Bone Quill (Hollow Earth, #2)

by John Barrowman and Carole E Barrowman

[Nessa Luna]

Actual rating: 3,5 - I am not sure how I found out about this series, perhaps from a tweet from one of the authors (John Barrowman, who I followed because he played Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who and Torchwood), but I knew that I wanted to read it because I thought the summary was quite interesting. I bought the first book, and was pleasantly surprised, even though it was a book written for children I enjoyed it very much. It wasn't the best story I've ever read, but I did like it enough to want to read the rest of the series.

Bone Quill starts off, I think, a couple of days after the events from Hollow Earth. The twins are under house arrest while the grown ups search for their mother. I didn't really remember anything that happened in the previous book, because it'd been a while since I've read that. But luckily, there was a sort of 'previously on...' page in front of the book. I am going to start a petition to force every author to do this at the beginning of their sequels, because that would save so much precious (re)reading time! (Of course, rereading a book is not that bad, but if you just want to start the sequel without having to reread the rest of the series, a 'previously on...' page would come in handy).

I liked the story in this book very much, loved how the twins started to find out their powers were much more than they had thought they were. They found out they can sort of travel back in time through paintings, and they also find out they are not the only ones who can do this. We learn more about the island, and about the events that happened in the middle ages after the vikings attacked. We are introduced to some new characters, and we see most of the older characters again which I liked (I really liked Zach and Jeannie).

This book was still a multiple POV story, and it was still a bit confusing whose pov the story was being told from sometimes. Because like with the previous book it sometimes seemed like the chapter was from Em's POV, and then it would change to Zach's POV sentences later. I did get used to this a bit more thanks to the previous book, but it was also still a bit annoying in my opinion. Also of course the story happens in two places - or I should say two times - at once. Present day (with Em and Matt) and the middle ages (with Solon), and I liked that. They eventually met each other near the end of the story, thanks to the twins being able to travel through time and I really hope they'll meet each other more often.

In the end, I liked Bone Quill and I will definintely be reading the third book in the series, because I just want to know how the story ends. It ended with a kind of cliffhanger, and I HATE CLIFFHANGER GODDAMNIT! Ugh. Yeah, will definitely be reading The Book of Beasts soooooooooon-ish.

My opinion on this book in one gif: