Stack Overflow: Revisiting Old Haunts

Geek Dad

07-07-2025

Today's stack consists almost entirely of books from various series. In a couple of the cases, I had to go back and reread previous books just to get caught up a little since it had been a while. There are also a couple of titles that take 'old haunts' a little more literally—you'll see when you get there.
Also, since we've reached the halfway point of the year, I figured I'd do a little check-in on my reading resolutions for the year. I have not managed to clear out floor space in my office yet. If anything, it has become even more crowded since I ended up piling up some board games in here along with the books. However, I have managed to keep up my weekly book weeding, and I think there's only been one week so far where I weeded only a single book. Obviously it's going to require a more aggressive approach before I really see some results, but it's a start.
As far as the reading goes, I did manage to read two of the three specific titles on my list: I wrote about Inkworld back in February, and you'll find the latest City Spies book in today's stack. Against Platforms had some interesting things to say, but although it was a slim volume I also just had a hard time keeping my attention on it; it was pretty academic and I have to admit that my brain just had some trouble absorbing everything. (Perhaps in part because of the very things that the book was arguing against?) I've set that one aside for now, but I do have a couple of other non-fiction books about AI and tech that I've added to my list. I also just got caught up on another Dungeon Crawler Carl book (see more below), but haven't finished The Spiderwick Chronicles yet.
With that, let's get to the books!
Nothing Special Volume 2: Concerning Wings by Katie Cook
Nothing Special Volume 3: Pride and Pompousness by Katie Cook
This Webtoon-turned-book series (see this Stack Overflow for my initial introduction) continues to delight. Volume 2 includes 25 more episodes—the beginning of 'Season Two' of the webcomic—and then Volume 3 picks up the thread, so these two are really best read back-to-back. Set in a world filled with magical creatures and talking radish ghosts, Nothing Special is a fun mix of humor and action, romance and drama. Declan—who in the first book discovered he was part fairy when a pair of wings sprouted from his back—has been having some issues. One of his wings was injured, and now shoots painful sparks when he tries to do magic, so the gang is off to find a fairy healer, and find much more than they bargained for. There's political intrigue and battles with demons and sprite-surfing (you'll just have to read the books to see what that is).
City Spies: London Calling by James Ponti
City Spies is a series of middle-grade novels about a secret team of kids working for MI6, able to infiltrate places where adults spies would be out of place. The team is led by a man who goes by the codename Mother, and each kid's codename is the city where Mother recruited them. Okay, if you haven't read the previous books in this series yet, you should probably stop here for now because it's impossible to say anything about the plot of this book without giving away lots of fun reveals from the first five books.
One of the things we've learned is that Mother's wife, Clementine, has been working for Umbra, a criminal organization. After a botched mission with Mother where she left him for dead, she took their two kids and went into hiding. Her loyalties are unclear: she has helped the City Spies in some of their missions, but she also has her own agenda that Mother hasn't been able to figure out. One of their children, now codenamed Cairo, joined the City Spies team, though it took a while to earn their trust. The other, Annie, wanted nothing to do with her parents' spy world and just wanted to be a normal kid.
That, however, has come to an end: Umbra agents made a move to apprehend Annie, who escaped and has since vanished, and Clementine has contacted Mother for help. The two have an uneasy truce as they try to track down Annie—while also working to uncover a plot centered on the upcoming royal wedding. Are they connected?
I really like the 'found family' feel of the City Spies books. The kids each have their own strengths, and James Ponti is good at setting up situations where they get their turn to shine. Though each book focuses on a particular mission or plot, there's also a good overarching storyline that has been building up, and keeps you on the edge of your seat. I've got a niece who really loves these books, so I've been passing them along to her whenever I finish reading them, and I know she's been eagerly anticipating this one!
Cryptid Kids 2: Moby Duck by Sara Goetter and Natalie Reiss
The Cryptid Kids are back! After the adventures with the Bawk-ness Monster in the first book, the trio started up their own zine about cryptids. They're excited about their upcoming summer beach trip, because Penny will be coming back to visit. K has a whole cryptid-hunting adventure planned out … but then she finds out that not only will Penny be bringing her new friend Jo, but Penny's mom is very insistent that this trip will have NO CRYPTIDS. K's dad is in charge of the trip, but his relationship with K has been a little strained.
But you know how these things go: one thing leads to another, and pretty soon the kids are caught up in another cryptid adventure, this time involving Moby Duck, who appears to be a terrifying whale with a duck on its head. (Even its teeth have teeth!) Can they fight it? Or capture it? Whatever they do, they're gonna need to work together, and they make some interesting friends along the way.
Like the first book, this one has a lot of silliness and humor, but there's also a bit of seriousness when it comes to K's family. K admires her great-aunt TK, a cryptid hunter herself, and can't understand why her dad doesn't get along with her. Over the course of the book, they untangle some of their complicated family history, and everyone learns a little bit more about each other. The book also gets into the difficulties of changing friendship dynamics: Jo has very different interests and an intense personality that's a bit overwhelming for K, so there's a bit of friction at the beginning that they have to overcome. This one is great for kids who are into cryptids and enjoy wackiness.
Lizard Boy 2: The Most Perfect Summer Ever by Jonathan Hill
The first book introduced us to Tommy Tomkins, a seventh-grader from a family of lizard people who fled to the surface when their underground world was dying. Tommy was able to make some good friends during the first book—including some other non-human kids who have to hide their real selves.
In this book, it's summer break, and Scarlett is determined to make it the 'most perfect summer ever.' Dung is headed back to Vietnam with his parents at the end of the summer, so they want to soak up everything they can before he leaves. But plans keep going awry, and it doesn't help that the ÜTube channel Eagle Valley Paranormal posts a video about lizard people. Tommy is worried that he'll be found out, and whether that might lead to the other non-human kids also getting caught.
What's cool about this book is that we finally get to meet some of the other non-humans, who showed up mostly at the very end of the first volume. There's a family of Sasquatches, a girl who turns into a bunch of snakes, and a robot from the future (among others). Tommy's mother takes them to visit one of her good friends—another lizard person—and it's a very good depiction of the dilemma that many immigrants face: how do you assimilate and fit in with your new culture while also trying to preserve important traditions and elements of the culture you came from?
When the non-human community of Eagle Valley is threatened by potential discovery, they have to decide how to respond, and that part echoed our current political climate, particularly for communities that are marginalized. The older members of the community want to lay low and get by, but the younger generation wants to speak up and be visible. What's the best solution that will keep them safe and let them thrive? I think that's a question that is really hard to answer, but I like what the kids in the book come up with, and it feels like a good start. Lizard Boy 2 may have a funny premise, and lots of winks and nods to various pop culture properties, but it also digs into some real issues in a creative way, and it's a fantastic followup.
The Rema Chronicles: Kingdom of Water by Amy Kim
This is the second book of The Rema Chronicles , and the plot moves quickly! In the first book, Tabby got pulled through a portal to another world, one that her father had become obsessed with before he died. Now she is stuck on Rema, a planet where people can fly, and some (called 'geists') can access a mysterious energy called 'ciphrony' to perform powerful magic, with a risk of losing control of themselves.
There's a tangled history here, and it's not entirely clear to Tabby whom to trust. The official histories of Rema paint the geists as dangerous, but something tells her there's more to the story than that. Philip, the boy she followed through the portal, is leading a double life and his attitude toward her keeps shifting. Meanwhile, there's a ghost that only she seems to see, and it's helping her to follow her father's research—but to what end?
Things really escalate in this volume: there's a big showdown, Tabby learns a whole lot more about her father and what he had been up to before his death, and a host of secrets are revealed. It's pretty intense! Although the book doesn't end on a cliffhanger, there's definitely more to the story yet to come.
InvestiGators: Case Files by John Patrick Green with Steve Behling and Chris Fenoglio
This one isn't a typical InvestiGators book—usually there's one case that Mango and Brash spend the whole book solving. This time, there are six shorter cases, and the reader gets to try to figure them out. Mango and Brash introduce the G.R.I.D. system, where they'll collect three clues in each section of the book, and the reader must decide which clue in each set is the relevant evidence and which ones are red herrings—and then pick the culprit based on those clues. They're not super difficult, but they do involve turning back and re-inspecting the pages to see if you've missed any details. But don't worry: they've still got plenty of the puns and visual gags that the InvestiGators series is known for!
Phenomena Book Three: The Secret written by Brian Michael Bendis, illustrated by André Lima Araújo
Book 3 of the Phenomena series is where everything gets wrapped up. In the first book, this odd trio of characters finds themselves thrown together by circumstances: Boldon, Matilde, and Spike. The world was mysteriously changed several years ago and is now filled with bizarre creatures and buildings. Book Two focused on Matilde—she returned to her home, which was in the middle of a war between magic and technology. Now, though, we finally find out where Boldon came from.
The trio make their way to Borzubo, Boldon's hometown and also the epicenter of the Phenomenon that changed everything. Spike—along with the other Cypers—has felt a strange pull here, so they feel there must be some reason for it. We meet the rest of Boldon's family and get a bit of his history, and Spike finally tells his own story. I don't want to spoil it, but it's a really great story about power and how it's used and abused, with a terrific ending. The illustrations throughout the series are amazing and I'm a bit sorry that it's over, but it's such a tightly paced story that does a lot with these three volumes.
Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman
Back in 2022, I wrote about the Seraphina duology, which was followed by another two-book series, Tess of the Road and In the Serpent's Wake . They were among my favorite books of 2022, so I was very excited to hear that Rachel Hartman was revisiting that world with a new standalone book, Among Ghosts . Set about a century before the events of the other books, Among Ghosts follows a teenage boy named Charl, who lives with his mother in a muddy village called St. Muckles—one that dragons don't attack because there's nothing there worth taking … at least, there wasn't until they came to town. Charl's father is an earl, and since he has been unsuccessful in producing an heir in the past seven years, he's decided he wants his estranged child back, and has sent a few of his agents to track him down.
Charl, meanwhile, has had a disturbing experience of his own. He's seen a ghost—though of course ghosts don't exist—and witnessed an accidental death, which has shaken him to his core. What's more, the earl's underlings have set in motion a plot intended to destroy St. Muckles, and everything seems to be falling apart. When Charl flees to an abandoned abbey, he discovers even more ghosts—and each of them has a story that holds important truths.
It's hard to explain some of the things I loved about Among Ghosts without giving away some of the details that I think are best revealed gradually, but ultimately the story is about figuring out who you are. Charl struggles with his identity: his father is a cruel man who abused his wife and child and waged war against pagans; his mother fled to a humble village and worked to make it a 'Peasant's Paradise' where everyone could belong. He wants to learn to fight to protect himself and his mother, but his mother cautions against reacting to danger with violence.
It is, like Hartman's other books, beautifully written and filled with complicated characters. As a standalone, you can read this book without having read the others, though you may not totally understand the lore about the dragons in this world.
Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 6: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman
Carl and Princess Donut are still at it: the dungeons keep getting worse, and the books keep getting bigger: this one weighs in at just over 800 pages! (If you haven't heard of this series yet, you can read about the first book here.) Despite the length of the book, it was still a blast to read and even when I finished I found myself wanting more. There's a bit of irony in that, I suppose: in the book, part of the plot is that the aliens put the crawlers through so many terrible situations because it makes for good entertainment and brings in viewers. And in reality, the author is creating so much trauma to put Carl through as entertainment for the readers. The difference, I suppose, is that the alien audience loves to see the crawlers suffer and die, and the readers love to see how Carl figures out his way past the various obstacles that the aliens keep throwing at him. One of the recurring themes of the series is the way that Carl is fighting to hang onto his humanity. The game is designed to pit the crawlers against each other. Each successive dungeon floor has more and more incentives for the crawlers to turn on each other, but Carl will not let them break him.
In this volume, the crawlers have made it to the eighth floor, which as usual comes with a new set of rules. This time, they're playing a Magic -like card game: the first phase involves collecting cards from the monsters they fight, and in the second phase the cards become the primary method of combat. You can tell Dinniman is really having fun coming up with these dungeon rules, though I'll admit that nearly four full pages of rules explanation seemed a bit much even for me (and I read game rulebooks all the time). It's not so much that the rules are complicated as much as I'm not sure how much detail you need in order to advance the plot. Maybe Dinniman thought it'd be a shame to have come up with such a detailed concept and not have it all spelled out for the reader.
The trick here is that in order to build up their decks, the crawlers have to capture monsters to use as their 'totems' in combat. The more powerful the monster, the harder it is for crawlers to maintain control of them in combat. So of course Carl has a plan to capture Shi Maria, a giant spider known as the Bedlam Bride, whose attack causes madness. Even if Carl and Donut manage to turn her into a totem, will she actually fight for them when her card is played?
In the meantime, the meta-gaming intrigue continues too. We get more glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes, and we finally get the story of what happened between Odette and Mordecai. There are a lot of people in the shadows pulling strings, trying to set up something for Carl, and he's never entirely sure who he can trust. But he's pretty good at figuring out unexpected ways to deal with problems, and when he isn't, well, he's also pretty darn lucky. My Current Stack
I've got a few more titles that would also fit in today's column if I'd gotten to them in time, but hopefully you'll see them later this year: the latest book in the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal, another Midsolar Murders title from Mur Lafferty, a lovely anniversary edition of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles . Oh, and I've also really been enjoying the Apple TV adaptation of Martha Wells' Murderbot . It feels a little sillier than the books, but overall it's been a lot of fun to see it translated to the screen, particularly the over-the-top scenes from Sanctuary Moon , the soap opera that Murderbot watches. Liked it? Take a second to support GeekDad and GeekMom on Patreon!