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...
Đăng nhận xét

The Secret

The Secret

Rose Coffin, by M.P. Kozlowsky


ROSE COFFIN by M.P. Kozlowsky


Rose Coffin, by M.P. Kozlowsky (Scholastic October 2019), is a fun middle grade portal fantasy with a very interesting twist!

Rose is going through a tough patch.  An accident has left her twin brother is in a coma, and her parents have little time and energy to spend on her.  At school she's teased for her too-small clothes, and for blushing all the time, and so when the popular SallyAnn encourages her to audition as a singer for her band, Rose is thrilled.  But the "audition" is simply an excuse to get Rose off alone in the woods, to humiliate her utterly and record it all to share in school.

Rose can't make herself get on the school bus the next day.  Instead she takes off into the same woods, and her life is upended.  A walking tree person and a golden boy kidnap her, and take her into the magical realm of Eppersett, where she is hailed as the chosen one.  But don't role your eyes at this seeming cliché--in Rose's case, her bad luck continues, and being chosen one means she'll be the one who gets to be sacrificed to the Abomination, swapping her life for 10 abomination-free years for Eppersett.  (We readers find this out almost immediately, so it's not too severe a spoiler).

Rose, naturally, doesn't find this appealing, but she's not given a choice.  The only thing the Eppersettians are worried about is getting her into the maw of the Abomination alive.  So the golden boy, the tree person, two fierce dog-like beings and a fairy with no wings agree to try to get her there alive.

Dangers beset the travelers, and Rose discovers that she is not, in fact, helpless; she has an actual magical talent of her own (that makes her even more valuable as a sacrifice).  Fighting alongside her captors, and seeing the horror that the Abomination is bringing to Eppersett makes Rose feel some sympathy for them....and if it weren't for the fact that they were bent on sacrificing her, they would be her first true friends outside her family....

And then in the end, Rose has to decide what she will do to save not Eppersett so much as her own self.

So as a standard story of child from our world find a magic gift and a destiny in a magical land it is fine; the magical world and its characters and their backstories and motivations are interesting, the challenges formidable and inventive, with nicely high stakes , and the Abomination unquestionably abominable.  But the whole twist of Rose being a sacrifice gives it a most enjoyable edge of ethical dilemma, that is brought to a satisfying conclusion that makes Rose a victim neither of fate, or of Stockholm Syndrome, but still requires a satisfactorily high level of threat/sacrifice on her part.

It's a journey in which Rose moves from being isolated to being a member of a community, and though she didn't start the journey willingly, in the end she's glad she did (and so is the reader!)

Here's the Kirkus review, if you want another opinion that is basically the same as my opinion...

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher




Nhận xét

Đăng nhận xét

Bài đăng phổ biến từ blog này

The Hippo at the End of the Hall, by Helen Cooper

If you are a fantasy fan who loves quirky small museums with collections of oddities, you will love  The Hippo at the End of the Hall , by Helen Cooper (first published in the UK in 2017, now out in the US from Candlewick, Oct 2019). Ben's invitation to the Gee Museum was delivered by bees.  He'd never heard of the place before, but despite his mother's reservations about letting him go there on his own (reservations which seem, for reasons, to be a bit much, even taking into account the fact that Ben's only ten)  he went...There, in its rooms full of taxidermidied creatures, other natural history collections, a glass bee hive, and clocks and other treasures collected by the Gee family from around the world years ago, he found magic, and the truth about his father, who died many years ago while off on an expedition of his own. Ben also found danger, one of my personal least favorite types of danger--the unscrupulous developer, in this case paired with the unscrupulous d...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm

The Moon Over Crete, by Jyotsna Sreenivasan, for Timeslip Tuesday

The Moon Over Crete , by Jyotsna Sreenivasan (1996, Smooth Stone Press), is a slightly older children's time travel story, interesting for several reasons. It's the story of a modern girl, 11-year-old Lily, whose mom is Indian American, and whose dad is European American.  Lily is finding it difficult being a girl--her best friend is interested in dressing to impress boys, a boy in her class is sexually harassing her and no one is doing anything about it, her mother isn't letting her do things (like go exploring off in the woods) that she'd be allowed to do if she were a boy.  Lily's flute teacher, Mrs. Zinn, is the only one who seems to understand Lily's growing resentment. And happily for Lily, Mrs. Zinn is a time-traveler, fond of visiting ancient Crete, where (in this fictional world) there is almost utopian gender equality.  Mrs. Zinn offers Lily the chance to go to ancient Crete with her for a few weeks,  and Lily accepts.  Having an experienced adult guid...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm

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 conf...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm

Free $100

Free $100