The Relic Hunters

April 15, 2011

A teeming cast, a mare's nest of plotlines and characters with ambiguous agendas muddle this sequel to The Brimstone Key (2010).

The morass of steampunk and fantasy conventions includes giant armored battle suits and flying cars, zombies, magical weapons and shapechanging Faerie familiars. In the midst of this, the four young Grey Griffins begin to drift apart. Natalia makes new friends, and Ernie, still smarting over events from the previous volume, splits off to lead a band of costumed vigilantes. Meanwhile, Harley becomes the assistant to a renowned inventor who is wasting away from an unidentified illness, and Max has confusing visions of the supposedly evil Otto Von Strife. This last character's conveniently available notebook reveals that he's building a world-threatening Paragon Engine. Led by mysterious instructor Obadiah Strange, the Grey Griffins reunite first on a failed mission that leaves them watching as Von Strife's teleporting associate Smoke whisks away both Strange and a magical (?) relic called the Schrödinger Box, then to mount an attack on the Paragon Engine that ends in a cliffhanger. Readers hoping to keep track of who's who and what's where will definitely want to start with the previous episode, but they are likely to feel that they've wasted their time after a climactic revelation renders the entire plot nonsensical.

There's a lot better out there than this. (Steampunk. 11-13)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2011

Gr 4-7-Teenagers Max, Ernie, Natalia, and Harley, aka the "Grey Griffins," combine their differing talents to battle the forces of evil. They attend Iron Bridge Academy, a special school where battle strategy might just be more important than mathematics. The consequences of many of the events in The Brimstone Key (Little, Brown, 2010) play out in this volume, including the fact that the Grey Griffins are growing apart from one another. There are hard feelings after the death of a classmate, and Max is concerned that he might not be able to call upon his partners as he used to. Can they work together to learn more about the "Paradox Engine," a machine that has the power to open up a portal to the Shadowlands? There are very few fantasy-fiction tropes that don't make it into this book. Steampunk style abounds, with airships, aviator goggles, and clockwork robots, but then so do the Knights Templars. Many kids at the Academy walk around with shape-changing familiars that are frequently hard to control, and there also seems to be a war between the humans and the changelings who are slowly losing their humanity as their faerie blood becomes stronger. A zombie army also makes an appearance. Any one of these elements would probably make for a great book. Together, it feels as if they're fighting for readers' attention.-Kathleen Meulen Ellison, Sakai Intermediate School, Bainbridge Island, WA

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.