Friday, June 18, 2021

Penny Preston and the Silver Scepter (Misaligned, Book 2), by Armen Pogharian (author), Michelle Babb (narrator)

CamCat Publishing, LLC, June 2021 (original publication August 2013)

Penny Preston, her friend Duncan, her multidimensional cat, or "Cait Sith," Simon, and their mentors, Mr. Myrdin and Master Poe, are facing a dangerous new challenge.

Something went wrong with Penny's closure of a new time fold, and something may have slipped through. Meanwhile, a friend of Myrdin's on an archaeology dig has found an ancient artifact, a silver scepter.

Suddenly, people are seeing a strange little man dressed in red, who asks for favors. After he doesn't get them, strange pranks are played--including the local cat lady's cats being hung up in trees, but very carefully, in rope nets that restrain them without harming them.

When the archaeologists, hoping for more funding, arrange a meeting with local figures including a sachem of a local Native American tribe, something less harmless happens. During that meeting, one of the participants finds himself unable to move. Penny, in a class where she and Duncan are supposed to do a presentation on Hatshepsut, is seen by others to faint, while she finds herself floating over the meeting in the town library, about the scepter. In the course of this, the scepter disappears from the hands of the sachem.

Penny, Duncan, Master Poe, and Mr. Myrdin discover that what's going on is a potential threat to the survival of the planet.

It's fun, exciting, and leavened with interesting bits of 17th century and early Native American mythology, and what might possibly be the fall of Atlantis. And despite having unusual powers, Penny and Duncan remain real kids, smart kids, brave kids, but subject to the same impulses and mistakes in judgment based in their limited experience.

A very enjoyable, satisfying story. Recommended.

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the narrator, and am reviewing it voluntarily.

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