Ben Gartner

I received a free ARC of this book from the author, to give my honest and unbiased review.


There's a lot here to love, especially for readers of the Magic Treehouse series. I really enjoyed the thought and the research that went into this, from the garments to the locale to the use of an ancient recipe and its incorporation into the story. For me, there was quite a bit of what I would think of as "over writing" but that's something I think is common and maybe even necessary in MG books, and it didn't bother my son at all (and since my son is the target audience, I'm taking into account his interpretation).

John and Sarah are kids you can root for. It's definitely aged up from Magic Treehouse, with a more complex plot, more complicated inner conflicts, and believable sibling interactions. The protagonists felt well rounded, not simply lenses through which to teach history. While my kids enjoy learning through the Magic Treehouse, the Eye of Ra gives a lot more information, woven throughout the narrative. Best of all, my reluctant reader was reluctant to put this book down.

The pacing felt a bit off to me at the end, but not so much that it wasn't enjoyable, and it could have been simply because I was expecting Magic Treehouse style pacing. Even so, the story was engaging and interesting and I loved the side characters, especially the lessons given by Hatmehit and Imhotep during the adventure.

After slight dings for frequent over-descriptions and the pacing hiccup at the end, this is a solid 4 star book for me, and I'm eager to share more from this author with my kids. I heartily recommend this to any kids with an interest in history, especially ancient Egypt.

I'm leaving the rest of the review for my 11 year old to give his thoughts-- Caution, Spoilers Ahead!

His rating - 4/5 stars.




Setting: Peaked Curiosity and Aided the Story
The setting was really fun. The idea of going to ancient Egypt was really cool and I quite like Egypt. I wish there was something about mummies. The pyramids are cool but I wish there were traps in there so maybe Aten could have gotten away easier and they would have had to avoid the traps.

Plot: Mostly clear, hard to follow in other areas
For instance, Sara was on the rolling team but then I couldn’t wrap my head around it when Sara couldn’t hear the warning about the dust storm. The wind picking up so suddenly took me by surprise. My favorite part was when John jumped over the scorpions. I didn’t know why they wanted to surround the place by guards but then when they came back, they would have seen guards and might have been accused of being the thieves. It was a bit unclear to me whether the portal stops time from the side you come from, or just when John and Sarah went through.

Characters: Unbalanced
Too much John, not enough Sarah. Sarah wasn’t as in the book, because John was really awesome with all the awesome parts, but Sarah, all she did was get guards. She did see Zach sneak out, but that wasn’t actually important. Sometimes the characters felt like real people. John didn’t feel as real as Aten did because I didn’t believe he’d jump over scorpions—I thought he got over his fears too quickly. Sarah was good and pretty realistic. Zach and their families felt really realistic and I liked Zach’s reactions to modern times. Zach was really powerful, hypnotizing the snake and then became sort of less powerful, and John got more powerful. I wasn’t so sure about the butterfly effect with all the changes they made with going back in time.

Immersion: Didn’t want to put the book down
Every night I was so excited to go back to the book because I wanted to read more. The chapters were very long, but I was still sad that it was so short. I really hope there are more books in the series.

Emotional response: Engaging/strong emotions
Because of the storyline and the characters. Even though some of the characters were unbalanced, there’s a lot of that in tons of stories and so it didn’t affect the engaging. John had big emotions that resonated with me. John felt really scared a lot of the time and unsure and that was something I really liked about the book.

Thought-provoking: New Ideas came up
Already knew a lot about ancient Egypt but I liked learning more about it and want to use ancient Egypt more in creations.


The story was awesome. I liked the tracing of the Eye of Ra.… (mais)

I did receive a free ARC to review, but have tried to make this review unbiased regardless.

There’s so much to say about Sol Invictus, mostly because there’s so very much to love! It’s a worthy successor to an excellent new series for middle-grade readers, and it'd be lovely to see it available in schools and libraries everywhere. My true review would be 4.6 stars.

I love the history and humor and the growth in both main characters. There’s so much action and humor, I can see this grabbing the attention of even reluctant readers, and the vocabulary is advanced in spots, which I like because it’s a chance to expand children’s vocabulary naturally in an interesting way. I also love the Non nobis solum- the theme of working together to succeed.

As a homeschooling parent, one of my favorite things to do is to bring a joy and love of learning to subjects, and my three kids have really picked up on it, loving multiple subjects that are stereotypically seen as dry, from math to grammar to history. S (age 9) especially loves history. One thing I really enjoyed about the story is that it reinforced the learning we had already done in our studies of ancient Rome in an entertaining way, and the kids quickly remembered terms like Gaul and Franks and their previous learning about the Tetrarchy and Constantine.

The humor was well timed, spattering through the story and lightening other heavy themes. The weighty situations provide a lot of discussion topics for the kids to think about and consider. Nearly every chapter produced audible reactions from the kids, from laughter and giggles to cheers or groans, and usually they were begging for another chapter. Toward the end, we nearly had a mutiny because of the cliffhangers!

The storytelling was engaging and interesting, and I really enjoyed how the kids acted like kids, including the all-too-familiar bickering. I love Sarah’s bravery even to the point of being rash, and I really appreciate John’s anxiety, since my youngest also struggles with anxiety.

The prose itself felt light, which seems pretty standard for a lot of MG books, and the two main characters felt kind of along-for-the-ride for much of the story as well, but again, that’s also fairly standard for a lot of MG books. The introduction of potential other time travelers was really interesting and I wish it had paid off more than it did, with the kids hearing about "Alex" being brought down after the fact, in a history book.

But really, overall the story was very strong and well written, and certainly equal in quality to other traditional published MG stories we’ve read with the boys. The history is a lot more immersive and detailed than in the Magic Treehouse series, including the Merlin Missions, and I like this series better as a result, especially since the main characters learn and grow. One of the great things about these books is the simple detail of the recipe at the end. There’s nothing quite like tasting history and it’s something we do when we’re learning history. By having the recipe at the end it helps kids to bring history and the story home and really make it real.




--------------------Spoilers ahead-------------------------------------



Kids’ Review below:

J (age 7) - 5 stars (well, technically he said 5,000 stars out of 5). But not as good as the Magic Treehouse.
S (age 9) - 4 stars. Better than the Magic Treehouse, but not as good as the Warriors series. (It needs a lot more talking cats to be 5 stars.)
A (age 12) - 5 stars! Way better than the Magic Treehouse. As good as the Eye of Ra. He loves it!




Overall thoughts: A really liked it. S is wondering if there are multiple eyes (like the eye of Zeus, etc.) J really likes it too and is waffling between liking this more or liking Magic Treehouse more.


Worldbuilding: S loved the Eye of Ra. A noticed that the dominus and the emperor ate the same dessert but he was thinking the emperor might have even better desserts. A liked the mysteries of Mythros. A thought the worldbuilding aided the story, and S and J said it made them curious to know more.
A said there were big cliffhangers like the cat books (Warriors series).
S - “but not as good as the cat books. Nothing can beat the cat books.”
J- “It’s better than Jack and Annie because the Eye of Ra is more portable than the Magic Treehouse.”


Plot: The battle at the end was hard to follow but everything else was easy to follow for S. A thought it was straightforward except for the battles. J had trouble with understanding some of the plot because he was introduced to new words.


Characters: A and S - roles were clear. A wishes he knew what happened to Aurora. They should have told her to write more stuff down so people would know more about them. All the kids really liked John and Sarah. S liked how John was worried about the other people trapped in time and he really liked how there were more time travelers, which made him wonder if there were more eyes, or if not, how did they get there? The kids also really enjoyed the side characters and that they each had their own motivations and showed nice and mean parts of themselves, not only good or only bad. Except Marcus.


Storytelling: Descriptions were rich and they could picture everything in their head. They really want to make libum cheesecake and eat it for themselves (we’ll definitely be doing this). They could imagine a lot of the action sequences and really liked that. J really liked imagining the eye of Ra necklace as they traced it over and over.


Immersion: The kid never wanted to stop reading. All the cliffhangers made them want to keep going, and the story was really interesting. S learned stuff during the reading, like more about marmots, and about hardtack, everyone learned more about the Roman empire and way of life, including new details from when we studied it.


Emotional Response: All had very strong reactions to the story, with lots of yelling and gasping and giggling and speculating throughout.


Thought Provoking: S wants to learn more about marmots and said it was very inspiring. J wants to know what happened to Aurora. A can see this book and the previous one as a movie.


Cover: They like the cover, but they thought John and Sarah looked a lot different.… (mais)