From the New York Times bestselling author of the Faerie Wars Chronicles, Herbie Brennan, comes this heart-pounding middle-grade adventure—think The Da Vinci Code for tweens. Reminiscent of the Percy Jackson and Artemis Fowl series, this edge-of-your-seat thriller involves an ancient curse, a murder, and a conspiracy by a secret society.
When Edward Michael “Em” Goverton uncovers the key to a five-hundred-year-old deadly prediction by the prophet Nostradamus, personal tragedy morphs into international crisis. Soon Em finds himself enmeshed in a sinister web of shocking events where nothing is quite as it seems. But the ominous forces behind the plot are not about to sit back and let their plans be ruined, and soon their net begins to close in on Em.
It’s a race against the clock for Em and his friends to prevent a catastrophe that threatens the lives of an entire generation.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Those Brits and Their Teenaged Spies!
By Teacherrates
Please understand that all my reviews focus on the interests of my middle school students. I never do a full plot synopsis in a review.There is a problem with YA literature: there is so much of it and so much of it is good. I can't really explain why I chose to read this book over so many, maybe it was just the next book I had to place in my in-class library and I had just finished Morgan Rhodes' Falling Kingdoms, so it was there at hand. Whatever the reason, I am glad I did. I am now a fan of Herbie Brennan (I've had Shadow Project in my library for some time; now I will read it).This is a great book for the MS group, despite a few bad words. The pace of the plot is scorching, dead certain to keep most of my seventh graders riveted. The two boy/girl mid-teen main characters are developed very well, and I like the way Brennan makes the heroine (Charlotte) the more forceful of the two. Both of them are very real and exceptionally likable. The narration is third person limited from the hero's (a boy nicknamed Em) perspective, which works out really well in keeping the reader guessing until the very end. Em never knows whom to trust, except Charlotte, of course. It reminds me of Card's Pathfinder series; there are so many lies and lies within lies within truths that your head just starts hurting. Still, the twists and turns keep you turning the pages to find out what IS true.The basic premise of the plot is that Em and Charlotte have to stop an evil super-secretive group (the Knights of Themis) from killing the majority of a whole generation of the world's children (by way of a vaccine that is really a genetically engineered virus). They have the help of a similarly super-secret British agency (Section 7). Maybe. Or maybe the Knights are the good guys, and the Section is a bunch of paranoid nutcases.From the perspective of my MS kids, this is a definite 5-star. It might stretch the credulity of grown-ups, and some of the plot events ARE a bit of a stretch, but middle school kids are adept at just accepting a story as-is; they are into the action and the characters. Global warming figures prominently in the novel; I find it interesting that global warming is slowy replacing nuclear war as the Armageddan of choice.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.Em on the Run
By Kate Coombs
This one caught my attention because it's by Herbie Brennan, who wrote an excellent series called the Faerie Wars.Em (E.M. for Edward Michael) loses his father, a scholarly geek who has been trying to find a lost prophecy of Nostradamus. At the funeral, Em sees strangers, including men with guns who begin to follow him. Then his mother is tossed in an insane asylum for no real reason, and his uncle Harold starts acting like he might be a traitor.Em figures out that people are looking for his father's notes on the lost prophecy. Together with a friend named Charlotte and the mysterious Victor, Em tries to find answers and evade his followers. He ends up going on the run, aided by Charlotte and Victor.There's a lot of chasing here, sometimes reminiscent of the Alex Rider books (the first one also starts with a death and strangers at the funeral). Trust me when I tell you that double and triple crosses are the name of the game in The Secret Prophecy.I mean, why exactly does Victor want Em to break into a dangerous secret facility in the United States? Is Victor a good guy or a bad guy? Why should Em keep trusting him?I liked Em, who acts from his gut, which often turns out to be right. Sure, he thinks through certain problems, but when action is required, he's already in motion.The meaning and importance of the prophecy is also constantly in question. This is an old-fashioned chase-and-suspense book in a lot of ways, but it takes some new-fangled twists and turns that readers will appreciate. It's clear that Brennan is a pro. Girls will like this one, but it definitely has strong boy appeal.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.Cool
By Amanda
An awesome book I recommend because of the action and the suspense that each word holds in its own writing
