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...
Lily's life at a regimented finishing school is unpleasant. But when her father's housekeeper comes to fetch her away, things to not improve. For one thing, tragedy has struck- her father is presumed to have died when his airship crashed. For another, the housekeeper has taken over the house, tearing it apart in a mysterious search, all the money is (apparently) gone, and orphaned Lily (her mother died several years previously) has no one to care for her, except, perhaps, her godfather (though he is too old and sickly to take her in).
Meanwhile, the mechanical fox belonging to Lily's father survived the crash, and desperately tries to reach her to deliver a message. But the fox is pursued by two murderous thugs (one of them truly creepy, with glass discs for eyes), and badly wounded by a gunshot, it barely makes it to a safe hiding place in the shed of the village clockmaker. The clockmaker's son, Robert, finds the fox, who tells him to go get Lily.
Though Lily and Robert make it back to Robert's home safely, the two thugs are now pursuing them as well as the fox, and Robert's father is killed. Fortunately they encounter a daring young woman who's an aviator as well as a journalist, and they escape in her zeppelin. But the hunt goes on, and the stakes get ever higher, and the dangers greater...and their path leads to the heart of the mystery--Lily's father's greatest invention, the Cogheart…
Once the chase is on, about a quarter of the way into the book, it's an exciting and vivid adventure. It had a steampunk Joan Aiken feel to it for me (the evil housekeeper reminded me vividly of The Wolves of Whillouhby Chase), and the mad dash through the skies and wide range of mechanicals was the sort of odd adventure she might have written if steampunk had occurred to her. (I hope this is useful; if it is not useful because you have not read Joan Aiken, you should read Joan Aiken).
The two kids, Lucy and Robert, both were given the chance to have their characters made clear to the reader before life and death made character development mostly a matter of being brave (which was a greater leap for Robert than for Lily; his self-doubt and personal fears were greater, and it was satisfying seeing him over come them). I liked them both, Lily for wanting to read forbidden adventures at school, and for appreciating that the mechanical constructs had genuine feelings and personalities, and Robert for being stalwart and endearing.
So all in all, a satisfying story! Not exactly to my personal taste, because desperate flights from murderous thugs are not my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it nonetheless because of all the interesting details.
(I seem to have used more parentheses here than in any other review I've ever written. This is probably meaningful in some way, but I'm not sure what way that would be. In any event, it should not be held against the book.)
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher
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