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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

The Nightmare Affair

by Mindee Arnett

Dusty Everhart goes to Arkwell Academy, a school for magickind such as sirens, wizards, and demons.  Dusty is a Nightmare (and I don't know why Nightmare is the only one that's capitalized).  She sneaks into people's rooms every other week to feed off their dreams.  One night, she feeds off Eli Booker's dreams and everything changes.
They have a special connection that allows Dusty to see the future in his dreams, so Eli is brought to Arkwell Academy even though he is not magical.  I knew from the back of the book that Eli was a love interest, but it went a bit overboard.  Naturally, they could not fall in love immediately, so there had to be some tension.  Eli's is understandable; he is frustrated with being ripped out of his normal life, where he was popular, and thrust into this one, and he blamed it on Dusty.  Dusty's tension is less understandable.  She seems to object to the hotness of Eli.  She is simply mad at him for messing up her life, except he didn't really mess up her life, he just made it a little bit more bizarre, then Dusty way overreacted.
The most annoying thing about the book was that Eli got called hot so much.  Almost every time Eli came up, he was described as hot.  There are other adjectives for good-looking.  I didn't like the beginning of the book for this reason.  Dusty was uninspired, her relationship with the other characters were a bit flat and stereotypical, and the characters were shallow.
However, the book did pick up near the middle, and I'm glad I read the whole thing.  Things get more complicated, some of the characters develop a little, and the plot gets more interesting.  Things get to the point where Dusty can't simply go on the internet and find the answers she wants in two seconds.  There are interesting turns to the story, and I enjoyed the ending.
Overall, the book gets a 2.8.  Not quite a three.  It could have been better, and I wish it got interesting sooner.  It was like a snow cone.  The first few bites are good, which would be the back cover description, the cover, and the first chapter.  Then it gets to the icy bit where all the syrup is gone and it tastes like nothing more than ice.  At the end, however, there is all the syrup that slipped through the ice and pooled at the bottom of the cone.  Enjoyable, but not the best thing ever.

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Order of the Majestic, by Matt Myklusch

Order of the Majestic , by Matt Myklusch (middle grade, Aladdin, May 7 2019), is one to offer kids dreaming of magic, and hoping it will find them one day. 12-year-old Joey Kopecky wasn't one of those kids.  He was content flying under the radar, living an unambitious life of computer gaming in New Jersey, when his life was upended by perfect standardized test scores.  Now he's been offered a place at one of the most exclusive schools in the country, where every kid is a genius.  He feels like a fraud--knowing how to take tests is a skill, certainty , but is it really a hallmark of genius? But one final test, a strange one involving 150 magic tricks to solve, leads to a 151st trick that transports him to the ghostly shell of a once grand magical theater, the Majestic.  It's fallen into ruins, and to get inside Jack must pass through spooky wraiths, but once he makes it, he finds the magician who once made it famous, the Great Rodondo.  Rodondo was once the leade...

this week's round-up of middle grade sci fi and fantasy from around the blogs (7/14/19)

Here's what I found this week; please let me know of anything I missed! The Reviews And All Between (Green Sky #3), by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, at Say What? The Book of Dust, by Philip Pullman, at Girl With Her Head in a Book Brightstorm, by Vashti Hardy, at Charlotte's Library Changling (the Oddmire #1), by William Ritter, at Metalphantasmreads , Storythreads , and Bookworm for Kids The Haunting of Henry Davis, by Kathryn Siebel, at From My Bookshelf The House with Chicken Legs, by Sophie Anderson, at Arkham Reviews The Longest Night of Charlie Moon, by Christopher Edge, at Middle Grade Mafia The Lost Tide Warriors, by Catherine Doyle, at Book Craic  The Magic Bed-Knob, by Mary Norton, at Fantasy Literature Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend, at Heather's Reading Hideaway The Rithmatist, by Brandon Sanderson, at Read Till Dawn Serafina and the Seven Stars, by Robert Beatty, at the B and N Kids Blog Ship Rats: A Tale of Heroism on the High Seas, by R...

The Shores Beyond Time, by Kevin Emerson

The Shores Beyond Time , by Kevin Emerson, is the third book in the Chronicle of the Dark Star series that began with Last Day on Mars , and continued in The Oceans Between Stars (links to my reviews).   Basically the premise is humanity, and an alien race with whom humanity is at war, are out among the stars after our sun went nova (and some other stars have too), both races looking for new homes (the aliens because humanity decided the Telphon's planet would be a great new home, and essentially nuked it, so there are only about three hundred of them left).  One human boy, Liam, and one Telphon girl, who goes by Phoebe, became friends on Mars and Liam met an ancient time travelling alien of a different species (as told in the first book) and were both separated from their people on a long lonely space flight, and Liam started travelling in time himself (the second book). In this third book, Liam and Phoebe find themselves at the heart of the mystery of the supernovas and the...

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