Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop by KRYSTAL SUTHERLAND and MARTIN SENEVIRATNE is a laugh-out-loud, edge-of-your-seat time-travel adventure. Read on for a Q&A.
What inspired the idea behind Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop?
It all started with Martin’s grandma, Srimathie, who’s from Sri Lanka. When Martin was growing up in Australia, Srima enchanted him with tall tales about her childhood on a coconut farm. In them, she was the fastest girl in her village and rode an elephant to school – but she interwove her own story with those of ancient kings and hidden cities and magic. We wanted to take that sense of personal history entwined with myth, and to give it a sci-fi twist (Martin is a doctor by background, and we both love science). So Time Lions began as a kind of love letter to Srima’s stories, and to Sri Lanka itself, this country that we both love … and then it grew claws, lasers, and wormholes.
The story follows 12-year-old twins and geniuses, Pearl and Patrick. Did you base their personalities on anyone you know in real life, or were they entirely imagined?
There’s definitely bits of both of us in both of them – both good and bad! Pearl is very scientifically minded, like Martin – and also very determined (almost to a fault!), like Krystal. Patrick loves baths and scented candles and curling up with a good book (Krystal) and is also a big history buff (Martin). Mostly, though, they’re their own people; they came alive as we wrote them, and started surprising even us as the story twisted and turned.
What research did you do on time travel theory, physics and historical eras?
In addition to being a doctor, Martin has a degree in physics, so he already had some background information on theories of time travel, wormholes, paradoxes etc. – as did Krystal, who liked to read about black holes for fun in high school. We decided not to stick too rigidly to any one theory of how time travel might work, and instead integrated bits of all of them. It means time travel in our book feels a bit more like magic than science, which is exactly what we were going for.
While researching for Time Lions and the Chrono-Loop, what was the most interesting or surprising fact you discovered?
Sigiriya blew our minds. It’s this ancient fortress built on top of a massive rock in the middle of the jungle. The part that hooked us was learning that King Kashyapa – the man who built it – wasn’t just a warrior; he was an artist and an engineer. The entire structure is aligned with the stars and designed with complex hydraulic systems that still function today. It felt like something out of science fiction, except it’s real.
What was your collaboration process like?
It was a learning process for sure! We both collaborate in such different ways. Krystal is used to the editorial process, where an editor has pondered their feedback for some time and then written it down in a letter. Martin is used to others getting into his documents while he’s still writing them, crossing things out and adding comments on the fly. We had to find a middle ground that worked for both of us. We settled on taking long “editorial walks,” where we could brainstorm and deliver feedback to each other without making eye contact!
If you could time travel, where would you go and why?
Krystal would use her time machine to solve history’s great unsolved mysteries – what really happened aboard the Marie Celeste, who was Jack the Ripper, that kind of thing. A time detective, if you will. Martin, on the other hand, would go way, way back before life even began, just to see what Earth looked like in its earliest, rawest form. No people, no cities, not even one single celled organism.
Do you see this book as part of a larger series or universe? If so, what’s next for the twins?
Definitely! The next book is called Time Lions and the Chrono-Rift – and if you thought time was in trouble in book one, just wait. In book two, the twins find themselves in a future where the universe is literally breaking apart, and they come face-to-face with older versions of themselves who are at war. The stakes couldn’t be higher: if they fail, time itself doesn’t just shatter – their relationship with each other could too.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Krystal Sutherland is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of House of Hollow, The Invocations, A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmare, the Time Lions series (with Martin Seneviratne) and Our Chemical Hearts, which was adapted into a film by Amazon Studios. Her books have been published in more than twenty countries and nominated for the Carnegie Medal and YA Book Prize, among others. Originally from Australia, she has lived on four continents and currently calls London home.
Visit Krystal Sutherland’s website
By day, Martin is a doctor and AI scientist. He trained in medicine in Australia, studied AI at Stanford, and worked at Google. But at his core, Martin is a storyteller, having grown up with the rich mythology of his Sri Lankan family. He loves to imagine how technology can power new futures (and pasts). Martin is married to bestselling author Krystal Sutherland. On a visit to Sigirya, the ancient rock fortress in the heart of Sri Lanka’s jungles, they began to craft their debut middle-grade series, Time Lions. The story of the genius Amarasinghe twins and their adventure back through time, it explores overlooked parts of history and the overlooked geniuses who shape it.
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