Finished The Maze of Bones over the break but forgot to blog it and just finished up Found last night. Both are fun middle-aged thrillers kicking off a series. Bones is by Rick Riodan (of the Percy Jackson series fame) and he apparently has sketched out the arc for the upcoming novels to be written by other authors (including the awesome Gordan Korman). I won't comment on all the add-ons (game cards, internet sweepstakes, etc.) but just say that the book is funny, thrilling and plain fun. It is even loaded with great background on world travel, history and art. There is a respectable stab at turning Benjamin Franklin into a Da Vinci Code-like genius and since Da Vinci never wrote essays on farts, which is remarked upon by one of the characters, and this book doesn't suck I declare it the winner. Looks like more geniuses will appear, including Mozart.
My wife and I alternated reading aloud chapters of Found to each other. We do that. Is that weird? She laughed because I kept mistakenly calling it Lost since it has a plane and mysterious happenings. Seems to be about time travel but like Maze of Bones, there's only so much I can say without ruining it for you. Great stuff--but Haddix has never let me down.
Both books feature brother-sister pairings to appeal to a wider audience and I personally think they would. Neither has a definitive ending, but then they clearly state that they are Part Ones. So it looks like they have me on the hook for some sequels...
