The Guardians of Time is a series of books by Australian author Marianne Curley, comprised of The Named (2002),The Dark (2003), and The Key (2005), telling of the efforts of the Guardians of Time to protect history against the Order of Chaos. This story focuses most on a group of adolescents and adults known as "The Named" — so called because of their specific mention in a legendary Prophecy — and their lifelong battle against the Goddess of Chaos and her army of Order members. Each member of the Guard is born with two specific powers, although sometimes a third power is revealed in particularly gifted characters. These powers are what mark members of either organization; people born without powers live ordinary lives, completely unaware of the fantastic world inhabited by their friends, spouses, siblings, lovers, and acquaintances.

The Named (2002)

• For all his short life the boy has been aware of his sister’s love for all things strange or extraordinary, like unusual flowers, orphaned woodland creatures, vivid sunsets. And many times he would simply sit in awe of her adventurous spirit, wishing that he too were old enough, or large enough, to swing down those cliffs with only a single rope tied around his waist. He shrugs and sits on the moist grass beside her, content in the knowledge that he won’t always be four years old.
  • Prologue

• I want to take you to a place where it is midnight every day and black irises glisten under a bleeding moon.
  • Marduke, in the Prologue. Said multiple times as a precursor to murdering the person to whom he speaks.

• So they decided to play Ping-Pong with the universe?
  • Ethan

The Dark (2003)

• She screams. And her scream is heard from one end of the universe to the other. The words, 'They will suffer,' are wrenched from between purple lips. Lathenia, the Goddess of Chaos, stares through her sphere to the past. A sphere she uses to create enough chaos to alter the present and produce a future that will have the world at her feet.
  • Prologue

• They will pay dearly for this. They will pay with blood, with fear, and with many lives.
  • Lathenia, in the Prologue

The Key (2005)

• Lorian recalls how Dartemis was never an 'innocent child', but the youngest and most powerful of the three siblings. He'd had to take his brother to another world for the boy's own safety. A world where he remains very much alive today. A world where even his greedy sister cannot defect life. And it is there he will remain, continuing to harness his powers — a lord, a magician and much more.
  Lorian remembers the day he saw his brother working magic — such powerful and unusual magic. He knew that with Dartemis's talents at her fingertips, Lathenia would become too strong.
  But for now there are other matters more pressing — the resolution of this conflict, without war.
  • Prologue

• The heart is a strange thing. It's also a significant weakness.
  • Matt

• But trust is what the Guard is all about. Faith in what doesn't always make sense.
  • Rochelle

• Maybe evil never dies, and once in your blood, stays there for ever, lying dormant until something comes along to trigger it. Is that how it is with my father? He's still in jail today for the crimes committed against my step mother. Marduke saw evil in me. He sensed it. And look at the things I've done, the people I've hurt. Can anyone really change?
  • Rochelle