Ice Shock

Gr 5—8—This second novel in the series starts off with the theft of a priceless artifact in Kabul by a mysterious ninjalike thief and then quickly switches back to Oxford, England, where 14-year-old Joshua Garcia continues on an adventure involving his father's death in Mexico, a hidden Mayan civilization called Ek Naab in which the citizens are brilliant and highly advanced, a lost codex, and danger at every turn. Josh's friends from Invisible City (Walker, 2010) are in this episode, along with his cousin from the secret city of Ek Naab and some new characters. This time, however, Josh doesn't know whom to trust because there must be a traitor among them. The characters aren't any more fully realized in this book than in the first, and some confusing plot twists are troublesome, but the action is nonstop and the unexplained mystery involving the Mayan calendar, the end of the Earth, and the belief by some that they were visited by aliens in the ancient past will have middle-school boys clamoring for the next installment.—Jake Pettit, Thompson Valley High School, Loveland, CO