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...
Then the world changes. An American arrives, with a boy originally from Samkad's village, who grew up in the lowlands. The man is friendly, sharing knowledge of his strange country and its customs. But other Americans have come to the Philippines too, bringing war, and they too come to the village. They are not friends, and Samkad's passage from childhood to adulthood is the trauma he and his father must face together in the wake of the American war.
I did not know anything about the Philippine-American War before reading this book, though the general trajectory of violent invasion and clash of cultures didn't surprise me. But the story isn't about the invasion so much as it is about Samkad's growing up, and coping with the dramatic disruption of his world. He's a great, believable kid, anxious to prove himself, making impulsive decisions that sometimes aren't great, and ultimately come through everything true to himself. There's enough about the war and the Americans to make things exciting, without that story decentering Samkad and his perspective as things fall apart around him.
The sights and sounds and even smells of Samkad's world are well described, making this place and its people vividly real, which in turn makes the story of invasion and cultural disruption even more powerful. The story ends gently, with the horror softened by a reprieve for Samkad and the Bontoc people, and indeed, after finishing the book, I was relieved to find that the Bontoc are still living in their mountains (see link above).
So the book is two things--an excellent, and universally familiar story of growing up, and a great introduction to a culture very foreign to many US readers, and to the horror of "culture contact" and imperialism for young readers! And it is, in fact, endorsed by Amnesty International:
"Amnesty International endorses Bone Talk because it upholds many human rights, including our rights to life, to equality, to have a religion, to enjoy our own culture. It also shows us what can happen when these are taken away from us."
disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.
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