THE SEVEN SWORDS

In the second installment of the Otherworld Chronicles trilogy, the fate of the world is at stake.

“I feel like we’re in the second Lord of the Rings movie!” young Kay says to her brother Artie Kingfisher, the new King Arthur. On a quest to recover seven magical swords of the Dark Ages, Artie and Kay gather “New Knights of the Round Table” and try to unite two worlds. Standing in their way is Lordess Morgaine, who has created (a different) Arthur and Mordred in a laboratory—genetically engineered creations essential to her goal of retrieving Excalibur, killing Merlin and attaining supreme power. Artie and his band travel from Ohio via crossover points between worlds in search of swords in Sweden, France and Japan, and they join forces with fairies, dragons and even Numinae, the forest lord, in an Armageddon-style confrontation with Morgaine and her minions. It’s a wild mix of Arthurian tales, with such folkloric elements as dragons, witches, fairies and bear soldiers, and a 21st-century world of video games, iPad sword apps, genetic engineering and characters who say things like “dude” and “Holy mirror image, Batman!” Johnson-Shelton thus manages to incorporate many of the elements of the classic tales and make them fresh.

Real excitement and horror await readers in this new take on classic Arthurian lore.