Websters' Leap: Brothers, Sisters, and Magic Computer Files

Really good fantasy isn’t about monsters, magic, and other worlds, it’s about people and the relationships between them.  No matter how many dark lords a hero defeats, readers won’t care unless he feels real.  Websters' Leap by Eileen Dunlop exemplifies this.  It is first and foremost about Jill Weaver, little sister to Tad Weaver.

Jill and Tad’s parents divorce when they are children, and not knowing that Tad, who she worships, wants to live with their father, Jill chooses to live with their mother because she is a better cook.  When her father and Tad move to Scotland, Jill takes it as a personal insult and refuses to speak to her brother.  After one very tense holiday gathering, their parents decide its best to keep them apart until they can grow up.  Every summer, the two switch parents for the holiday, and Jill goes to live with her father in a flat attached to a crumbling Scottish castle where her father gives tours.  Jill couldn’t be less happy about leaving London and her friends behind to spend months surrounded by her brother’s things, but no sooner does she arrive then strange things begin happening, and after messing with her brother’s computer, she is sucked into the past.  Stranger still, everyone there seems to know her, and the second person she sees is Tad.

( Cut for Spoilers (but only some): If I Had a Scottish Ruin, I Could Do Some Writing Too )