The Crown of Zeus (Norris)

The Crown of Zeus
Christine Norris (2008)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a bonus book from a recent Kickstarter campaign. Note: my book, A Bucket Full of Moonlight was one of the books in the Kickstarter as was Norris's A Curse of Time and Vengeance.

I've read a lot of bonus stories. It was nice to read a full book for a change.

Since is was a special Kickstarter edition, I didn't get the pretty cover shown above. Also, I don't remember if my version mentioned the Library of Athena or that it was a series. (Maybe it wasn't back then?)

Megan and her dad move to England for his job. She hates the idea of leaving everything behind and having to start over and make new friends in a new school in a new country.

Then she winds up staying in a mansion, the Parthenon, that the company her father works for owns. It comes with a butler and maid as well as its own ghost stories. Megan hears about these stories at school. Next thing, she's having a sleepover with three classmates. The four girls want to hold a seance but end up going on an adventure that finds a secret library hidden beneath the mansion with steps leading down from behind a statue of Athena. Among the shelves, Megan finds a book titled The Crown of Zeus and the four girls are sucked inside of it.

Now they have to follow the clues and solve the puzzles to find the Crown of Zeus to get out of the book or they'll be stuck in there forever or killed trying.

The puzzles are familiar, and while there's no kraken released, Medusa needs to be beheaded and her head needs to turn another monster to stone. Nothing so esoteric that a teenage girl with an interest in Greek mythology can't figure out.

The four girls work together, save each others' lives and become best friends. And, spoiler, they get out with the crown. And then we learn more about Sir Gregory, the archeologist and student of magic.

The book was a little slow-paced but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. I'm not even the target demographic. I also proudly showed off to Christine Norris that I was reading her book when we were at an eSpec Books launch party at Philcon (Cherry Hill, NJ) last month.

So Good Reads is telling me that this is #1 in a series. Given the library in the basement, it seems natural that many more books could follow. Obviously, I'm going to have to check those out, too.




If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs.

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