Living in Threes

By Judith Tarr

Three lives. Three worlds. Three times.

Three young women, past, present, and future, come together to solve an age-old mystery and save a world.

Meredith is just settling in for a long and lazy summer, when her mother announces that she’s sending Meredith to Egypt to dig up an ancient temple.

That’s her mother’s dream vacation, not hers. But there are greater forces at work than a sixteenth-birthday present she doesn’t want and a summer she didn’t plan. 

Meru lives on a far-future Earth, where disease has been eliminated and humans travel through the stars in living ships. Just as Meru is about to fulfill her dream of becoming a starpilot, a mysterious message sends her on a journey to find her missing mother and save the people of Earth from a deadly plague.

Meritre is a singer in the Temple of Amon in ancient Egypt. Her people have survived a devastating plague, but Meritre foresees that the sickness will return. As she struggles to find a magical spell that will keep her loved ones safe, the gods take one last life. 

That life, and that death, will resonate through Meredith and Meru to the end of time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book View Cafe
• Release date: Nov 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781611382082

Judith Tarr

Judith Tarr is the author of more than twenty widely praised novels, including The Throne of Isis, White Mare's Daughter, and Queen of Swords, as well as five previous volumes in the Avaryan Chronicles: The Hall of the Mountain King, The Lady of Han-Gilen and A Fall of Princes (collected in one volume as Avaryan Rising), Arrows of the Sun, and Spear of Heaven. A graduate of Yale and Cambridge University, Judith Tarr holds degrees in ancient and medieval history, and breeds Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona.

Book preview

Dedication

For the real Meredith

who has waited very long and patiently for her book to come out in the world

Acknowledgments

This book could not have existed without the help of many friends and colleagues.

My agents, Russell Galen and Ann Behar, believed in it enough to let it go—and to encourage me to publish it through Book View Café.

But before that could happen, this happened: a successful Kickstarter, a round 256 backers, and the wherewithal to transform a manuscript into a book.

Thanks to the backers who have made it possible for Living in Threes to make its way out into the world:

Cora Anderson, Richard Kirka, Marty Grabien, Gwyndyn Alexander, Kari Sperring, Kathleen G. Seal, Alan Hamilton, Robin Taylor, Marci Ellingwood, Carole Nowicke, Ingrid Emilsson, Lisa Clark, Kit Kerr, Meredith Tarr, Woj, Katja Kasri, Hugh Agnew, Marianne Reddin Aldrich, Val Kondrich, Nancy Kaminski, Kathleen Hanrahan, Robin Marwick, RJ Nicolo, Molly Kalafut, Elizabeth Bennefeld, Michael Gaudet, K. Case, Linda Antonsson, Frauke Moebius, Jenny Graver, Noriko Shoji, Deborah Sumner, C. Joshua Villines, Mary Ellen Garland, Lauri M. Weaver, Christy Marx, Shauna Roberts, Catie Murphy, Ruth Stuart, Adrianne Middleton, Paula Mikkelsen, Paul Princejvstin Weimer, Pat Knuth, Mary Kay Kare, Peter Aronson, Rebecca Stefoff, Joseph Hoopman, Di, Valerie Nozick, M. Menzies, Nancy Pimentel, Dawn Marie Pares, Leah, Beth, SAMK, Anne Walker, April Steenburgh, Margaret C. Thomson, Ashley with the Morgans, M.L.K. Ondercin, Jaakko Kangasharju, Mary Spila, Poppy Arakelian, Sarah Patrick, Helen Wright, Paula Meengs, HY Tesler, Patricia Burroughs, Nancy Barber, Maryanne Stroud, Amanda Weinstein, K. Kisner, Pat Hayes, Kate Elliott, Phil Freund, Ceffyl, Solveig, Regina A. Tarr (hi, Mom!), Marti Wulfow Garner, Kerry Stubbs, Amy Sheldon, Mary Caelsto, Pat Cadigan, Christine Swendseid, Heidi Berthiaume, Sue Wolven, Donna P., Melinda Goodin from Australia, Kate Kirby, Cameron Harris, Ron Chance, Alison Farrin.

You are amazing. Thank you all.

Meredith

Chapter 1

That was the absolute best and the absolute worst summer of my life, the summer I turned sixteen.

Sixteen is a weird year. Make it sixteen with your dad off finding himself again—not that he’d been around much even before the divorce—and your mom in remission from ovarian cancer, and you can pretty much figure you’re being dumped on from somewhere.

What I didn’t figure, and couldn’t ever have figured, was how bad it was going to get—and how completely impossible both the bad and the good part would be.

Magic. It’s dead, they say. Or never existed.

They aren’t looking in the places I fell into, or finding it where I found it, that wonderful and terrible summer.

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I had plans with the usual suspects: Cat and Rick and Kristen. They had their licenses already, got them before school let out. I was thisclose to mine, with the September birthday and being the class baby.

It was going to be our summer on wheels, when it wasn’t on horseback or out on the beaches. We had it all mapped out.

Then Mom dropped the bomb.

I came home from the barn early that day, the day after the last day of school. Rick had the car, but his dad wanted it back by noon. So we’d hit the trails at sunup, then done our stalls and hay and water in a hurry with him already revving up the SUV.

When I got home, wringing wet and filthy and so smelly even I could tell I’d been around a manure pile, Mom was sitting out by the pool.

That wasn’t where she usually was on a Thursday morning. She still had her work clothes on, but she’d tossed off the stodgy black pumps and splashed her feet in the water.

Her hair had all grown back since the chemo. It was short and curly, and still a little strange, but I liked it. I thought it made her look younger and prettier.

She turned and smiled at me. She looked tired, part of me said, but the rest of me told that part to shut up. Good ride? she asked.

Good one, I answered. Bonnie only threw in a couple of Airs. And that was because Rick was riding Stupid, and she was living up to her name. Bonnie had to put her in her place.

Mom laughed.

As long as I was out there, I figured I’d do the sensible thing. I dropped my shirt and riding tights and got down to the bathing suit any sane person wears under clothes in Florida summer, and dived into the pool.

The water felt absolutely wonderful. Mom watched me do a couple of laps.

Finally I gave in. I swam up beside her and folded my arms on the tiles and floated there, and said, All right. Tell me.

She was still smiling. It must be something really good, to bring her out of court and all the way home.

I’ve been talking to Aunt Jessie, she said. She’s staying in Egypt this summer, instead of coming back home to Massachusetts.

I knew that. I talked to Aunt Jessie, too. She Skyped in at least once a week. Checking on me, and on Mom through me.

But Mom was in story mode. I kept quiet and let her go on.

She’s really excited, Mom said. She’s made some discoveries that she thinks are very important, and with everything that’s been going on over there, she hasn’t been at all sure she can keep getting the permits. She actually got a grant, which is just about unheard of these days.

She must be over the moon, I said.

Oh, she is. Mom paused. It’s a big grant. Big enough for a whole team.

Including you?

That came out of the way Mom was smiling—excited, as if she had a secret and she couldn’t wait to share. She’d been dreaming about Egypt for years, following all of Aunt Jessie’s adventures and reading and studying and talking about maybe someday, if she had time, if she could get away, if—

There were always reasons not to go. First she had to make partner in the law firm. Then she got asked to be a judge in the county court, and that needed her to be always on. Always perfect. And then there was the cancer.

So maybe she figured it was now or never. I could see that. Even get behind it. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

Mom away for the whole summer? Was she really ready to leave me for that long? I didn’t have my license yet. How was I going to—

All that zipped through my head between the time I asked my question and the time Mom answered, Including you.

That stopped me cold.

Mom grinned at my expression. You really thought it was me? I wish, but there are a couple of big cases coming on trial, and I might be called to the bench for another one, and—

You said you were going to take it easy this summer, I said. We both were. What would I do in Egypt?

Learn, said Mom. Explore. Be part of something big.

Florida is big enough for me, I said. What about Bonnie? And the trip to Disney World? And turtle watch? Turtle watch is important. The college needs us to count those eggs. That’s big, too. It’s real. It’s now. Not fifty million years ago.

Four thousand, give or take, said Mom, and Disney World will keep. So will the turtles.

Bonnie won’t. Bonnie needs me. She just got bred. We don’t even know if she’s pregnant yet.

We will tomorrow, Mom said. You’ve got a week till you leave. It’s all taken care of. Visas, everything. Aunt Jessie’s been working on it for months. It’s her birthday present to you.

She’d never said a word to me. Not even a hint.

I hate surprises, I said. I hate her.

Hate me, Mom said. It was my idea.

"It’s your dream. Mine is to spend the summer with my friends and my horse. Not baking in a desert on the other side of the world. There are terrorists over there. Revolutionaries. Things get blown up. People get blown up."

You will not get blown up, Mom said.

I pulled myself out of the water. I’m not going, I said.

Mom didn’t say anything. I grabbed a towel off the pile on the picnic table and rubbed myself dry, hard enough to make my skin sting, and marched off into the house.

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For once in the history of the universe, none of the usual suspects was answering their phone. I barricaded myself in my room and went laptop surfing instead.

I surfed for horse stuff and beach stuff and turtle stuff. Nothing whatsoever to do with Egypt. Who cared about sand and terrorists and old dead mummies? The only sand I wanted was right underneath me in Florida.

When my phone whinnied at me, I almost didn’t bother to answer it. After all, nobody could be bothered to answer me.

But the whinny was Cat, and she had an excuse. She’d been driving her kid brothers home from soccer.

Crisis? she texted.

Big time. But with the phone in my hand and the screen staring at me, I couldn’t manage to fit it all into 160 characters. Tell u tonight, I said. Still on for ice-cream run?

8:30, she answered. Rick too. Kelly’s got a date.

Normal me would have squeed and wanted to know all about it. Crisis me punched OK. See u then, and threw the phone on the bed.

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Mom was still home. I could hear her rattling around in the kitchen. Then the TV came on, rumbling away in the background.

That was weird. I almost went to find out why she wasn’t going back to work, but my mad was still too new. If she thought she was going to wait me out, she could just keep thinking it.

The computer beeped at me. The phone was lighting up with messages. Now everybody wanted to talk-text-email. All I felt like doing was crawling inside a book and pulling the cover over my head.

I tried every book in my to-be-read file, and even in my favorite-dead-tree-rereads pile, but my eyes kept slipping away from the words. Finally I opened my laptop instead, but I shut off the wi-fi.

It felt weird. Kind of guilty. Like telling the whole world to eff off.

What I needed was my own words, or words that came to me. Words that weren’t about here or now. I needed to go away, really far away, deep inside myself where everything was different. Where I wasn’t even me.

I’ve always told myself stories. I started writing them down as soon as I knew how. When I got my first computer that was all my own, I’d found the place where I could always go.

I wasn’t always safe there. Stories aren’t about being safe. On the screen, where the words were, I was home—more than I was anywhere except in the barn or in my own house.

A year ago, when the cancer came in, it was scary, but then there was the remission and I told myself that was it, we’d go on and nothing would change. Mom wouldn’t get sick again.

But the world was different. I couldn’t trust it any more.

The only world I could trust was the one I made for myself. The only light was on the screen, pale like moonlight, black like the sky between the stars. Outside it was a steaming hot Florida afternoon, with the sun beating down and the thunderheads piling up. In here, it was as cold as the truth I’d had to face, the day Mom came home from the doctor and sat me down and told me she was going to die.

Today wasn’t anything like that. She was just dumping me for the summer—same as Dad used to do, till he stopped even bothering to show up. Just like Dad, she thought it was great. Romance! Adventure! All the things she’d never had time to do, so I got to do them instead.

I closed my eyes and made myself go away. Skip over. Ignore. Forget. Be somewhere else. Be someone else—someone as different as it was possible to be.

This wasn’t really a new story. Pieces of it had been in me for as long as I could remember, fragments of words, images, half-remembered dreams, but now it was all there: solid, whole, and so real I could taste it.

Really, I could. It was bitter and salty, like a mouthful of ocean, or too many tears. When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere completely different.

I was inside the story. Instead of me telling it, it was telling me.

Meru

Chapter 2

In all Meru’s world, she was sure of two things: that she was born to be a starpilot, and that wherever her mother was, however far she wandered, she would always come home.

The message came over Earth’s web one bitter-bright night, when the air outside the house was so cold it numbed the back of Meru’s throat. She was the room she loved best in this world, high up in the family’s house. Its ceiling was a force field, and by night it was transparent. When she slept there, she lay under the stars.

She had been sharing a webcircle with other star dreamers—Earthlings who dreamed of becoming starpilots. She and Yoshi, who had passed the tests and would be shipping out together to the starpilots’ school, were basking in a cloud of joy and awe and envy.

It felt wonderful, and rather terrifying.

This is how it will be for the rest of our lives, Yoshi said to her on an underchannel. I don’t know if I like it.

We’ll be ordinary enough at school, Meru said, especially at the start, when everybody knows more than we do.

Ai, said Yoshi. You are right. I’m not sure I like that, either.

It’s worth it, she said.

His agreement hummed through the weblink.

The link broke abruptly. The message feed was corrupted, the words in it broken and blurred, but the priority tag was still on it, with the finder beacon that told Meru who had sent it.

Meru linked to the beacon and followed it, braced for a long search down the starways—and came to an abrupt and earthbound halt.

That should not have happened. She ran the search more times than she wanted to count, but the answer was always the same. Her mother, who should have been on the other side of the galactic sector, was on Earth, and close by. Something other than distance had garbled the message.

It could be an error, or a ghost in the web. Implants wore out. They could malfunction. There was no need to panic.

Yet.

Meru? You there?

The webcircle was still up, and still celebrating. Yoshi’s ping was like a hot wire across bare skin.

I’m here, she said.

But what? What happened?

I can’t talk. I can’t stop. I have to go.

Meru—

She shut him off.

Her family gathered below, in the common room where everyone came together in the evenings, or curled in a warm and communal pile in one of the sleeping rooms. Meru missed the warmth suddenly, and the presence of all her cousins and the youngest aunts and uncles.

But two words in the stream had come through without static or garble.

Alone.

And Danger.

Meru’s mother was on Earth when she should have been exploring a distant system, and something was wrong.

The web offered no answers. Meru took a deep breath and made herself be calm. She searched for a new message, or even a slightly older one that might have told her more, but there was nothing about a woman of Earth named Jian, daughter and aunt of the family Banh-Liu, mother of Meru.

All Meru found was a babble of newsfeeds off the starweb. They were connected by a single key word: Epidemic.

There were always waves of disease on other worlds, plagues that came and went, infected aliens and unprotected humans, then ran their course and disappeared. They never reached Earth; the Consensus that governed it had such strong protections, and such effective quarantine and containment, that there had not been so much as a sniffle on the planet in a thousand years. Earth was the safest place there was, and Consensus had every intention of keeping it that way.

Jian must have been investigating a plague on one of the worlds she explored. Civilizations often rose and fell because of such things, and Jian would want to know everything: who and how and why, and whether the disease was still on the planet, waiting to break out again. It did not in any way explain why she was on Earth and sending such a weak and broken signal.

She could not be sick. If she were, Earth’s protections would never have let her through.

That was not as reassuring as Meru would have liked it to be.

Over against the wall, a shadow stirred. Wings unfurled, half mist, half solid. Eyes glittered above a drift of fog that might have been a beak. The starwing stroked its half-substantial wingtip across Meru’s cheek, a touch like ice and smoke, but strangely warm inside.

It always knew when she was sad or troubled—always had known, since her mother brought back the egg from one of her expeditions, and it hatched in Meru’s hands. No one else she knew had a starwing. It was like a piece of the stars, to remind her of where she was going, and to keep her company when she went there.

She closed her eyes and let its presence soothe her. But not too much. She needed the sting of urgency.

She started down the lift to the common room, to the family and community and consensus. She would tell them what had come to her, and they would tell her what to do.

Alone, the message had said.

Danger.

Starpilots on voyage did not have community or consensus. They were alone with the ship and the stars. When danger threatened, they faced it—alone.

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Meru sent the lift down the back way, away from the family.

She should have known it would not be that easy. No one was in the storage, but her cousin Ulani was in the kitchen, sitting under a lone, dazzling-bright light,

Reviews for Living in Threes

[ljldml · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I supposedly 'won' this book as an earlier reviewer from Librarythings early reviewers giveaway. I never received the book, but purchased it myself from Amazon because it looked and sounded like a great story. I am not familiar with Judith Tarr. Haven't read anything by her before. I wasn't overly impressed with this story. I love Egypt and I love archaeology, but I had a difficult time following the trio of voices throughout this book. Past, present, and future all at the same time. A very ambitious book. I'll try re-reading it at a later time, perhaps I'll appreciate it more.

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A weird and interesting story. I find Meredith the least interesting of the three, so it's a pity she's the main voice - she keeps going off and sulking, very annoying. The most childish of the three girls...hmm, an interesting comment on modern times, if that was intended. Meritre is enjoyable - very capable and competent, and interesting views on life (and death). I like Meru best, though I wonder if one reason she was being considered for starpilot is that she doesn't really prefer Consensus. She reminds me rather of Theo in the Liaden Universe - trained and raised to peace and consensus, but when the chips are down her choices are always to go it alone (or as alone as she can manage!). I did, deliberately, keep my emotions detached from the story - I've had a couple recent scares with my parents, and I think that if I'd tried to integrate their emotions I'd have broken down and been unable to read the book. It carries some pretty heavy messages. But the final one is hopeful, at least - life goes on.

[wolffaerie17 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Living in Threes is an aptly named title for this book. Three teenage girls named Meredith, Meru, and Meritre are connected in such a way. They're the past, present, and future all rolled into one. Each of their experiences are different from one another yet their common tie is the only hope for Meru's future. Each must face their own inner demons to triumph what comes next for all of them. Meritre needs to learn a secret. Meredith must accept the truth. Meru needs to search for the truth. Together they can be living in threes.When I first read the concept of this I was intrigued. Yet after reading it, I find that it's been such a fascinating story. The author cleverly wove three lives together in such a way that leaves little doubt in story crafting. Out of all the characters I most relate to Meredith. She is strong willed, honest, determined, and clear minded. I will definitely read more of this author's work.

[jami_leigh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Plot: 3 1/2 stars
Characters: 3 stars
Style: 4 stars
Pace: 4 stars

rounding up.
I actually hadn't read any of her books before (They've been on my TBR list for a while, but I've been trying to read through my already on hand stacks), but between enjoying the blog she does on BVC, and the ringing endorsements of her by several other authors I enjoy, I bought into the kickstarter anyway.

The three girls' voices all sounded the same, but for good reason. It was the ending, I think, that made the rest fall flat. I wanted something about the magic to save Meredith's mom, since it was too late for Meru's mom and the ancient Egyptian princess. There's too much uncertainty in Meredith's life at the end, and it ended up feeling unfinished.
Otherwise, an enjoyable read.

[vivapdx_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love the way the three stories intertwine. Very descriptive and the characters are great. For young adults, or slightly older kids who love great adventures.

[britt84 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really loved this novel, I found it to be really gripping, a real page-turner!The story switches between three times and three lives, which each have a separate story, but are also intricately interwoven. I really liked the way in which the stories become increasingly linked and really become one story over time. The descriptions of ancient Egypt and the distant future are lovely and very lifelike. The characters are not always worked out as well as they could have been, but the three main characters are worked out nicely and I found it easy to connect to them.

[avellana_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received this book through Early Reviewers. I agree with one of the other reviews that the cover art is not great, which kind of put me off. However, I was reasonably surprised by the story. It is obviously aimed at young adults and one of its main themes is how to cope with death and illness. I felt some of the aspects of the story could have been dealt with in more detail, but overall it would be a good read for a teenager.

[alanbes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful story of a young woman across three time eras. A must for anyone interested in ancient Egypt and archaeology. It took a little while for me to get into the story, but after a couple of chapters I was fully engrossed. I was expectant of something more in the conclusion. For me the book closed with too an abrupt end. I would have liked, at the end of the book, for the author to have spent a little more time with each of the three main characters. A good read and I would have have no hesitation in reading any further books by Judith Tarr.

[drbrendafloyd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very enjoyable book for anyone who enjoys a fast-paced fantasy where one girl experiences living in three different times. The girls lives are tied together with personal tragedy of losing their mothers, the threat of a deadly plague, and a blue scarab.

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Living in Threes is the story of three girls who find themselves connected to each other across thousands of years. One lives in ancient Egypt, the second in present day Florida, and the third somewhere in the future. Together they struggle to prevent the breakout of a pandemic. I recommend this book. It was well-written and the three main characters are well characterized. There was not a whole lot of attention paid to the more minor characters. While I would have liked to see some of them more fleshed out, this is a short book so I can see that there's not really space. The one other complaint I have is that it felt slow to get into. However, I'd suggest readers to stay with it has it picks up near the end.

[raevon-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Quite a complex approach but well handled! Three girls or only one? The current time has Meredith, whose mother is dying from cancer, Meru from a future time, has just found out that her mother has died from the plague which originated in the past time of Meritre. The three girls are linked through time and the two others help their current time persona - Meredith - through the loss of her mother to cancer. A complex story but well drawn together, well written and even with some editing glitches a very good read. Cancer is the 20th and 21st century plague? Could this be the link that binds the three girls? Read it and make your own decision.

[zjordi_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It looked like a 'simple' tale, typically for youngster's use, but as the story began to unfold under the different perspectives of the three lead roles, it slowly took a life of its own.I found the book very well written, the timeframe jumps between the three girls well-timed to compound to a sense of depth that really pleased me.All in all, an excellent read, I highly recommend it.

[woakden · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The concept is really intriguing - a girl in the present, one in ancient Egypt, and a third living far in the future become aware of one another and are able to communicate. The story was engaging and mostly centered around Meredith who is living in our own time, although the main focus of action was the far future Meru. I really enjoyed the mix of personal issues and world-threatening problems. It was very quick and easy to read, lots of fun seeing the day to day life of ancient Egypt contrasted with the future and present. The interactions between the three girls felt very real - totally the way you might imagine reacting if you suddenly had voices inside your own head. Obviously in a YA novel the author can't flesh out the details of all 3 timelines, but there was enough detail to really get the flavour of the past and the far future.

[cfraser_38 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At first I found the language and style of this book quite frustrating and disjointed - as if the author was trying to be very current/trendy. As I continued to read this faded and I started to enjoy the book more. The plot was fairly predictable but I would recommend for early teens.

[landwaster_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An odd but touching story, probably targeted at young women. Because of that it's a short and easy read, with most characters besides the main one getting shallow treatments. Still, the premise is intriguing and the main characters are relatable. I enjoyed it and would especially recommend it for any teenage girl.

[ladycato · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I supported Judith Tarr's Kickstarter project to fund this book and have looked forward to reading it for months. I can see why this book wasn't marketable by agents and needed to be self-published: not that that it's criticism of the book's quality or story, but the fact that it's completely cross-genre. It's simultaneously a contemporary YA novel, historical fiction, and far-future science fiction. I was quite curious as to how those varied settings would weave together, and was very, very, pleased with the result.In short, this is a book I would have read to death when I was 12-years-old and transitioning from my horse obsession to adult historical fiction and fantasy. This book has EVERYTHING I wanted at that age and could never find in one book.Tarr is masterful in her writing. She knows her horses. She knows archaeology--the real, tedious thing, not the glorified silliness of Indiana Jones (though that's enjoyable in its own way). I loved how she wrote about ancient Egypt in particular. It's so rare to see that used as a backdrop, and again, Tarr made it feel real, not some utopia. I could smell the dust of the place.I can't help but smile when I think of this book. My inner 12-year-old is pleased at last.

[jaelquinn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel kept my interest all the way to the end. It had the usual problem with time travel novels where there is a fair amount of repetition once the timelines start to resolve near the end of the story. It would be great for an 8-12 year old girl. The author shows a lot of respect for kids, not sugarcoating real life issues.

[pumpkinpuddy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had a hard time with the book switching between three characters at first. I was about 30% of the way through the book before I got invested enough in the three personas to care about what was happening. After that, it got a lot better. The concept of actually being able to connect with and talk to past selves is interesting.

[darcyoliver · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a school librarian, I am always looking for good books to recommend, especially to teens. I hope this was the intended audience for this book, as it seems to fit that "category".I love Judith Tarr's ability to blend elements of magic and/or science fiction into real, everyday situations or into historical events. The magical becomes totally believable in her hands.The idea of 3 young women, scattered through 8,000 years, sharing one soul is not entirely unique but is presented in an engrossing story. I truly love the themes of the cycles of life, the cycles of time, and the commonality of all people.I would recommend this book to young adults, especially any who are dealing with loss of a parent.

[laurievent · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was an excellent book that incorporated past ( a young girl in Egypt), present (a teenager in Florida) and future (a teenager on a very futuristic earth) and reincarnation. The way the author drew you in and connected with the characters was thoroughly enjoyable. I also love the way the author ended the book very believably and with a sense of hope.

[arilla-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The book was a fascinating mix of ancient, current and future, bringing together the lives of three women in a different way. A thoroughly enjoyable book that I didn't want to put down.

[nordie_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book focusses on Meredith, a 16 year old American girl who fancies a summer break looking after her white horse (who is hopefully pregnant), turtle watching and hanging out with her friends. However, her mother – recovering from cancer – sends her to Egypt to help Meredith’s aunt in a dig. There she becomes aware of two other people: Meru who lives 4000 years into the future and Meritre who lives 4000 years in the past (as a singer for the female pharoh). All are tied together through a sickness/plague and they have to help Meru save the future from a plague.


I got this Young Adult book through Librarything’s Early Reviewer batch, and opted for it based on the summary. I was pleasantly surprised that a YA fiction book was easy to read and not patronising (something I specifically dislike about YA books).


This book suffered slightly in being the last book of 2012, during a busy Birthday and Christmas period, which meant it became the first finish of 2013 instead. The start was a little shaky, where I feared Meredith was going to be a stroppy teenager (and she was, just a little). However, when the other two characters came in, the telling became much better, and Meru in particular was realised well and a natural expansion of our current reliance on the web. The progression of the story was good, and the dealing with death (all three characters have people close to them who die).


The book ended quite quickly, and leaves the line open for other stories (I would be almost disappointed if Tarr HASN’T written more books in this series - it opens up so many opportunities to continue this world…..

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Meritre is a Temple Singer in the Temple of Amon, four thousand years ago. The recent plague that has killed so many is finally ending, but it's going to take one last victim before it's over.Meredith is a teenager in our day, planning a summer of riding with her friends and caring for her recently bred mare, when her mother announces that as her sixteenth birthday present, she's going to Egypt to take part in a dig with her archaeologist aunt.Meru, four thousand years in the future, has, along with her friend Yoshi, qualified for starpilot training. Unfortunately, Meru's mother, who has been chasing down the source of a mysterious plague hitting many planets, has secretly returned home--and died, leaving a package keyed so that only Meru can open it.These three young women are connected, in some sense the same person, and a little scarab pendant enables them, unexpectedly, to communicate with each other. Each of them is confronting larger forces than they know, and the connection between them is key to finding the solution.The girls each live in very different worlds, despite all those worlds being our own Earth. It's not just the technology levels that are different; they all live in very different family structures, and different expectations for their behavior and future lives. Yet they are also very closely connected, and find the connection helps them deal with their individual problems as well as their shared problems.All three young women, and their friends, are wonderfully portrayed, clear, and complex, and likable. All three worlds feel believable and lived-in. The narrator does a great job, and has an excellent voice for these characters.Highly recommended.I bought this audiobook.

[sarahcameron · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At first this is a difficult book to become interested in, but it does become more enjoyable after the significance of each character is understood. It does have the past, present, and future all in one book. Each character's struggle is significant, and it explains who the character is. It is a great read, and a good fictional novel.

[stewartry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a book received through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers (thank you!). I've been trying to cut back on the books I put my name in for on LibraryThing, because while I've had pretty good luck there have been a number of clunkers – plus I'm a ways behind on my Netgalley books. But when I saw Judith Tarr's name on the book, it was a no-brainer – I had to request it, and I was happy when I received it. I was not so happy with the cover art. This is one of those times when I'm happy to have the Kindle, so I don't have to look at … that. It's awful, amateurish and ill-conceived and just plain ugly. Book View Café, the cooperative publisher which allows authors to publish books they either can't or don't wish to take through traditional venues, apparently does not have an art department. The book starts off much like one of the girls-and-horses books I loved when I was a tween and teen; it is a young-adult novel, and there is a heavy horse presence. I don't know if I would have loved it when I was the age of the characters, though. Meredith is a sixteen-year-old Florida girl who is looking forward to a summer spent with her friends and her newly pregnant Lipizzaner mare. However, her mother – in remission from a serious bout with cancer (not that any bout with cancer is anything to take frivolously) – puts a very firm kibosh on the plans: Meredith's aunt, an archaeologist working in Egypt, is on the verge of something big, and Meredith is going to go join her dig. And there's not a thing she can do to prevent it: to Egypt she, sullenly, goes. Just before she leaves, she takes refuge in one of her favorite pastimes: she begins writing a story. It writes itself, really: a science fiction tale set in the far future (about four thousand years out) about a sixteen-year-old girl named Meru whose mother – also an archaeologist, of sorts – has gone missing, whose last fragmented message sends Meru looking for her into areas where she should not go. Meredith is unsettled by the story; it's too real. And then there are the dreams that begin about a girl named Meritre, who is a sixteen-year-old temple singer in the Egypt of four thousand years ago. It's all very strange – and more and more there seems to be a reason for this strangeness. I liked the characters. They were a little precocious for their ages ("ages" can and should be taken two different ways here; Meritre was a bit too sanguine about all of the things which were completely alien to her, which would be … just about everything), but that's part and parcel of the reading experience. I mostly liked the idea, which I won't go into here (spoilers!), though it stretched willing suspension of disbelief for both me and the characters – with the fact that the latter had a hard time with it making it easier for me. Meredith, though sullen for much of her part of the story, had good reason, and was likeable anyway – quite an accomplishment. Second-tier characters were lovely; I liked all three girls' circles of family and friends. Were it not for the ending, I think I would have loved this to pieces when I was sixteen. There were a few things that bothered me: - I admit, I smirked a bit over the fact that Meredith's horse is a Lipizzaner, given that Ms. Tarr devotes the non-writing bulk of her life to her Dancing Horse Farm, and that it took a little jiggering to explain how a sixteen-year-old Florida girl owns a Lipizzan mare. But it is explained, and "write what you know" can often equate to "write what you love", and Ms. Tarr's love of the breed cancels out my qualms. - Meredith's writing voice was no different from that of the rest of the book, which considering Judith Tarr's skill means she's a pretty remarkable writer for sixteen. I wouldn't have wanted it to be worse - I wouldn't want to be forced to read fake juvenile writing, but if that's how the girl writes she should have a multi-book contract by now. Given that very little throughout the rest of the book is made of Meredith as a writer (she doesn't really have time or inclination for writing after this one burst), another means of introducing Meru might have been smoother. - Meritre reacts with bafflement when she first sees a horse. Now, I know Ms. Tarr knows her Egypt, so I'm not questioning her decision here to have the girl not know what a horse was … well, maybe a little. I've seen the pictures of wall paintings horse-drawn chariots; there were horses in Egypt, introduced "during the early Second Intermediate Period (1700 to 1550 B.C.)"; I found it a little hard to swallow that Meritre never heard of them. - Again, Meritre was cool with the concepts Meredith and Meru were exposing her to – including the archaeological dig that was opening up the tomb which in Meritre's time was just being sealed. She didn't like that – but she accepted it. And I didn't buy her acceptance of it: it violates every precept of her religion. - The future world of Meru lacked depth for me. It was, I think, to some extent down to the fact that ancient Egypt is relatively familiar, almost as much so to Northeastern me as present-day Florida is (and the Florida-ness of the present-day setting was not overly stressed), and so shorthand went a long way in placing Meredith and Meru in their backgrounds. Meru, though, lives in an unimaginable future, and I floundered with where on Earth she was (literally) and how far she had to travel and in terms of alien presence are we talking Starfleet or Mos Eisley Cantina or Serenity, or what? What there was was intriguing; there just didn't seem to be enough. - The aspects of the three worlds, past and present and future, were in a way both too closely parallel and not closely enough. They're all about the same age – though that means something drastically different in ancient Egypt from what it means in modern Florida. (Don't know what it means in the far future…) All three girls have mothers in peril – one dies early, one will probably be fine, and one dies at the end. All three have fathers who are absentee, or all but – one works a lot and is ill, one is divorced and elsewhere, and I honestly don't remember a thing about the third. Love is blooming for two, but not the third; all three have aspirations and vocations (at least, Meredith wants to write and spend a lot of time with her horse). I think I would have been slightly happier if there had been more resonance among the three girls than the name similarity … but too much would have been irritating. Ah well. - That ending. Meredith discovers that her mother sent her off to Egypt knowing that she was about to go into hospice, that the cancer was back with a vengeance and she did not have much more time. By the time Meredith finds out she can only arrive home in time to – just barely – watch her mother die. My mom is eighty-five years old, and I don't need this crap. I would have hated it like poison when I was sixteen, and I hate it more now. That's on me, and not the book – it was the right way to end this story, and it tied it up without tamping all the edges down overly neatly – but I hated it. These are, really, quibbles. The writing – always reliable, in the word's best possible meaning – carried the book through whatever difficulties I had with the details. The idea was fascinating, if outré – it pushed the envelope without busting through. Am I glad I won this book? Absolutely. Am I glad I read it? Yes. Will I read it again? No. Do I still love Judith Tarr? Oh yes.

[sophia0white · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was not sure that I was going to enjoy this book, but after reading was glad I gave it a go. I liked the mix of the three different women and the different genres.