As with many of the best stories, A Loop in Time crosses genres. The main characters are the children: Errica Ludwig and the twins Elle and Matt; however this is not specifically a children's book. The backdrop is Manhattan, but not exactly as we know it. For example, the lions are still at the library steps, the landscape is concrete, glass and steel, streets and subways are crowded, but strangers are patient, speaking politely at street corners and this is not specifically a tale of alternate reality. Much of the beauty and excitement portrayed is based on hard, earth-bound, science, but you are not reading science-fiction. Anyone with a sense of wonder, curiosity and imagination will be engaged by the weaving of the many literary vines.

Another thing that is fascinating for me is that I consider A Loop in Time visual and lyrical as opposed to readable: blue sprinkles, transparent children, sailboats, candy-striped models, pharaohs dancing, three dimensional art and hand-held computers come to mind. Her words on the page sing when you say them! The name "Quintana" (I say it Keen-tana) has been fixed in my mind from the first reading, as have "Sybille Nix" and "Branch Archer," because when I say them there is an elemental connection with the resulting tones and vibrations.

You will note I said "from the first reading." I didn't close the book at the end; I immediately started over. I won't tell you that I understand everything I have read and where it is going. There are many questions left unanswered, but there is one theme that runs throughout all of the threads and I expect will tie future books to this one. Rowena Wright has given me the correct word to describe what she is creating in the Polis series: "Quintessence", the elusive fifth element; which as all followers of popular culture know, from Leeloo, is Love.