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 Passion of Dolssa By Julie Berry A young woman in 12th century provincial France preaches to her people, and performs miracles that could only come from the divine. The Catholic Church, fresh from the crusades, seeks to “purify” the soul of christendom, and secure their hold on Europe. This young woman, Dolssa, refuses to be silent, and is branded a heretic. The Church hunts her across the land until Botille, a matchmaker in a small seaside town finds Dolssa on death door, nurses her back to health and hides her. However, with the Church bearing down on them, they only have so long, and the more time Dolssa spends in this town the more the Church will likely damn it. Julie Berry weaves a tale of feminism, religion, and the thin line between being a saint or a heretic in medieval Europe. The prose of the novel is gorgeous, littered with Provincial French, and the characters are captivating. Botille and her sisters are outspoken and feminist in a time when women had few...
