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...
Here at YA Galley we have very strong opinions about book covers. They matter. A lot. A good cover beckons the reader, and is also an indication of how much value the publisher places on the novel. We are more likely to pick up an book that has a great cover with engaging art and high quality printing. We spent our meeting this week looking at recent galley covers and discussing what we liked, and what we didn't like. Good Covers on the right were simple, had good color schemes, a focus on one object, weren't too overwhelming, had contrasting colors, no faces, depth, and a smooth font. Bad Covers on the left had people posing, which included girls in long flowing dresses, couples kissing, and half-faces, had garish colors, cheesy bling, and bad illustration. We really liked some of the books on the left, but the covers were definitely a detraction. Some of the books with great covers were actually not that wonderful, but the covers were so much more appealing t...
