Chuyển đến nội dung chính

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 Time Museum, Vol. 2, by Matthew Loux for Timeslip Tuesday

Delia and her cohort of kids training at the Time Museum to journey across the ages are back in another adventure--The Time Museum, Vol. 2, by Matthew Loux (First Second, June 2019).  This graphic novel has all the brightly illustrated fun and excitement of the first volume (my review), and even more danger and suspense.

Delia and the other kids are getting ready for their next time travel mission, with the help of none other than Richard Nixon.  Nixon is a surprisingly capable instructor, and the tips and tricks he provides during training come in very useful indeed when things start going wrong.  Their mission sounded straightforward--travel back to 18th century Versailles to patch up French/US diplomatic relations, but it quickly becomes complicated by a temporal loop that brings future versions of themselves back in time too.  And then things become very strange indeed when all of them travel to a dystopian future, where an old enemy awaits....

I have to confess I totally lost track of what was happening, and couldn't comprehend the plot at all.  I'm not good at paradoxes and causality loops, and though I enjoy many graphic novels, I sometimes have a hard time making the pictures and words work well together.  Though the plot was too much for me, I did enjoy the progress of the relationships between the kids, and their character development, but I liked the first book much better.

That being said, the sci-fi excitement and young teen drama will appeal to many young graphic novel fans, who will doubtless be eager for book 3.  And this is perhaps my favorite fictional Richard Nixon ever....

Nhận xét

Bài đăng phổ biến từ blog này

Dead Voices, by Katherine Arden

Dead Voices , by Katherine Arden (middle grade, G.P. Putnam's Sons, August 2019), is a delightfully spooky sequel to Small Spaces , perfect for a chilling read as winter draws closer! Ollie, Coco, and Brian became close friends under somewhat trying circumstances last fall--the evil Smiling Man trying to turn them into scarecrows--and now winter has come, they're on their way to a fun weekend at a new ski lodge with Ollie's dad and Coco's mom.  They almost don't make it through the intense snowstorm, and when they arrive, they find themselves the only visitors.  The snow keeps falling, trapping them inside, and the power goes out.  And there are ghosts. The day after they arrive another visiter makes it through the snow, a young reporter for a ghost hunting magazine.  The owners of the hotel aren't sure that publicity about the hotel's previous incarnation of an orphanage with a dark, sad, history is what they want, but the young man is keen to get ghost hun...

Premeditated

I'm going to start with the blurb from the back cover of this book, because it does a remarkable job of introducing the story in very few words: A week ago, Dinah’s cousin Claire cut her wrists. Five days ago, Dinah found Claire’s diary and discovered why. Three days ago, Dinah stopped crying and came up with a plan. Two days ago, she ditched her piercings and bleached the black dye from her hair. Yesterday, knee socks and uniform plaid became a predator’s camouflage. Today, she’ll find the boy who broke Claire. By tomorrow, he’ll wish he were dead. Claire and Dinah are cousins who are incredibly close, close enough that when Claire ends up in a coma in the hospital from a failed suicide attempt, Dinah knows where to look to find Claire's diary (or the computerized version of one, anyway). Dinah figures out what drove Claire to the point of suicide--a boy from the private school that Claire was supposed to attend that fall. Dinah enrolls at the school herself, determined to get...

Storm

By: D.J. MacHale This is the sequel to SYLO where a small island off the coast of Maine was invaded by the US Navy (the US navy is called SYLO).  The main characters, Tucker, Kent, Olivia, and Tori escaped from Pemberwick and got to Portland, Maine.  In Storm they pick up another character, Jon, a doctor from a Portland hospital.  As it turns out the US Navy is at war with the US Airforce.  Over three fourths of the worlds population is dead.  Tucker, Tori, Kent, Olivia, and, Jon are trying to get to Nevada where a radio signal they picked up said to come if they wanted to fight back.  There is a lot of action and the plot moves along at a good pace.  One thing that was different from the first book was how much you found out about their relationships.  Kent is with Olivia and Tucker is with Tori.  It sort of bothered me that they were so into who was with who when they were trying to figure out why most of the world's population was killed. ...

Free $100