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Time Travel

InuYasha

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InuYasha by Rumiko Takahashi
Format: Manga Series
Who it’s for: Teens

Kagome is a present-day high school student in Tokyo, but ends up getting sent back to Sengoku feudal era of Japan after she encounters a magical shrine. She meets a half-demon named InuYasha, who is stubborn but honest and loyal. After a treacherous event takes place where the powerful Shikon jewel shatters into a million pieces, the two heroes team up to find all of them before they slip into the wrong hands. Along the way, Kagome and InuYasha meet some amazing friends, go on great journeys, and try to protect the world from complete evil! This is a classic manga series that has so much depth and character development to it. The anime and movies that were based on this manga have been released, so if you love reading this series, give those a try! Find InuYasha in the catalog.

A Spindle Splintered

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A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow
Format: Book
Who It’s for:  Adults

“Sleeping Beauty is the worst fairy tale, pretty much any way you slice it.” According to Zinnia Gray. It’s her twenty first birthday and  most likely she will not have any more birthdays. Zinnia has a rare condition that no one, who was ever diagnosed with it, has ever lived past 21. On her twenty first birthday, her best friend Charm surprises her with a party, where she surprisingly, indeed has a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia touches it and pricks her finger…she actually does find herself falling through some sort of time warp of worlds along with other sleeping beauties. When she stops falling past a thousand other girls reaching for the spindles point, she hears one say, “help!” That’s when she stops falling. Zinnia looks up to see her, this ridiculously beautiful princess who says to her “from whence have you come?” At which point she passes out.
Zinnia is definitely  not in the same world where she was.
Fairytales as we know them are challenged through this narrative of a classic story and a multi-universe, time traveling event with a very different ending.

Find A Spindle Splintered in the catalog!

Inkblot

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Inkblot by Emma Kubert, Art by Rusty Gladd
Format: Book & eBook on Hoopla
Who’s it for?: Teens and Young Adults

Meet Inkblot! Anyone who cohabitates with a cat knows that our feline friends are going to do what they want, when they want. Inkblot is no exception. Seeker, a bookkeeping sorceress, accidentally summons this magical black cat, a “space-distorting demon” that has “no regard for any established law of nature, magic or otherwise.” As Seeker chases Inkblot through time and space, he leads them into chaos, from a pirate mutiny to battling giants and dragons and even solving a sphynx’s riddle. If you’re a cat person who happens to enjoy space travel, I highly recommend.

Find Inkblot in the catalog or on Hoopla!

Tenet

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Tenet
Format: DVD
Who it’s for: Adults

A CIA operative is involved in a mission at an opera house in Kyiv to extract an artifact. He is captured and tortured, but refuses to give up any information, swallowing a CIA-issued cyanide pill. But then he wakes up. He’s informed the interrogation was a test of loyalty he passed with flying colors, and he’s recruited into a new secret organization, Tenet.

He comes to learn that there is a war going on between the future and the present. In the future we’ve developed technology to invert entropy, moving people and objects backwards through time. That artifact our protagonist was attempting to extract is part of a device from the future that could end the world, and Tenet is trying to stop that from happening.

Tenet is a thought-provoking action flick, brought to you by Christopher Nolan, the auteur responsible for such films as Inception, The Prestige, and Memento, featuring excellent performances from the cast including John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, and Kenneth Branagh, an amazing score by Ludwig Göransson, and mind-blowing visual effects that earned the film several awards including an Oscar and a BAFTA (seriously, the film’s climatic “temporal pincer” sequence is unforgettable, trust me).

Find it in the catalog

Killjoys

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Recommended TV Series
Series Title: Killjoys
by SyFy & Universal Studios
Format: TV Series on DVD
Who it’s for: [Teens, Adults,]

“From the producers of Orphan Black and the creator of Lost Girl comes Killjoys. This sci-fi adventure follows a fun-loving, hard living trio of interplanetary bounty hunters (a.k.a. Killjoys) sworn to remain impartial as they chase deadly warrants around the Quad, a system of planets on the brink of revolution. A motley crew that always has each other’s back, until a dark secret threatens to tear apart their trio for good. Follow their adventures and discover their secrets with all 10 episodes back-to-back and uninterrupted.”  – via SyFy and Universal Studios

I picked this up because a former coworker recommended it.  I was looking for a new Sci-fi series that was like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, or Eureka.  The DVD cover was quite attractive and intrigued me. Plus it was produced by the SyFy channel. The show has many similar traits to Firefly, Star Wars, and other science fiction entertainment.  I really like space operas with action, adventure, mystery, a lil romance, and fun.  This show has all of those elements yet somehow they put their own unique spin on it.  It will feel familiar to regular fans of Sci-fi but not exactly, the same plot twists, friendships, villains, rebellions, romance, robots, etc. A good thing (or bad depending) is that the show was not produced in the USA. This means it is short; there are only 10 episodes per season.  You don’t have to carve out 2 months of your life to binge all four seasons. Since every episode ends with at least one cliffhanger, I would suggest you checkout all 4 seasons on DVD at one time.

(Killjoys television series is inspired by the comic series written by Gerard Way, The true lives of Killjoys. The collected issues 1-6 are available in print format in Calvert County and digital format on hoopla .)

I would recommend this to people who like a bit of magical mystery with their typical episodic adventure space show.

Click to Request Season 1-4 on DVD!

Furyborn

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Furyborn by Claire Legrand
Format: Book
Who’s it for: Adults and Teens

A queen screams in the throes of childbirth.

A little boy travels to another place and time with a power that is a mystery to even himself.

An angel comes to the door with an evil intent.

A young woman decides to barter her soul for her family’s safety.

Claire Legrand’s Furyborn is bursting with tales of magic, love lost, heroic deeds, and tantalizing mysteries.  It is fantasy at its absolute best, but what makes Furyborn so compelling, and unique among its peers, is how Legrand sets up her narrative.  It follows two young women, Rielle, an aristocrat who is discovered to have a magical power that could either doom or save the world, and Eliana, a young bounty hunter that will do anything to protect the ones she loves.  The twist is that Rielle’s story takes place roughly 1000 years before Eliana’s.  The chapters alternate between each character’s point of view, as well as their place in time, which results in an amazing case where one story would seem to foreshadow the next, only to surprise you in how events actually play out.

Furyborn features a world that is as deep as it is complex, with an implicit history that helps the world to feel as real as any created by J.R.R. Tolkien or Christopher Paolini.  Each chapter starts with a quote from a historical figure of its world, each adding a satisfying tidbit of lore for readers to ponder.  For readers that love to figure out the timeline of a story and how events all fit together, this is an absolute paradise.

The first book in the Empirium trilogy, Furyborn introduces and resolves enough plot points to feel satisfying, but still leaves enough mysteries for readers to theorize about in the wait before its sequel, Kingsbane, is released next year.

Recommended for: fans of young adult fantasy, strong female protagonists, magic, time travel, rich fictional histories, and action.

Find it in the catalog.