Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret
by Obert Skye

This second Leven Thumps adventure finds our young hero stuck in Foo, the world where dreams become reality. The gateway back to the real world has been closed (preventing the bad guys from merging the two worlds into one, and essentially destroying both). But, in not-so-good news, Leven and his friends are vulnerable to being killed because they forced their way into Foo, rather than being brought there by fate. So fate, for them, could become very perilous.

It is especially perilous once the remaining bad guys hear the news that Leven and friends can be killed. On the run with his faithful sycophant Clover, his friend Winter, and a great king named Geth who is currently in a very vulnerable state (i.e., the form of a toothpick), Leven is faced with an unending succession of strange and deadly adversaries, from small monkeylike creatures that bury people alive to a colony of insects with a hive mind that means to use Leven's corpse to fertilize a tree. At the top of the villanious pecking order is a rant named Jamoon, who has an army of terrible minions and a machine that can remove a person's magical gift.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, a really nice guy named Tim is trying to find out what became of Winter...and an up-and-coming psychopath named Dennis joins forces with a vicious, talking toothpick and the leftover residue of the previous book's villain, Sabine...and fate, for whatever reason, brings the two men together on the German lake that once concealed the gateway to Foo. There is something ominous about the meeting of these men, one good and the other evil, and what it will mean for the third book in the series: Leven Thumps and the Eyes of Want.

While I'm waiting for the third book to come out in paperback, I will also be looking for a clever-looking companion volume to this series: Professor's Winsnicker's Book of Proper Etiquette for Well-Mannered Sycophants. This seems to be a school book kept by dear Clover, whose antics (especially connected with candy) always brighten Leven's otherwise spooky and dangerous adventures. Perhaps this companion book will enlighten us about some of the mysteries surrounding sycophants...but I doubt it. One of the chapters is supposedly called "Keeping Secrets and Avoiding Epiphanies." Clearly there are some truths that just don't want to be known!

Robbie Fischer
USA

Recommended Age: Age: 12+

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