George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. ![]() Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment. ![]() Fearful evil survives to threaten the world, promising further adventures in a future volume. Wilson feels as though he's trying to keep the stakes high and to top what has come before, which can be tedious for readers who are not attached to the outcome. Some of the more engaging characters from the previous book are less integral to the plot this time around, and the presence of historical figures such as Captain John Smith and Ponce de León are not as convincing, though the mythological references still succeed. The children's cutesy nicknames, Rus-rus and Tigs, seem irritatingly inappropriate and jarring under the circumstances. The discoveries that engaged readers as they uncovered the world of Ashtown in the first book grow old as the plot perpetually bombards the two children with ever-greater foes and danger. Like many second books in a series, this is definitely for those who have read the first-and even they may find themselves disappointed. One year after the events of the first book, the children find themselves desperately seeking the Dragon's Tooth they had lost, encountering perils aplenty. Cyrus and Antigone continue the adventures begun in The Dragon’s Tooth (2011), as the Order of Brendan and its fearless leader, Rupert Greeves, experience a rebellion that threatens the future of the world.
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