Earth & Sky (The Earth & Sky Trilogy)

Ever since Skylar was a little girl, she's felt a wrongness in the world. Certain things and people give her unexplained panic attacks. It all started with the mysterious disappearance of her older brother Noam when she was only five years old. He went out to the store to get something for her and he never came back. After she lost Noam, nothing in the world seemed right, and she felt like it more than just grief that was causing it. Twelve years later, Skylar is still trying to convince people that she's normal, but everywhere she turns, she sees things that are just...wrong. It's not like she can explain it or do anything about it, so she just clutches the bracelet that is the last remaining piece of her brother and fills her head with numbers to drown out the wrongness she feels, but it's only getting worse. One day, at a school field trip to the courthouse, she has a horrific flash of a fiery explosion and her own death, but as quickly as the vision came, it went away. Skylar finds herself fine, but screaming in an otherwise quiet room surrounded by her shocked classmates. Her screaming catches the attention of a strange boy named Win, who is about to change the path of Skylar's life, assuming he can keep anyone else from noticing her.

With a few words and an otherworldly time traveling cloth, Win explains to Skylar that she isn't crazy, and the wrongness she's felt all her life isn't all in her head. According to Win, alien scientists have been messing with Earth's timeline for thousands of years, not caring about the consequences. Their experiments have been altering history and leaving ripples behind, these ripples are what Skylar sees as wrongness. These ripples are causing catastrophic changes to the planet and if the time-travelling experiments don't stop soon, the very fabric of the reality will unravel and the Earth and everyone on it will be destroyed. For some reason, Win believes that Skylar's ability to sense the small shifts in reality are the key to saving the world. Throughout history, a member of his group has hidden the pieces of a machine that can put an end time travelling and stop the further destruction of the planet. Skylar agrees, but partly because with time travel, she believes she can bring back her brother, or at least find out what happened to him. She has no idea how dangerous this mission is, though. There are alien Enforcers hot on their trail and ready to kill as they hop through history to try to save the future.

My Thoughts

Well, that was fun! Earth & Sky is an exciting and clever romp through the ages. Not only that, but it's got cool alien technology, a complex plot and a truly star-crossed romance. This book manages to fit into several different catagories at once: sci-fi, historical fiction, contemporary, action/adventure, mystery/thriller and romance. All aspects are well written and perfectly fit together, plus, it's just an enjoyable read. At first I was thinking, oh, man...time travel and paradoxes...aliens...globetrotting though history...this sounds so cool, but it could get confusing! BUT, it did not. The story flowed well and was fast paced and full of adventure. Sure, there were a couple of times that I had to stop and think (mostly when it got to talking about paradoxes), but it was fine, it didn't take me out of the story. The time travel aspect was very well done and even if someone doesn't quite understand everything 100%, their overall mission to save the world keeps it moving so you don't have to become a scientist to enjoy the story. I also really liked Skylar as a character. She's smart and brave, yet vulnerable. Win is great, too. Yes, he's an alien rebel with a mission, but he's also curious and still has a lot to learn about the human race that he so desperately is trying to save. He and Skylar are learning from each other along the way, not just about fighting for the future, but also about what it means to be human.

I'm REALLY looking forward to continuing this story. The next book, The Clouded Sky, releases May 5th, 2015.

I've been loving sci-fi YA lately and since I'd heard so much good stuff about Megan Crewe's Fallen World series, I thought this book would be perfect for me. Sadly, no. I had to push myself to finish it due to sluggish pacing, generic characters, and a plot thoroughly devoid of excitement.

The premise had so much promise what with aliens and time travel, and yet it really failed to deliver on those concepts. The aliens are rather un-alienlike and the time travel choices felt so arbitrary. Pretty much all the questions and mysteries could have been solved immediately if they'd just traveled to the right time and place, but no, that doesn't happen. Cue the frustration on my part.

The first 100 pages of the book define tedious and it really doesn't improve much after that. I was just really underwhelmed by everything.

The start of the story did not quite grab my attention like most. I don’t read up book summaries ahead of time so I had no idea what I was in for. I thought the story was an ordinary one about a teenager — until it was not.

I love how Megan creates a different picture of an alien; you definitely do not get that a lot these days (or maybe that’s just based on what I’ve read). Not quite sure about the possibility of romance but often, it strikes as weird and gross to have any such type of relationship with an otherworldly creature. Mostly because I associate aliens with ET. Haha.

Read full review here: http://thebookloverslounge.com/review-earth-and-sky-by-megan-crewe/

Disclosure: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Earth & Sky
by Megan Crewe

Skylar's family tragedy when she was five losing her older brother mysteriously has changed her out look on life. She decided to not miss anything, but soon after that decision she learned something that haunted her for years, things felt wrong. She could not say why, she could not explain, but she did what she could to cope. Then the events of a class trip will change her life forever. She is able to look into the past, and save the future. This is a dynamic children's book that should be in every classroom of middle school students. The book looks not only a personal responsibility, but the responsibility of society, of science and of self. The breath and scope of the book is amazing, the characters enduring, and the story just out of this world. I can't wait to delve into the A clouded sky and start the next adventure.

Great voice, great characters, engaging story -- my daughter and I both loved it!

I really enjoy Megan Crewe's books so I was very excited to read Earth & Sky. Science fiction is not what I usually gravitate towards, but between a unique main character, some historical fiction woven in, and strong logic behind the science fiction, I was quite impressed.

Earth & Sky combines a science fiction base with flashes of historical fiction, which I absolutely loved. I am a big fan of historical fiction, so having Skylar and Win jump to different time periods on their quest -- and to get to explore these time period a bit, not just hop in, hop out -- was a lot of fun for me. I think Crewe did a wonderful job of trying to capture the feeling of each location and time period and I wish I could have spent more time in each of these places because I was enjoying that a lot.

When it comes to the actual time travel element that made those history visits possible, I was impressed with the logic. I'm sure more experiences sci-fi fans than I will have some questions for Crewe, but as a casual (but reasonably intelligent) sci-fi fan, I was able to follow along with the explanations and logic behind the time travel and the aliens' actions that were messing with Earth. I didn't pick up on any glaring errors or inconsistencies that would have pulled me out of the story or made it completely unbelievable, and I think that made a huge difference because I was able to suspend my disbelief when it came to the alien aspect since the science aspect lined up well. In this sense, it was very well executed.

I thought Skylar was a great character, especially in the way she dealt with the crazy that Win brought to her life. She isn't one of those immediately over-trusting girls that seem to have cropped up since Twilight's Bella; she is immediately suspicious of Win once he starts showing up more than is reasonable. She also doesn't accept his story right away; it takes some convincing and some hard proof to get her on board, which I really respected. It was also interesting to have a main character who is so into math, as that seems to be unusual in a lot of YA, and especially so because it is math on which her compulsion that keeps her grounded is based (I'm not sure that's exactly the correct way to put it, but basically she seems to struggle with a mental illness that is associated with the changes the alien scientists have been making to Earth and math helps her keep it from overwhelming her). Now, I'm definitely not a very well educated judge on portrayals of mental illness, but I think Crewe handled it well and respectfully, and the way she associated it with the conflict in the world, thus tying Skylar in, was smart.

One thing I did struggle a bit with was keeping the other characters straight. Some of them were easy enough to remember, but when it came to people who were largely grouped together, especially Skylar's friends, it wasn't easy to remember who was who. They could have been distinguished from one another more, though I think that would have taken more scenes with them, which weren't necessary for the plot. This wasn't a huge detractor for me, but something happens at the end with one of the friends and it didn't have the impact on me that I think it was meant to because I didn't even remember which of the friends it was by just her name. Overall this was only a small issue, though.

Earth & Sky has a lot going for it and while there are a few things that held me back from totally loving it, there is also plenty to praise, including the fact that it worked so well for just a casual sci-fi reader like myself. I really appreciated that and am interested to hear what other readers -- sci-fi fans and otherwise -- think!

Ok I loved this book. Thank you so much Megan and yabookscentral.com for the ARC. One thing I do have to say is that the time-traveling was a bit confusing for me, but I have never really understood time travel in general so that’s normal I guess. Anyways on to the review. Skylar is a not-so-normal teen girl who one day runs into Win who, unbeknownst to Sky, is an alien from planet. Win is part of an alien conspiracy group that wants to stop the controlling of Earth by the alien race. The reasons I love this book i because Sky actually does something to help take down the machine that the aliens created to help them control Earth. She doesn’t just sit around waiting to be rescued or let her fear stop her from helping out Win. One thin that I was kind of disappointed about was the lack of romance. I did think that there was going to be more romance in the book but I am kind of glad that there wasn’t because it doesn’t take over the book. The part the killed me was when they go back to the past and we find out what actually happened to Noam, Sky’s older brother who was presumed to have run-away, and Sky can’t interfere because it’ll just mess up everything her and Win had already done in order to free Earth from the evil grips of the Kemyates. She just has to stand there and watch as what happens to Noam happen. And then she still can’t go back and stop Noam because of some time traveling reason, that I did no understand, seriously time travel is s confusing! Anyways poor Sky I just wanted to cry with her. So many feelings. The only thing that soothed my heart, by the end of the book, was that this is a trilogy so there are two more books. This gives me hope that they’ll go back and save Noam.

I am a huge fan of Megan Crewe's books. I was really excited about this one. I was not disappointed. if you are a Megan Crewe fan, you will love it.

Pretty interesting and unique story. What if aliens were controlling things on earth over the past few thousand years by manipulating time and experimenting on us? It's a fun concept, It reminds me somewhat of some movies I've seen and I did enjoy this book. I look forward to the next book in the series.

Megan Crewe's EARTH & SKY is a YA science fiction novel about aliens, time travel, and a race to save the planet. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a tedious slog to get through.

High school senior Skylar (or Sky) has always suffered from anxiety issues and panic attacks - it's as if the very fabric of the universe suddenly seems to come unraveled and she feels lost and terrified. This sense of "wrongness" always rights itself eventually, and she's convinced that whatever is happening to her is psychological in nature, something she can overcome by focusing on concrete things like numbers and math. But when Sky meets a strange boy named Win, she learns that there's a logical explanation for the frightening things she has seen, an explanation rooted in a centuries-old alien conquest, travel through time and space, and an alien resistance movement determined to free planet Earth from a horrible enslavement.

This all sounds really interesting, but the story is so wrapped up in its two central characters, Sky and Win, that the wider reaches of its plot get totally lost. Win comes from another planet, a planet that has been destroyed by the careless actions of its inhabitants. He's also part of a resistance movement attempting to right the wrongs done to planet Earth over the centuries. But we get little of Win's backstory, and even less of the real parameters of the resistance. The purpose of the alien conquest (which involves scientific experimentation and study) never really makes much sense, and Crewe spends little time developing this aspect of her story. Instead, the huge majority of the novel involves Sky and Win running around evading alien Enforcers and traveling through time and space to find the parts of an alien weapon that just might free the planet from alien control.

This might not be a problem if there was chemistry of any kind between Sky and Win. But there isn't. There are hints of a possible romance, but Sky seems to have more chemistry with Daniel (a guy she refers to briefly in the first chapter) than she ever does with Win. And his interest in her seems totally pragmatic - she can help him find the parts of the alien weapon. Oh, there's a kiss - Win wants to find out what it feels like to kiss an Earthling girl - but there's nothing romantic about it.

And if the romance doesn't work, the novel becomes more tedious than exciting. Sky and Win journey to 19th century Paris, Vietnam in the year 938, and 18th century Ohio, but none of it seems particularly real or believable. The same things happen over and over - Sky and Win time-travel, the Enforcers pursue them, they almost get caught, and then they do it all over again. By the third trip, it all seems rather meh.

I like time travel stories, and Crewe does a commendable job trying to make her version of time travel (which involves a "time cloth" rather than a time machine) jive with physics. I just never felt invested in either Sky or Win as characters. Since this is the first of yet another YA series (of course it is!), that's a problem. Crewe sets up the second installment at the end of this one, but I felt no inclination to pursue this story further. I might have liked this better had it been a fully developed, complete novel - as it is, it's the set-up for something that isn't interesting enough to justify multiple volumes.

If you enjoy time travel stories and don't mind a bit of repetition (and a cliff-hanger ending!), EARTH & SKY might be worth a read. But be prepared for characters that aren't particularly compelling. Bottom line, it's an OK novel.