"A fun combination of reality and fantasy with emphasis on fantasy. A great place to meet new heroes and villains who display some very human tendencies. Petra Bravo is a young girl who travels to Rim through a time warp created by a magician called Vahinya, who turns out to be a very good friend, even when she is occupying a cat's body. In Rim, it is found Petra's coming was foretold in old legends and that she would be "a being of your kind" who would help with a problem concerning a destructive icy wind. A second adventure involves the city ruled by Jadnan and populated by the grey children. Here Petra meets Kveggla, house- keeper to an evil demon who was exiled many thousands of years before in a battle of wills and magic. Petra's third adventure is when she is captured by Ramgor after she goes to the Mountain of Evil Dreams to help free Vahinya who is held there. This is a story that could easily be the first in a series of exciting adventures for Petra and her new friends. "Rim" intro- duces the young reader to the world of fantasy, and stretches the imagination in visiting places like the Sea of Sorrow or the place where the Lantern people live. Highly recommended as a read to please any reader. Enjoy."--Anne K. Edwards, eBook Reviews Weekly and author of Journey into Terror.
"Petra Bravo first learned of the Land on the Rim of Time when she was transported there to defeat a rather minor threat. During her brief stay, she learned about the eons old land out of time where magical beings descended from demons lived and observed other worlds. It was a peaceful, happy place, with only one enemy, a demon who refused to be adapted into a peaceful creature and now lurked in a void, waiting to re-enter some world and wreck havoc. Upon returning home, it all becomes rather like a dream, a distant memory to Petra. Then, one of her friends takes control of her cat to warn her that the demon, Ragmor is poised to strike. Petra is needed to help defeat him. So it is that she embarks on a fantastic odyssey where her inner st rength is her greatest weapon. Demonized gnomes, ages old mythic evils, and beings that are purely mean will stand in her way using trickery and cruelty to hinder her quest. Then, when facing her foe, love may be the thing that overcomes her. If you are a fan of quests and fantastic worlds, no matter your age, you will be charmed by this book. It has a sweetness and grit that all classic fairy tales share, and an originality that keeps it from being tired and trite."--Amanda Faye, The Eternal Night
The first time I visited the Land on the Rim of Time I actually had no choice. My parents had died in a car crash a few months earlier and I had many unpleasant dreams at nights. The time rip had come open in my bedroom after one especially intense nightmare. I thought the rip was an ordinary hallucination of the kind you sometimes get after a dream before being fully awake. Then the dream's pictures linger a while on the eye's retina and are seen as mirages or ghosts in the room, although one has in fact quit dreaming. I don't know if this happens to everyone. It happens rather often to me anyway, and the pictures can be very fascinating. Figures of shadow or of light seem to be standing in the room, but they are only illusions, lies to the mind. After a while, they fade away and disappear, leaving only the too well known everyday view to watch. This makes me a bit disappointed; I would rather see a real ghost just once.
At this time, a trembling, shining rip--about a yard long--hung in the air over the bedroom floor. I was half-awake when I left my bed to have a look at this peculiar light phenomenon. Had I really dreamed about a light-rip floating in the air? I took some drowsy steps towards it. Suddenly it sucked me in with great power and I noticed that I could no longer see, hear or breathe. Even before I got scared, I tumbled out on a forest path. It was dark except for a big white moon and the glowing rip, which had thrown me out. Its light became weaker and weaker until it faded out completely. Beside the path where I lay more or less spread out, a woman was squatting.
She had chalky white skin, raven black hair and green eyes with narrow pupils that made her look like a cat. The form of her face was slightly triangular. She said something I didn't understand, then searched the pockets of her neat dark-grey garment for something, finally found a small cube-formed device that she turned on, after which I understood the meaning of the foreign words:
"My name is Vahinya. I really do apologize, it was not my intention that you should end up here."
My illusory images usually did not speak. At least not if I was awake myself. Perhaps I had fallen on the bedroom floor and hit my head severely. Or I was back in my bed starting on a new dream. The cat-like woman looked sincere and friendly and was radiating some kind of mild self-assuredness. I decided that I too would introduce myself, as if I were awake and assuming all this was for real.
"My name is Petra Bravo," I said, sending a grateful thought to my absent parents, for not having christened me Britta. Britta Bravo is a very stupid-sounding name. My brother's name is Max Bravo. He is an artist and the name sounds good for that purpose. Maybe it explains why he is so successful at getting grants of all kinds. To me, the sculptures he produces look like gnarled black snails. They are extremely ugly, but on the other hand, he uses a lot of beautiful words when he explains why he is creating them. As for myself, I study genetics at the University of Stockholm. My great interest is the hidden human disposition towards evil. It is obvious that we have a genetic need for goodness, but why do we have evil? My goal is to find the explanation in one or several human genes. In my daydreams I imagine myself wiping out all evil and being awarded the Nobel Prize in biology.
"Did you make that shining rip in the air?" I asked.
"Well, I suppose I have to admit that I did," she said. "It is a time rip. I'm training myself to pronounce the spell in the right way."
"It landed in my bedroom," I said.
The night was cool in a summerish way. Nevertheless I felt the draught of small ice-cold currents of air through my thin pyjamas. There were pine needles on the path under my feet. Around me, vaguely distinguishable, was a high-grown forest of the kind that seems to be wild, but where in fact somebody regularly removes dead branches and brushwood.
"The time rip has disappeared, and I need some time to make a new one, especially if it is supposed to lead in the opposite direction while still keeping its exact coordinates," the cat-woman said.
I was so confused I had forgotten her name.
The chilly night wind continued to attack me in irregular puffs. It was no ordinary breeze. The draught of the wind felt nasty, as if it lived and had a will and could interfere with my thoughts. It became a song in my head: Cold, wind, more, worse, always, cold, wind, more, worse, always... The song had strange, unfamiliar words and sounds, yet I knew their meaning: Eternal cold and destruction of all growing and living things was the wind's desire.
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