Terrance Brown, the high school-aged protagonist of Kordel Lentine’s FROM UNDER THE SUN is a smart, goofy, picked-on teen. Walking home the long way to avoid being bullied, he’s nearly killed by a bowling ball falling from the sky, which instead crashes explosively into a parked car. The explosion alarms a nearby resident, who yells at Terrance, presuming he is responsible. Terrance, unnerved by the near-death experience and tired of being picked on, grins madly at the resident, who snaps his photo, which lands Terrance in the local paper. This perfect prelude leads Terrance into fate-altering experiences with time travel, friendship with beautiful, popular Blaire Reynolds and a duel with a genius bent on using Terrance for his own ends.

Lentine’s nuanced, satisfying characterization of Terrance illuminates this excellent story. Terrance is by turns self-effacing, ill-considered, good-hearted, clever, funny and determined; his range as a likable, teen everyman is uncommonly expansive. He has a hopeful, improvisational approach to problem-solving that is both bane and gift. While Terrance’s character shines the brightest here, Blaire and Stanley, critical secondary characters, are also well-realized. FROM UNDER THE SUN is also graced with a set of solid tertiary characters, including Terrence’s mother, a small set of school bullies and a librarian from the future. FROM UNDER THE SUN — effectively a trilogy within one volume — is an extended tale in which everything fits. The threads of causality within the narrative are justified and move the events along plausibly. Futuristic technologies, character traits, and stories within the story function like a well-crafted watch — it all works together. The pacing occasionally bogs down toward the end, but that is a small downside in this well-crafted, engaging, original fiction.

The vividness of stories within the larger narrative and Lentine’s exploration of the implications of time travel provide added strengths in FROM UNDER THE SUN. Multiple chapters bring readers out of the story’s familiar landscape and the direct thrust of the plot. These chapters serve the greater whole, are engrossing on their own and enhance the overall richness. Finally, while the idea of time travel has been revisited in multiple narrative-based media, Lentine’s retake successfully explores time travel in a refreshing, thoroughgoing way.

Kordel Lentine’s FROM UNDER THE SUN is an exceptional entry in the young-adult fantasy genre–a well-told tale, full of great imaginative flourishes, a likable and well-realized hero and richly imagined story elements that fit together seamlessly to support the engrossing plot.

~Ellen Graham for IndieReader