Category: The Girl from Everywhere

The Girl from Everywhere #2
A great continuation of Nix’s story! While The Girl From Everywhere was all about Nix finding her place in the world, The Ship Beyond Time was about learning the value of her relationships and what she’s willing to sacrifice. We really delve into the mythology of Navigation in this one, and it does become a bit confusing and difficult to follow from time to time. But I had fun piecing it all together (it’s hard to follow a linear timeline when time travel is involved). And I have to hand it to Heilig, she really dealt with the idea of time travel and paradoxes well and didn’t shy away from it like most writers might. In fact, this book serves as an almost philosophical look at the impact of time travel: Can you really change the past? Or does your interference actually cause the events that you are trying to avert?

Once again, I wish there was a little more time travel in the book. We spend most of our time in the mythological city of Ker-Ys, and I really wanted to do some more time and location hopping. But that may have taken away from the story that Heilig was trying to tell, so in the end I can forgive it.

The ending of The Ship Beyond Time was a tad bittersweet, but also left the story open for new adventures and new beginnings. This may be the end of our story for now, but should Heilig ever choose to return to the world of Navigation, I’ll be right there with her.

The Girl From Everywhere #1
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting from The Girl from Everywhere, but it was so different and so much more than what I anticipated. Instead of an adventure story, I read about a girl lost and adrift in the world, finding her place and her purpose. Nix’s history is complicated, her relationships are complicated, everything about her is so complicated that it leaves her paralyzed; unable to really dedicate herself to a particular goal, ideal, or future. And in the beginning of the novel this bothered me, I felt like the story was adrift without a purpose. But slowly Nix starts to come into her own. She learns so much about herself, about what she really wants and needs, and about what it means to be a Navigator. She starts out angry and discouraged, and gains empathy, acceptance, and hope.

Not everyone will like this book. Its greatness lies much more in the character development and transformation than the actual story. While there is action and adventure, it is not really what drives the story. There is also far less “traveling” than I would have liked, based on the premise. But in the end, I loved it all the same. If the plot could have moved me as much as the character focus did, this would have made it to the top of my list.