Yestermorrow

This unevenly paced first installment of the Timetripper series opens in a high school for gifted students, among them Harry, who confides to Siara that the trauma of his father's recent death in a freak accident has damaged the filters in his brain that prevent some of the senses' input. Consequently, he says, he is ""seeing more of the whole picture"" and feels ""like I'm on the verge of making some big kind of breakthrough."" After his seemingly maniacal actions prevent Todd, a thuggish classmate, from fatally shooting a peer, Harry begins to realize that he can see things before they actually happen. He then finds himself transported to ""an entire new reality"" divided into three-dimensional, intersecting trails that represent specific individuals' lives. This bizarre universe, which he labels ""A-time,"" is bereft of linear time, yet he (and eventually Siara, whom he brings into this realm) can witness the past, present and future. Following Harry's trail into the past, Siara discovers that his preacher father had counted on his son to do what he himself hadn't been able to do: to figure out ""the consequence of time, death."" Harry takes on the task of preventing Todd's suicide, a mission requiring that Todd, too, journey into A-time and best one of the hideous spider-like monsters (Quirks) able to manipulate the future adversely. Despite its inventive premise, the occasionally murky descriptions and the characters' overwrought thoughts make the tale more confusingly than cleverly convoluted. Ages 12-up.