The Relic Hunters

Posted on by jslewis on August 1st, 2011 | 0 Comments »

Friendship is wonderful. It’s great to have people you can count on . . . people who will be there to encourage you when you’re down, pat you on the back when you do a good job, or shake some sense in to you when you’re messing up. But friendship can also be difficult.

One of the hardest things about friendship is expectations. Oftentimes we expect people to behave in a certain way. That could mean answering our text or email right away, whether that person is busy or not. Sending us a card or buying us a gift on our birthday (and it better be expensive, right?). Or reading our facial expressions or body language without us having to say a word. We can hold people to impossible standards, and when that happens it creates friction. Sometimes it ruins friendships.

Broken friendship is what The Relic Hunters is all about. Sure, there’s a lot of action, faeries, zombies, clockworks, and an evil scientist, but even the best action stories are focused on personal struggles as much as explosions and special effects.

Something terrible happened at the end of The Brimstone Key, and after it happened, Ernie felt betrayed by his friends. He thought that the Grey Griffins should have done more to save Robert Hernandez, and now he’s decided to spend Christmas break with the other changelings from Iron Bridge Academy instead of Max, Harley and Natalia.

If that’s not difficult enough to deal with, Natalia has been spending most of her free time with Brooke. Then there’s the fact that Brooke isn’t talking to Max, and now Harley isn’t around much either. Harley has been vying for an apprenticeship at Monti’s workshop in New Victoria, and for the first time in a long time, Max feels alone. He’s starting to wonder if the Grey Griffins are drifting apart, and in a sense they are. But that’s the thing about friendship. It changes, and that change can be difficult.

When school starts back up, changelings begin to disappear and it looks like Otto Von Strife may be behind it. After what happened with Robert, Ernie feels like he can’t rely on the Grey Griffins, so he rallies the changelings to form a superhero team called the Agents of Justice. They go after Von Strife’s slavers, but it doesn’t take long before things go sideways and the Agents of Justice are in over their head.

Will Ernie and Max be able to work through their differences, or will there be an all out war between the Grey Griffins and the changelings? You’ll have to read the book to find out, but we can promise that it will be a non-stop adventure that will keep you guessing!

You can order The Relic Hunters hardcover or the Kindle version.