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...
by Lindsay Smith
Yulia lives in Communist Russia, and her family is hiding from the government. She is able to see past memories of people and things when she touches them, and she uses this skill to bargain in the black market until the KGB finds her and forces her to work in their program training psychic spies.
I liked the premise of the book, and it’s different than a lot of books I’ve read. The writing was fairly fluid, though at times, I wish some events were tied together more fully. I also would have preferred more training sessions. Yulia gains psychic powers without the reader really knowing, and that made it slightly confusing, which could have been helped if some of the training sessions were shown instead of mentioned in passing. Some of the psychic powers were a little inconsistent, which also may have been helped by some training session scenes.
The characters themselves were pretty consistent, though. Yulia had understandable motivations, and her actions were in character. I liked the backdrop, and the other characters were distinct and well developed.
This is a 3.6. I liked the idea, and it was fun to read despite a few continuity hitches. Like oatmeal, it was satisfying enough. There were patches of brown sugar that were great, but also small bits that weren’t quite cooked and made it so the texture wasn’t quite uniformly good. But it’s only a couple bits, and there’s enough brown sugar, and the rest of it is just about the right texture that it’s pretty enjoyable.
I liked the premise of the book, and it’s different than a lot of books I’ve read. The writing was fairly fluid, though at times, I wish some events were tied together more fully. I also would have preferred more training sessions. Yulia gains psychic powers without the reader really knowing, and that made it slightly confusing, which could have been helped if some of the training sessions were shown instead of mentioned in passing. Some of the psychic powers were a little inconsistent, which also may have been helped by some training session scenes.
The characters themselves were pretty consistent, though. Yulia had understandable motivations, and her actions were in character. I liked the backdrop, and the other characters were distinct and well developed.
This is a 3.6. I liked the idea, and it was fun to read despite a few continuity hitches. Like oatmeal, it was satisfying enough. There were patches of brown sugar that were great, but also small bits that weren’t quite cooked and made it so the texture wasn’t quite uniformly good. But it’s only a couple bits, and there’s enough brown sugar, and the rest of it is just about the right texture that it’s pretty enjoyable.
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