/robots ourselves, so a sufficiently complex robot should be able to become a conscious moral creature with its own soul of sorts (though maybe materialists would say neither robots nor people have any sort of non-corporeal part of themselves like a soul). My point is, in secular hands a human-like robot would be an attack on the distinctiveness of human-kind (Gen. 1:26-27). But that's not what's going on here. It's just a fun quirky side-character, that's all. So there are some plot points that in a secular author's hands might be troublesome but just aren't here. I'll also note – this is a bit of spoiler, so don't tell your kids – that the evil future "Marshall" is playing with occultic things. He's trying to get help from "the Ones Out There." I was a bit worried where it was going at first, but I had no need – it speaks to the spiritual realm, but from a solidly Christian perspective. Conclusion Unlikely Intrusion is the first book in the TimeFall Trilogy, and the second, The Bewildering Courage of Emma Bloom, is every bit as good, which has me looking forward to book 3, The Astonishing Destiny of Clay Danvers. I think the series would be best for boys (and some girls too) 10 through 14 who like adventure stories. Lots of action here, and kids with courage. Very creative, and the Christian underpinnings are evident, even if they aren't explicit. You can hear the author read Chapter 1 below.