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Geeks and the Holy Grail (Camelot Code #2), by Mari Mancusi, for Timeslip Tuesday

The first book in the Camelot Code series, The Once and Future Geek , mixed time travel between the medieval world of King Arthur and our own, and it is a very entertaining book.  The second book in the series, Geeks and Holy Grail (Hyperion, October 2019), is also entertaining (though not quite as funny; King Arthur as a modern day high school student is hard to beat....). When Morgana, sworn enemy of King Arthur, attacks the druids of Avalon, Nimue, the youngest of them, takes the Holy Grail and runs with it.  King Arthur is dying, and only the Grail can save him.  Desperate to keep it from falling into Morgana's hands, she stumbles into Merlin's Crystal Cave.  But instead of Merlin there to help her (he's on vacation in Los Vegas, in our time), there's only his very inexperienced apprentice, Emrys.  His attempt to hide the grail works, in a sense--as a small, flatulent dragon, it sure doesn't look much like a grail.  But it isn't much use to Arthur as a...

The Secret

Shards & Ashes

By: Kelley Armstrong, Rachel Caine, Kami Garcia, Nancy Holder, Melissa Marr, Beth Revis, Veronica Roth, Carrie Ryan, and Margaret Stohl

When you want to try a new dessert there is almost always a taster tray.  The book Shards & Ashes was just like a taster tray.  Taster trays are great except for the fact that a taste of each dessert is never quite enough of each dessert.  After each short story I couldn't help but feel unfinished.  I always wanted to know more.  
Although the writing in the book was amazing, the plots didn’t seem finished.  At the end of each story I wanted to flip the page and begin the next chapter.  There was only one problem with that; there was no next chapter.  All of them felt like an introduction into something bigger. 
Many of the stories felt post-apocalyptic or almost dystopian.  I wasn’t completely sure how some of the stories were related to the others.  The first story, “Hearken,” was like a cheesecake while the rest of the stories were some sort of chocolate.  It was my favorite but didn’t fit with the others very well.  
The second story of the book is called “Branded.”  It is about a girl named Rayne.  In the world Rayne lives in there is the town and then the outside.  She is in the town.  The town walls protect those inside from werewolves and animal-human hybrids that live outside.  Rayne’s friend, Braedon, was discovered to be a werewolf and forced out of the town.  The rest of the story is about how Rayne uses another girl, Pricilla, to go into the outside.  Both Rayne and Pricilla end up looking for Braedon.  By the end, one leg of their journey is completed but not the rest.  I wanted to know what happened after the story ended.  The ending felt abrupt and not really like an ending.  
All of the stories were really good until your spoon hit the bottom of the bowl and came up empty.  If each story was longer I would have given the book a 4 but because none of them had a satisfactory conclusion this book is a 2.5.

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The Hippo at the End of the Hall, by Helen Cooper

If you are a fantasy fan who loves quirky small museums with collections of oddities, you will love  The Hippo at the End of the Hall , by Helen Cooper (first published in the UK in 2017, now out in the US from Candlewick, Oct 2019). Ben's invitation to the Gee Museum was delivered by bees.  He'd never heard of the place before, but despite his mother's reservations about letting him go there on his own (reservations which seem, for reasons, to be a bit much, even taking into account the fact that Ben's only ten)  he went...There, in its rooms full of taxidermidied creatures, other natural history collections, a glass bee hive, and clocks and other treasures collected by the Gee family from around the world years ago, he found magic, and the truth about his father, who died many years ago while off on an expedition of his own. Ben also found danger, one of my personal least favorite types of danger--the unscrupulous developer, in this case paired with the unscrupulous d...

The Moon Over Crete, by Jyotsna Sreenivasan, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Moon Over Crete , by Jyotsna Sreenivasan (1996, Smooth Stone Press), is a slightly older children's time travel story, interesting for several reasons. It's the story of a modern girl, 11-year-old Lily, whose mom is Indian American, and whose dad is European American.  Lily is finding it difficult being a girl--her best friend is interested in dressing to impress boys, a boy in her class is sexually harassing her and no one is doing anything about it, her mother isn't letting her do things (like go exploring off in the woods) that she'd be allowed to do if she were a boy.  Lily's flute teacher, Mrs. Zinn, is the only one who seems to understand Lily's growing resentment. And happily for Lily, Mrs. Zinn is a time-traveler, fond of visiting ancient Crete, where (in this fictional world) there is almost utopian gender equality.  Mrs. Zinn offers Lily the chance to go to ancient Crete with her for a few weeks,  and Lily accepts.  Having an experienced adult guid...

The Time Museum, Vol. 2, by Matthew Loux for Timeslip Tuesday

Delia and her cohort of kids training at the Time Museum to journey across the ages are back in another adventure-- The Time Museum, Vol. 2 , by Matthew Loux (First Second, June 2019).  This graphic novel has all the brightly illustrated fun and excitement of the first volume ( my review ), and even more danger and suspense. Delia and the other kids are getting ready for their next time travel mission, with the help of none other than Richard Nixon.  Nixon is a surprisingly capable instructor, and the tips and tricks he provides during training come in very useful indeed when things start going wrong.  Their mission sounded straightforward--travel back to 18th century Versailles to patch up French/US diplomatic relations, but it quickly becomes complicated by a temporal loop that brings future versions of themselves back in time too.  And then things become very strange indeed when all of them travel to a dystopian future, where an old enemy awaits.... I have to conf...

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