not bad, but ending was not satisfying, and some of story was not important to the plot ( )

I've managed to read Margaret Anderson's kids'/YA trilogy in reverse order but, the way the three books are structured, this is actually not a problem. Where volumes #2 and #3 tell the two sides of the same story (and I found this a fascinating exercise), In the Keep of Time involves a quite different adventure and, for the most part, quite different kids in a quite different era. Unsurprisingly, it's the least fully formed of the trio, but it's still good reading.

Andrew and Elinor and younger siblings Ian and Olivia (Ollie) are sent for the summer to live with elderly Aunt Grace in the Scottish borders. Aunt Grace is part-time custodian of a ruined border keep nearby, Smailholm Tower. One day the kids notice her key to the place looks different -- glowing silver rather than a matte black -- and as they turn the key to enter the keep they find themselves cast back to 1460, where James II (the real James II, not James VII & II) is repelling the sassenachs. Andrew, Elinor and Ian are unchanged by the transition but, interestingly, Ollie "becomes" the Scottish peasant girl Mae, complete with an ignorance and backstory that place her existence very firmly in this earlier time.

After adventures, the kids get back to the present day . . . but Ollie is still Mae, and much effort must be put into educating her to fit her place in the modern world. A weak point of the book is that the other three kids seem improbably unconcerned as to what might have happened to the "real" Ollie meanwhile. Eventually, though, their consciences start to twinge; and luckily the key adopts that mysterious glow once more . . .

This time, however, instead of returning them to 1460 the keep/key time device hurtles them into the future world of the other two novels. Here they help the old woman Vianah (who features in the other two books, where she recalls them fondly). This time on return to their present they discover Mae is now once more Ollie, as if the real Ollie had been there all the time within her but hiding behind a curtain, or something.

As I imply above, this is a less satisfying tale than its two successors, but it nevertheless has lots going for it. The business with Ollie/Mae was interesting and original; but even more so is a subplot in 1460 where Andrew befriends and is befriended by a youth of his own age called Cedric. Cedric is mad keen to fight at the Battle of Roxburgh alongside the men, and Andrew facilitates this -- only to witness, close up, Cedric's death on the battlefield. It's a powerful moment -- in books for the young you don't expect sympathetic characters of the readers' own age group to be butchered -- and a strong reminder that battles aren't actually romantic adventures or merely scenes of gallantry: they kill people, good and bad alike.

Between this novel and the rest of the trilogy Anderson published an unrelated time-travel story, To Nowhere and Back (1975), which I'll be reading soon. I'm looking forward to it. ( )