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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 Thief Knot, by Kate Milford

The Thief Knot, by Kate Milford, is the third of the Greenglass House series (though there are other books set in the fictional town of Nagspeake). The first, Greenglass House, will always have a special place in my heart, because not only did I myself love it, but it was the last book I read out loud to my little one (now 16), and he loved it too....So it was a treat to anticipate returning to Nagspeake with The Thief Knot (it's a real pleasure to keep a book you really want to read out for a few days, so that every time it catches your eye you get a happy zest moment), and a treat to actually do so (because it was really good)!

The Thief Knot is essentially the story of a group of kids coming together to solve a mystery--in this case, the kidnapping of a politician's little girl, Peony.  Best friends Marzana and Nialla had been wanting excitement, and despite all the curious and dubious things about their home in the Liberty district of Nagspeake (full of shifty characters with pasts not talked about, magical "old iron" that transforms itself, and lots of secrets), they hadn't found a good adventure.  When Peony is kidnapped, and Marzana's parents (who fall in the "pasts not talked about" category) are asked to use their connections to help find her, Marzana and Nialla decide that they will help too.  They are joined by four other kids, each with their own unique attributes and abilities, and set to work to hunt for clues, starting in their own school....

And a delightful tangle of clues they are too, with false leads and improbable connections taking the kids into places in the own neighborhoods that blow their minds!  It's not just the place that was familiar being made extraordinary to the kids; the stories they learn about each other and their families do the same. Along the way, the kids themselves are changed. For instance, Marzana doesn't exactly overcome her crippling self-doubt once and for all, but she is able to trust her new friends and her ability to make decisions as leader of the group, and able to make mistakes, realize she has, and set things right.

I myself have no yearning to solve mysteries, but if ever there was a group of kid detectives that I could join, it would be this one.  I feel they might value my skills as historian/archaeologist/person able to draw to scale underwater (although no drawing to scale underwater was needed to crack this particular mystery).  My lack of innate detecting ability makes me unable to comment on the manner in which the mystery was solved--when I read, I almost never see clues and if I do I assume the writer has failed somehow and made things too obvious.  In this case, I went into the book with a bit of bird knowledge that let me make a connection before it was pointed out in the book, but that being said, I found this mystery satisfying (although the group dynamic was really what I enjoyed, and the really truly fabulous architecture. Nagspeake's always had great fabulous architecture, but it went up a notch here).

So if you enjoy kid detectives in fantastical settings (with a bit of actually magic and fantasy elements to it), you will love The Thief Knot!  It would probably be pretty confusing to read this one before any other Nagspeake books, and part of the pleasure is seeing old friends from the first two books, but as a story it stands on its own just fine.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher


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This week's round-up of middle grade science fiction and fantasy from around the blogs (10/13/19)

Here's what I found in my blog reading this week; please let me know if I missed your post! The Reviews The Bootlace Magician (Cicus Mirandus #2), by Cassie Beasley, at Randomly Reading The Boy Who Was Fire, by Marcus Kahle McCann, at The Children's Book Review City of Bones, by Victoria Schwab, at Pages Unbound The Dark Lord Clementine, by Sarah Jean Howitz, at Sally's Bookshelf Dead Voices, by Katherine Arden, at Charlotte's Library Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee, at Imaginary Friends The Dragon Warrior, by Katie Zhao, at Log Cabin Library , Forever and Everly , and Lost In Storyland Ember: the Secret Book, by Jamie Smart, at Mr Ripleys Enchanted Books The Hippo at the End of the Hall, by Helen Cooper, at Charlotte's Library Homerooms and Hall Passes, by Tom O'Donnell, at Ms. Yingling Reads The International Yeti Collective, by Paul Mason, at Book Craic The Little Broomstick, by Mary Stewart, at Fantasy Literature Mightier than the Sword, by Drew Callander and ...
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Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins, for Timeslip Tuesday

If you are in the mood for a real page turner of a YA time travel story (it only took me two and a bit hours to read 400 pages), with lots of twists, lots of great characters, and lots of action, look no further than Stolen Time, by Danielle Rollins (Febraury 2019, HarperTeen). It begins in Seattle, in 1913, when Dorothy runs away from the marriage her con-artist mother has inveigled her into.  Her flight leads her to a time traveler, from New Seattle, 2077.  Ash is on a mission to find his mentor, the professor who figured out time travel technology, and who disappeared. leaving his team of young people gathered from different times without guidance and purpose.  Dorothy stows away in his ship, and Ash inadvertently takes her back to his own time, to a city devastated by earthquakes and inundated by tidal waves. It's a city living in fear of a vicious gang, whose co-leader, Roman, was once one of the professor's brightest students.  But Roman wanted time travel to ...
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Dark Metropolis

by Jaclyn Dolamore Thea waits tables by night, and by day, she takes care of her mother, who is plagued with bound-sickness; her mother was magically bound to her husband when they were married, but Thea’s father disappeared in a war.  Those who are bound-sick are taken away to the asylum, and Thea lives in constant fear that someone will notice her mother’s deteriorating mental state and that she will be left entirely alone.  Then Thea meets Freddy at the Telephone Club, where she works, and her friend mysteriously disappears.  Thea is thrust into parts of the city she didn’t know existed and, along with Freddy, discovers the darker aspects of their community. Although there was a lot going on for just about all of the book, there was a severe lack of depth to the world.  There was magic, but it was only mentioned or used in direct relation to the plot.  The magic wasn’t part of the world except as it was used to make the story work.  The charact...
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