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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...
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The Secret

The Secret

The Shores Beyond Time, by Kevin Emerson

The Shores Beyond Time, by Kevin Emerson, is the third book in the Chronicle of the Dark Star series that began with Last Day on Mars, and continued in The Oceans Between Stars (links to my reviews).   Basically the premise is humanity, and an alien race with whom humanity is at war, are out among the stars after our sun went nova (and some other stars have too), both races looking for new homes (the aliens because humanity decided the Telphon's planet would be a great new home, and essentially nuked it, so there are only about three hundred of them left).  One human boy, Liam, and one Telphon girl, who goes by Phoebe, became friends on Mars and Liam met an ancient time travelling alien of a different species (as told in the first book) and were both separated from their people on a long lonely space flight, and Liam started travelling in time himself (the second book).

In this third book, Liam and Phoebe find themselves at the heart of the mystery of the supernovas and the time traveling Liam's been doing.  Is the Dark Star, with its miraculous ability to create new universe, the answer to humanity's problems?

This took me right back to the days back in the 1980s when I first discovered science fiction--the sense of mysteries upon mysteries out in space, strange alien technology of unbelievable power, whose makers aren't necessarily friends, and the aliens and humans maybe about to kill each other, or not.  But without the sexism and imbedded racism and imperialism of much mid 20th century sci fi.

And so I recommend this series to today's middle grade readers with strong conviction.  It is a great story of friendship, action and adventure, and marvelous science fiction.

This being my time travel book of the week, I should mention that it is just full of Liam, and to a lesser extent, Phoebe, bouncing up and down timelines.  It is confusing at times, but not so much as to vex the easily confused reader (me).  The past on Mars is where Liam goes to retreat, the futures he sees are part of his path to questioning the present.  So it's good and useful time travel, and it allows for an especial bitter sweetness to the epilogue....

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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...
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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...
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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. ...
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