Epic, Somthing Rotten

Epic by Conor Kostick, 2004
Eric’s mother has died in the arena, failing to win her appeal for a new solar panel and must now start over from scratch. Eric has recently died as well on adventures his parents fear are frivolous. On a whim, he recreates himself as a girl swashbuckler and uses all his start-up points on beauty. In this world where the population uses a virtual reality game to solve all conflicts and run the economy, such loses and choices are serious business. When Eric’s father is sent into exile, he and his friends take a path in the game that no one has risked for generations, defeating a dragon, accumulating great wealth, and threatening both the society’s ruling elite and the game’s own nascent intelligence in the process.

This book was written by a fantasy-game writer and is a great read, just as entertaining as Heir Apparent. I liked the plot and the relationships between the friends.


Something Rotten (A Horatio Wilkes Mystery) by Alan Gratz, 2007
There’s something rotten in Denmark, and it stinks bad. Denmark, TN, has a polluting paper mill that is owned by the family of Horatio’s best friend, Hamilton Prince. Now Hamilton’s dad is dead and his uncle has married his mother. Sound familiar? Horatio promises to uncover motives, means, and opportunities to understand what really has been happening in Denmark.

Other tags: Copenhagen River. Pollution. Olivia Mendelsohn, the tree-hugging, cute ex-girlfriend. Trudy Prince, mom. Rex Prince, dead dad who appears from beyond the grave (in a video). Claude Prince, the uncle. Ford N. Branff, the ex-flame of Trudy’s.

A clever take on Hamlet, with humor and suspense. YA mysteries are not my favorite genre and I like this one more in the abstract than I did while reading it.