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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 Last Human, by Lee Bacon

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Last+Human+lee+bacon&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss The Last Human, by Lee Bacon (middle grade, Abrams, Oct 8, 2019), is set in a future in which robots exterminated humanity to save the earth from environmental destruction.  Now the robots live peaceful lives, carrying out their duties, and every day the President reminds them via its universally shared messages just how horrible humans were, and how good robots always do what they are supposed to do (which includes never keeping secrets).

12-year-old XR_935 is a good robot, working with his team-mates to install and maintain solar panels every day, then going home to their family units to recharge.  Each has a role--Ceeron is the brawn of the group, lifting and carrying, zippy little SkD is the electrical engineer, and XR-935 is the analytical one, making sure all the numbers work.  Then one day their peaceful lives are disrupted when an Unknown Lifeform comes into the solar field where they are working.

It is an unthinkable lifeform, a human girl called Emma.  Emma survived with a handful of other humans in an underground bunker, but was the only one to make it through a devastating sickness.  Now she is trying to do what her parents wanted, following a map to the place they wanted her to go.

The robots face a dilemma.  Emma doesn't seem like a monstrous world destroyer; she seems like someone who needs their help.  XR_935 crunches the numbers, and realizes that the probability of Emma making her way through a world full of enemy robots is almost nil.  A little bit of help for Emma at the beginning snowballs into the robotic threesome going AWOL, setting out with Emma and getting themselves into greater and greater trouble.   

The journey with the human girl forces XR_935 to question not just whether humanity was a horrible as it's been led to believe, but whether the President is in fact not being a good robot itself.  And indeed, the President has been keeping information from the robot community; information that can, and does, change everything (the ending offers the promise of human/robot co-existence).

It's a story told in short chunks, making it very friendly for readers daunted by large swaths of text.  XR_935, and his comrades, are also very engaging traveling companions, and it's delightful to see XR_935, the point of view robot, stretching its consciousness past acceptance of the status quo.  Ceeron and SKD are delightful in their own ways as well, bringing considerable humor to the tense adventures.

I thought at first this would be a dystopia from the human point of view--attempted extinction and a world ruled by hostile robots is fairly awful.  But it turns out that the robot society itself has dystopian elements, with knowledge controlled by a de facto dictator, and free will (these robots are so advanced that free will is possible for them) suppressed.   I also thought Emma's journey would be the center of things, but instead it's just as much as story of XR_935 growing from trusting kid robot to questioning thinker, taking responsibility for its own actions.   And so I found it much more interesting than I expected!

I enjoyed it lots, and I think it has tons of kid appeal. Definitely one to give to fans of The Wild Robot, or kids who love reading about plucky kids copying with unimaginable circumstances.

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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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