The Oracle of Avaris (Secrets of the Sands, Book 3)

Written by Alisha Sevigny

Dundurn

978-1-45974-435-6

368 pp.

Ages 8-13

January 2022

 

In Alisha Sevigny's earlier books in the Secrets of the Sands trilogy (The Lost Scroll of the Physician and The Desert Prince), Sesha, daughter of the Great Physician Ay, had kept herself and her young ailing brother Ky alive after the deaths of their parents and endeavoured to find the notable scroll believed to have the power of life over death and which was desired by all. This led her and her fellow scribes, Reb and Paser, along with the Hyksos spy Pepi away from Thebes to the desert to free Sesha's friend and the Pharaoh's daughter, Princess Merat, who'd been given in betrothal to the Hyksos chieftain, Yanassi. But their adventures are far from over and, with a copy of the scroll newly rescued, the foursome–Sesha, Reb, Paser and Pepi–are heading to the capital of Hyksos to help prevent a war between the Hyksos and the Thebans.

In Avaris, King Khyan is dying. His son, the chieftain Yanassi, believes himself to be his father's successor and is anxious to wage war and extend the Hyksos's power. Pepi, the king's nephew who believes that he may actually be the king's son, is determined to maintain peace between the nations and see that the prophecies, both contained in the scroll and as recounted to him by his priestess mother Kalali upon her death, be fulfilled. But there is a complication: Pepi believes that Sesha, one from the line of the physician as prophesized, should rule. Still the king is determined to wait to hear directly from the Oracle who is expected to attend solstice ceremonies. 

But the Oracle is missing. And so Sesha, Reb and Paser head out on their newest quest: to find the Oracle, confirm the prophecies that would determine the future of Hyksos, and bring her back to Avaris before the imminent death of the king.

For middle-grade readers looking for an extraordinary adventure in a historical setting, The Oracle of Avaris and the earlier books in the series deliver. There are dangerous vipers of the serpentine and human varieties, conflict between nations, enigmatic predictions and perilous journeys. There is discrimination between nations and peoples, illness and injuries that devastate, and familial discords that could be fatal. But Alisha Sevigny does more than tell a great story. She takes us to ancient Egypt to witness the struggles of its peoples, the foods, transportation, clothing and ceremonies of its cultures and a landscape of desert, temples, palaces and humble huts. Young readers will feel the heat, worry about a Nubian mercenary, cheer for some and sneer at others, and wonder about the true meaning of the prophecies. And, better yet, Alisha Sevigny leaves readers secure in the knowledge that Sesha and her compatriots will be remembered by their deeds and their hearts.

...to an Egyptian, there is nothing more important than being remembered.      (pg. 352)

The Lost Scroll of the Physician (2020)

The Desert Prince (2020)

The Oracle of Avaris (2022)

The Desert Prince (Secrets of the Sands, Book 2)

Written by Alisha Sevigny

Dundurn

978-1-45974-432-5

364 pp.

Ages 8-13

September 2020 

"I know what it is like, how acting on your conscience can bring you into conflict with higher powers." (pg. 52)

 

When middle-grade readers first met Sesha in The Lost Scroll of the Physician, she was studying with other scribes and searching for the lost scroll of the Great Imhotep. Though those in power viewed the scroll as a tool of influence, whether for military surgery or more, Sesha needed it to help save the life of her younger brother Ky. So, even though Pharaoh's queen Anat stole the scroll and tried to kill Sesha and fellow scribes Paser and Reb, the Pharaoh's physician Ahmes was able to help Ky. Now the trio of teens are on the run and searching for Pharaoh's daughter, Merat, who'd been given to the Hyskos chieftain in betrothal.

 

To improve their chances of escape and survival, Sesha helps free a Hyskos spy who'd been in the pits alongside them. Under Pepi's guidance, Sesha, Paser and Reb are able to cross the dangerous desert of scorching heat, deadly quicksand, negligible water and terrifying sandstorms to reach the Chieftain's oasis community. Under the ruse of Sesha being betrothed to Pepi who is the Chieftain's cousin, and Reb and Paser being her brothers, they ingratiate themselves into the community and look for ways to free Merat and save themselves. 

But freeing Merat is not as easy as it sounds, especially at a secluded oasis where they all become integrated: Merat working with children, Sesha helping as a physician, and Paser and Reb training as Hyskos soldiers. When the Chieftain's right-hand man Akin is badly injured, Sesha devises a plan to retrieve the scroll from Thebes, ostensibly to help in his recovery, and to get them all to the city of Avaris from which they might escape. But will her scheme to return to Thebes and see her brother, recover the scroll, warn the Thebans about the Chieftain's plans for war, and return safely to her friends be as easy as she plots, especially with Pepi by her side? And will the skills he has taught her as a spy be enough to ensure their success?

If The Lost Scroll of the Physician was a thriller, then The Desert Prince is action adventure. By taking the action out of Thebes and into the desert, where survival requires skills beyond understanding how and why people act as they do, Alisha Sevigny has added a new dimension to her story. There is still the myriad of characters, some of whom we don't trust and learn to trust, and others whose motives are questionable all along, and they are key to the plot of the story and how it progresses but place and time become even more prominent. Being set in Ancient Egypt, the Secrets of the Sands series is already historical fiction with a different landscape, and Alisha Sevigny adds richness to her story by infusing it with the Ancient Egyptians' belief system, cultures, medical and funereal practices and more. But now she also brings us into the desert and to an oasis and introduces a new culture, that of the Hyksos, and an imminent new conflict. Alisha Sevigny has taken us to Ancient Egypt, making everything so real that young readers will be tempted to check how much is authentic (Thebes, Hyskos, Imhotep, Avaris, and Ahmes all are) and even if Sesha might be found in Wikipedia (she is not). 

That's the context of Alisha Sevigny's The Desert Prince but the story, of a prophetic scroll, of allegiances and spies, betrothals and family, and war and accord, provides us with the action and the mystery that will keep readers reading, especially as even more secrets are revealed. She may have left us satisfied with her story's resolution but, just as she did at the conclusion of The Lost Scroll of the Physician, Alisa Sevigny knows how to keep us wanting more and, with a secret prophecy and a looming war along with some budding romances, she's hooked us into anticipating Book 3.

The Lost Scroll of the Physician (Secrets of the Sands, Book 1)

Written by Alisha Sevigny

Dundurn

978-1-45974-429-5

272 pp.

Ages 8-13

January 2020

He looks up at me, expression bleak. "There is nothing you can do, Sesha. This is an ailment you cannot treat."

     "I will treat it," I say firmly. "And I swear by the gods I will find that scroll and see you cured." (pg. 129)

 

Thirteen-year-old Sesha  and her younger brother Ky have been fending for themselves for a month since the fire that killed their parents. Because Sesha had seen guards with the pharaoh's crest running from the burning house, Sesha believes Pharaoh had had their father Ay, Great Physician and Chief Scribe, killed, perhaps because of his last project. Though she doesn't know much about the scroll he'd been transcribing, she remembers hearing that it was by the Great Imhotep and might have great implications for the world but also save Ky's life.

When they are returned to the palace, Ky is delighted to be reunited with his friend Prince Tutan, Pharaoh's young son, but Sesha is wary of all, including Pharaoh; Wujat, their father's friend and Grand Vizier and former High Priest; the new physician Ahmes; Queen Anatmoset; the priest Nebifu; and Scribe Sebau. In her determination to find the scroll, she requests permission to study the medical arts with other scribes at the temple where her father's chambers had been. Pharaoh agrees on the assurance that she will search for the missing scroll which he claims to be an invaluable treatise for military surgery.

With the help of Pharaoh's daughter Merat and a scribe trainee, Paser, and some other unlikely allies, Sesha searches for the scroll so that she may help Ky, who has seizures because of an excess of fluid in his skull, but also disprove the rumour that her father was a heretic who believed only in practical medicine and not the magic of their gods, and learn who was responsible for their parents' deaths. But with those who have already harmed her parents determined to stop her efforts, Sesha must rely on her instincts and learned skills to persist in her quest if she is to save the only family she has left.

Set in Ancient Egypt, a unique culture rife with intrigue and peculiarities–the mummification Sesha witnesses as part of her studies is especially distinctive–The Lost Scroll of the Physician is at its heart a spellbinding mystery. Central to the story, of course, the plot to locate the missing scroll which could be anywhere or already discovered and perhaps destroyed. And with so many characters at the palace, at the temple and in the countryside, Alisha Sevigny has created a story that is embedded with treasonous villains, colourful happenings–from snake charming to a hippo hunt and the Festival of the Inundation–and a setting rich in history and ethos. Ancient Egypt becomes part of the story, not just the setting, giving readers even more story as they follow Sesha and her allies into the mastaba in which her parents are interred, or into the embalming room, or through the market where Ky steals food. The Lost Scroll of the Physician will delight middle grade readers with its history, its setting and, most of all, its gripping adventure and mystery which, though resolved, offers more to come.

With the release of The Desert Prince, Book 2 in the Secrets of the Sands series, slated for this September, we don't have long to wait until we get to accompany Sesha and her new friends on a new mission away from Thebes and undoubtedly into more danger and in conflict with new adversaries. 

How to Curse in Hieroglyphics

by Lesley Livingston and Jonathan Llyr

Illustrations by Stephen Burley

Puffin Canada

978-0143184249

248 pp.

Ages 8-12 

October, 2013

Reviewed from galley copy

The title is fun, the fluorescent cover is dazzling and How to Curse in Hieroglyphics is entertaining as a rollicking adventure teeming with mystery, B-movies, graphics, humour and action!

Twelve-year-old cousins and B-movie fans Tweed Pendleton and Cheryl Shumacher live with their grandfather, Jefferson "Popcorn" Pendleton a.k.a. Pops, in Wiggins where he owns and runs the Starlight Paradise Drive-In.  Though the girls are responsible and diligent, they may have a reputation for too much imagination because of their regular game of "Action!" that has them playing movie scenes and chasing monsters.  That and the story they told about "The Incident" that left them as five-years-old sitting on a rock, the survivors and only evidence of a family plane trip in which their parents and siblings, and pilot and plane, all disappeared.  Luckily, even though the babysitting jobs seem to be infrequent, Pops has asked them to try their hand at programming for the drive-in, while he works at reopening the adjacent mini-golf course.

But the girls recognize the competition they'll have when Dudley's Traveling Curiosity Show comes to town and sets up across the road, especially with its posters claiming to have the sarcophagus of an Egyptian princess, Zahara-Safiya.  With the help of their 14-year-old friend, Pilot Armbruster (whose father had piloted the awol plane seven years earlier), the girls undertake a mission to scope out the carnival, along with their eleven-year-old annoyance, Artie Bartleby. 

Everything goes awry when Artie tosses "B. Ruth's ball" (Bob Ruth, not Babe Ruth) and cracks the green stone in a decorative scarab beetle embedded in the sarcophagus.  Some purple smoke and a whirlwind later, Artie is missing, the girls are babysitting 15 cats for the school librarian and Colonel Dudley, the proprietor of the carnival, is freaking out because the sarcophagus is empty.  Tweed and Cheryl's game of Action! becomes a real scenario in which they must herd four toddlers turned minions, deal with a transformed, lisping, scaly and tailed Artie, and thwart a curse to bring about a satisfying "The End" for all.

Readers in the middle-grades (Grades 4 to 6) will chuckle with the sparring dialogue between the kids and their verbose claims when trying to impress adults.  They call Arnie "Shrimpcake" and describe him "as annoying as a mosquito in a dark room" (pg. 122) while reassuring Miss Parks that she could "leave the precious shnookumses" in their capable hands (pg. 62).  Their commando gear consists of  

"two sets of hockey shoulder-pads rescued from outside Wiggins' only skating rink, a welding mask (Cheryl), a pair of cardboard 3D glasses with one blue lens and one red lens (Tweed), and a gear bag full of 6 cans of Day-Glo Silly String, a homemade crossbow and quiver stocked with two dozen spongy suction-cup Nerf arrows, a couple of coiled lengths of bubblegum-pink skipping rope, a dodge ball, a whiffle bat, collapsible poles with green nylon fishing nets attached to the ends, and a bag of Double Stuf Oreos with the word "BRIBES" written on it in black magic marker." (pg. 132)

It's so nice to meet pre-teens who still seem like kids.  Tweed and Cheryl are what all tweenies should be: creative, friendly, and fun-loving.  They're not concerned with looking older than their years or being the most popular or attracting boyfriends.  Even Pilot at 14 isn't playing at impressing anyone.  Maybe that will happen at 15 or maybe never.  In the meantime, all readers will enjoy the kids' exploits as literary entertainment, with some graphic storyboarding and scripting worthy of a favourite family movie.

Actor and author Lesley Livingston has always created books that are well-seasoned with wit and clever repartée (see these reviews of her Wondrous Strange series, Starling, Descendant, Once Every Never, and Every Never After) and it would seem that she has found a writing partner in actor and space geek Jonathan Llyr, who apparently wore a rubber turtle shell on his head on SPACE (Kevin A. Boyd, 2010).  How could middle-grade readers with a taste for geek, history, paranormal or adventure all rolled up in laughs not love this story?  I suspect they'll all be waiting (as we all do with Lesley Livingston's books) for the sequel to How to Curse in Hieroglyphics, hoping to learn the details about "The Incident".  Fortunately, How to Curse in Hieroglyphics has been identified as The Wiggins Weird, Book 1 so we know there's more to come.  Yeah!

~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Remember: the book launch for How to Curse in Hieroglyphics is on October 19, 2013.

Canadian Fiction in Ancient Civilizations

Young Canadian readers may choose from a plethora of fiction in which travel from the present to an earlier historical time period fantastically occurs. However, there are far fewer fiction titles in which the entire story is set in that time period, especially when we focus on ancient times. Depending on discussions by economists, archaeologists, historians, etc., the end of ancient times will vary, but for the purposes of this blog, we'll use the early Middle Ages as its end point (although apparently that doesn't jive with Ancient Chinese history.)

Also, there are many books of nonfiction that may be based in ancient times (e.g., Good Times Travel Agency series, Linda Bailey and Bill Slavin, Kids Can Press) or retell myths or legends (e.g., Island of the Minotaur: Greek Myths of Ancient Crete, Sheldon Oberman, Tradewind Books, 2003) or even fictionalized accounts of historical persons (e.g., Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile, Kristiana Gregory, Scholastic, 1999) but I have focused here on novels with new story lines set in ancient times. (Sadly this prologue is longer than the list.)

Torn from Troy: Odyssey of a Slave
Written by Patrick Bowman
Ronsdale Press
978-1-55380-110-8
199 pp.
Ages 10+
2011
See this blog on December 8, 2011 CanLit LittleCanadians review

Shen and the Treasure Fleet
Written by Ray Conlogue
Annick Press
978-1-55451-103-7
320 pp.
Ages 11-15
2007
When the city of Nanjing is under siege, Shen's mother is imprisoned and his father, an Imperial Bodyguard, is presumed dead. Shen and his sister Chang flee with a travelling acrobat troupe, that gains passage on the new emperor's armada, the Treasure Fleet, led by the powerful Zheng He and then the notorious government official, Yang Rong, who has the power to free their mother.

The Roman Conspiracy
Written by Jack Mitchell
Tundra Books
978-0-88776-713-5
164 pp.
Ages 10-13
2005
In the first century B.C., young Aulus Lucius Spurinna must formally be recognized as the head of the household with the sudden death of his uncle and incursions by bands of retired soldiers onto the estate's holdings. Aulus immediately sets off for Rome to inform the family's Protector (who happens to be the Consul Cicero) of the bandits' threats and of his uncle's death/murder. In Rome, Aulus meets Cicero and his enterprising daughter, Tullia, who manages to get him thoroughly involved in their attempt to foil the Roman conspiracy i.e., a plot to take over the government. Soon Aulus finds himself involved in burgling the house of a senator, reporting on traitorous speeches, and even taking command of a troop of Roman cavalry!

Ancient Ocean Blues
Written by Jack Mitchell
Tundra Books
978-0-88776-832-3
187 pp.
Ages 10-13
2008
Not content to create the stereotypical characters of Ancient Rome, Jack Mitchell seamlessly melds historical politicos and literati with the story of Marcus, a young man recently sent to Rome for an education. Because of his cousin, Gaius, Marcus is soon sailing to Athens on a mission to thwart Cicero's political machinations which could foil the rise of young Julius Caesar. Marcus seeks Spurinna (from The Roman Conspiracy) as does Paula, his romance-loving, Spurinna-crushing betrothed who stowed away in Marcus' trunk of scrolls. But this is no lame ship voyage: there are pirates, bribes, a poet, a shipwreck, a rescue, battles, romance, and much humour.

Rise of the Golden Cobra
Written by Henry T. Aubin
Annick Press
978-1-55451-059-7
255 pp.
Ages 11-15
2007
Nebi, a 14-year-old Egyptian scribe, learns of a traitorous plot involving the Assyrians and Count Nimlot to take over Egypt. Nebi travels south to warn King Piankhi, a principled and compassionate man, chosen by the god Amon to rule the African kingdom of Kush. King Piankhi is guided by maat, the ethical principle of ancient Egyptian religion denoting a life committed to justice, order, and truth. He goes to war to protect his people from the harsh rule of the Assyrians, but Nebi finds himself dealing with the King's hot-headed young nephew, Sheb, who wants to win the war and exact revenge.

Germania
Written by John Wilson
Key Porter Books
978-1-55470-112-4
279 pp.
Ages 11+
2008
As Vesuvius erupts, old Lucius records his biography from his time as a young Roman soldier, battling the barbarians in Germany and Illyria, through the revolts of the barbarians against the Romans.

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n.b. As stories set in Viking times may or may not belong here, I will prep a list of those titles separately. (Update: I posted one here on January 15, 2013.) But, if any reader discovers a Canadian title (excluding nonfiction and time-travel) set in an ancient time that I have not included here, please leave a comment to help me address any omissions.