Theodosia & The Staff of Osiris (Book 2)
by R.L. LaFevers
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008
400 Pages
Mid-Grade (9-12)
The Serpents of Chaos are back… and Tetley’s mummified body is discovered as their calling card!
Grandmother Throckmorton is causing trouble as she is determined to find Theodosia a tutor who can teach her some manners. It’s incredible fun to try and guess how the next potential governess will find herself out in the cold: dismissed through Theo’s cunning; a Victorian faux pas, a premeditated curse, or a case of nerves brought on by a precocious young lady?
There is a new assistant Curator in the museum. Though Clive Fagenbush is still a suspicious creep, Vicary Weems (Nigel Bollingsworth’s replacement as First Assistant Curator,) may outclass Fagenbush’s dislikeability quotient by far, while a trust develops between Theodosia and Third Assistant Curator Edgar Stilton.
One fine morning, all the mummies in the city of London congregate in the foyer of Theodosia’s museum (The Museum of Legends and Antiquities, run by her father, and kept in stock with Egyptian artifacts, many cursed, by her parents’ expeditions.) Mummies from private collections, museums, even Tetley shows up again.
I found a small shape huddled near the baseboards behind the mummy formerly known as Tetley. Any other mummy would have been preferable to this one. Mummies you had once known in real life were far creeper than ancient ones.
Police Inspector Turnbull is determined to find a way to pin the mummy thefts on Theodosia’s father, but the real culprit may be Theo herself.
Theodosia Throckmorton is a special twelve year old. She has both the gift to see curses and the innate ability to figure out how to defuse them… with a little research. She is now in the regular employ of an ancient secret society called The Brotherhood of Chosen Keepers, and reports her findings to their head, Mr. Wigmere, through Sticky Will, a friend with special talents himself, whom she met just months ago when she faced the Serpents of Chaos.
The tension builds rapidly as Grandmother Throckmorton develops an interest in one Admiral Sopcoate, in command of the British Naval vessel Dreadnaught, then Theodosia brings a statue of Anubis to life, and a powerful Egyptian artifact called The Staff of Osiris is stolen from the museum! Soon Theodosia finds herself trapped in a racing carriage with none other than a horribly disfigured Nigel Bollingsworth looking for revenge!
Later we discover that Edgar Stilton is a member of (yet another) secret organization dedicated to studying the wisdom of the ancients: The Ancient Order of the Black Sun, whose Grand-Master, Aloysius Trawley, believes that Theodosia is the living incarnation of their divine mistress, Isis. Their operatives use code names after The Seven Scorpions who protected Isis in the old times, and are continually about doing odd things like following and repeatedly kidnapping Theodosia to coerce her into teaching them magic.
It wasn’t as if I didn’t have enough to do, what with mummies running loose in London, Will dabbling in questionable behavior and being followed by the Grim Nipper, a wretched governess stifling my every move, an ancient Egyptian god in jackal form coming to life, and seven inept scorpion guards acing, quite frankly, mad as hatters.
One of the highlights of this book is watching Theodosia herself create a cursed object(!) by trapping an evil spirit and binding it with knots in a rope.
Some spying down at the docks at a dive called The Salty Dog reveals that VonBraggenschnott himself, leader of the Serpents of Chaos, has returned along with Bolligsworth, and that their goal is to steal the flagship of the navy by using the Staff they stole to create a Fog of War that will kill the crew of Sopcoate’s Dreadnaught and reanimate them as mummy slaves.
“But Grandmother,” I asked, “why is it okay for a girl to know about battleships but not Egyptology?”
Theodosia must defeat the Serpents amidst a surprising betrayal, avoid Trawley’s Black Sunners, help to free Sticky Will from the threat of The Grim Nipper, and worst of all, rid herself of the nasty, pinching tutor, Miss Sharp!
The ending scene is worthy of Indiana Jones. Luckily, the next two books in the series, Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus and Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh are available now, so I don’t have to wait another second to be immersed in Egyptian magic, Victorian adventure, secret societies, and high danger!
Related Posts:
Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos
Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris
Theodosia and the Eyes of Horus
Theodosia and the Last Pharaoh
