Grab your sword and prepare for adventure! This week’s featured new LGBTQ-inclusive middle grade titles are two stories of action and fantasy: one is the latest volume set in a beloved fictional universe; the other is among the best series starters I’ve ever read.
Click images or titles for full reviews!
The Court of the Dead
From the World of Percy Jackson: The Court of the Dead: A Nico di Angelo Adventure, by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro (Disney Hyperion). The second volume of this Percy Jackson spin-off series, by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro, picks up three months after The Sun and the Star, with boyfriends Nico di Angelo, son of Hades, and Will Solace, son of Apollo, back at Camp Half-Blood after their adventures in Tartarus. A message from Nico’s half-sister Hazel Levesque, however, sends Nico and Will to Camp Jupiter, the West Coast training ground for Roman demigods, where a surge of creatures from the Underworld (who prefer the term “mythics” to “monsters”) has come to the camp, seeking refuge and a better life. Not everyone at the camp is happy to see them, however. When the mythics start mysteriously disappearing, Nico, Will, and Hazel know they have to help—but their efforts reveal a dark threat that could endanger them all and change the world forever.
Everything that has won the Percy Jackson series (and its spin-offs) praise is here: a fun imagining of the interactions between the Greco-Roman gods (and demigods) and the modern world, exciting action, snarky dialogue, puns and humor, and young people trying to discover who they are and where they belong. This book also delves further into Nico’s inner journey to healing and self-understanding. It’s a recommended title and a lot of fun.
Scarlet Morning
Scarlet Morning, by ND Stevenson (Quill Tree). A post-apocalyptic, queer-inclusive, pirate adventure? That should be more than enough to commend this exceptional novel to most readers (and their tweens) here. But it’s much more than that, with a beginning that pulls readers right into its salt-ravaged world, a storyline that is both highly original and evocative of swashbuckling tales of old, and vivid, quirky characters.
Viola and Wilmur have grown up alone in the remote town of Caveat, helping each other survive and learning about their blighted world only through their memories of a caretaker’s tales and the collection of books left to them. When a storm brings the mysterious and slightly scary Captain Cadence Chase to their door, however, they are swept off into adventures that could change the fate of the world.
Author ND Stevenson is best known for his graphic novels, but here shows his consummate narrative skills in a prose work (although he can’t help including occasional illustrations). The worldbuilding here is as good as I’ve ever seen, giving us a setting full of history, cultures, magic, eerie landscapes, and pirate slang. It is the characters—fun, flawed, and memorable—who bring the world to life, however, and allow Stevenson to explore themes of change, loss, facing one’s fears, and choosing one’s family, in between the swash and buckle. There is rollicking humor here, but also insight into human imperfections and human resilience, along with some plot twists that I didn’t see coming. Everything comes together to create a highly recommended whole.