The Arcade Catastrophe by Brandon Mull (Good)

Sorry that I haven't written anything in such a long time...  I've been a little preoccupied.

The author also wrote the Fablehaven series and the Beyonders.  Anyway, this book is the sequel to the Candy Shop War.  I'll be the first to admit that it sounds pretty stupid but it was a pretty nice story.  A short summary is that a couple kids get caught in the middle of a war between magicians.  They can help using magical candy that does anything from reducing gravity to convincing people that you are doing the right thing.  So that's a super brief summary.  Look it up to see if that's the kind of thing you want to read.  I read it a couple years ago so it might be slightly more kiddish than I remember.  I'll let you decide.

Okay. Back to the Arcade Catastrophe.  The Cover:

I honestly have no idea what's going on on the cover.  What's up with the Spinx?  I don't know.  I also don't know why Summer is flying and Nate is running super fast.  It doesn't make sense.  There's some kid by the base of the statue that's like a chameleon.  Which I don't think happened throughout any part of the book.  Either way, not my favorite cover.

The Summary:  Nate, Summer, Pigeon, Trevor, and their new friend Lindy hear that John and the magician police man, Mozag, have disappeared, and it all leads back to an arcade in Walnut Hills where its biggest prizes are stamps.  The kids start earning stamps for themselves to better find a way to free their friends.  The stamps are tickets for the competition of the century.  They reveal a plot that could very well destroy the entire world, lead by none other than Jonas White, Mrs. White's brother.

I enjoyed it.  It had a nice plot and characters.  It was a bit predictable, for example you could tell which group would win each contest just because of the importance of the characters.  I might have just been good at predicting but some of the things seemed a bit obvious.

Another slight problem was that two or three times there would be a page or two where the writing tone didn't quite match up, and I felt like someone was trying to teach me a lesson, which I didn't appreciate.  I wouldn't have minded but it just didn't fit in.  For example *minor spoiler. It doesn't effect the plot just an irrelevant page or two*  The characters had just done some adventurous thing and they were going to go home for the night when randomly Trevor asked what he should get his mom for her birthday.  Then they discussed how you should use a coupon book but be sure to actually be able to do the things you put in it.  It was completely unnecessary and the whole tone of that page didn't match up.  It was like they wanted to teach me how to give gifts. *spoiler off*

With all that in mind, I would still recommend this book, especially if you like the first book, since they are very similar.  It's not one of those books that if someone asked me to recommend a book to them would pop to the front of my mind.

All in all a nice book with a nice plot intended for younger kids.

Thanks for reading, as always feel free to comment if you would like.