Reviewed by Candace Cunard for TeensReadToo.com

Theodosia Throckmorton, a precocious and self-assured eleven-year-old girl, can see the curses swirling around the Egyptian artifacts in London's Museum of Legends and Antiquities. Too bad the grown-ups won't listen to her. Her father, the head curator, and her mother, an archaeologist who makes frequent trips to Egypt to acquire new artifacts, don't understand why their daughter continues to give them protective amulets, or at least get them to wear gloves when handling cursed objects!

Good thing Theo's a smart girl; she takes it upon herself to find ways to un-curse the things her parents bring back to the museum, learning how to read hieroglyphics and perusing old papyrus documents about the legends and myths of ancient Egypt. She's not perfect--sometimes her solutions go awry, as when she accidentally transfers a curse to her pet cat, Isis--but her skills keep the museum in good order, leaving her parents none the wiser.

Things start to get bad when Theo's mother comes back from Egypt with a new artifact: the Heart of Egypt, a legendary object that carries with it a curse that could destroy all of Britain and plunge the world into chaos. When the Heart of Egypt is stolen from the museum before Theo can work out a way to dispel the curse, she's sent on a wild chase through London. With the help of her younger brother, Henry, and a young pickpocket, Sticky Will, Theo organizes a plan to find the Heart of Egypt and steal it back.

Theo is an innovative and interesting young girl, and her first-person narration is full of spunk and energy that shapes her character. The narrative voice was easily my favorite part of the storytelling; Theo's narration was compelling, really showing the world through her eyes. The supporting cast--heroes and villains alike--is rendered in great detail, so hat even those characters who might seem larger-than-life are just right for their setting. LaFevers paints a wonderful picture of 1906 London, with nods to the geopolitical tensions rocking Europe at that point, delivered through the perspective of a young girl who cares more for curses than for politics.

The plot moves along at a good pace, spending just enough time on each scene that the reader gets a sense of being there, all of which is only emphasized by the voice of the novel's protagonist. The conclusion is satisfying, but the story's larger questions are left unanswered, in preparation for a sequel I can't wait to read! ( )

http://hollybooknotes.blogspot.com/20... ( )

A wonderful book about a young girl (Theodosia) who can see ancient Egyptian curses. Her parents both work at a museum, her father as a curator and her mother in the field. Theodosia spends more time at the museum trying to dodger her parents, a sneaky curator, and school, than she does at home. While at the museum she researches Egyptian curses and tries her best to remove curses from objects that her mother sends back from her digs in Egypt before somebody gets hurt by them.

my cover says "Theodosia Throckmorton and the Serpents of Chaos." Apparently, the title got changed. Weird.

Theodosia (her last name remains Throckmorton--it's only the book title that's been changed) is 11 years old and lives in London. The story takes place in 1906.

Theo's parents are archaeologists--her father runs a museum of antiquities while her mother is in the field. Her younger brother is away at school, something Theo's been working very hard to avoid for herself for two reasons: she feels it's a waste of her time, and she's busy enough as it is, trying to protect everyone from curses.

See, Theo can sense ancient curses on many of the artifacts in the museum, and she's developed ways of neutralizing them. And nobody else seems to realize they're there at all. With her mother and brother gone, Theo and her father spend most of their time at the museum, where he tends to lose himself in work, and she ends up spending her nights sleeping in a sarcophagus. It's safer.

When Theo's mother returns from her latest expedition, she brings the Heart of Egypt, which is seriously cursed. Theo needs to return it to Egypt, but before she can accomplish that, she teams up with her little brother and a street thief to foil evil villains, falls in with a secret society, accidentally curses her cat,... well, life is pretty hectic.

It's a wonderfully exciting story that doesn't talk down to kids, and provides quite a few situations they (or an adult who remembers being a child) can relate to. Even though Theodosia does possess a special gift, and her parents are neglectful and oblivious to the dangers she sees so clearly, the adults in this book aren't painted as bumbling idiots. Theo's parents and the adults of the secret society do their best with the information they have, and Theo knows when she needs the assistance of adults. Likewise, the children are neither completely helpless nor stupid. It's a nice balance. ( )

I loved this book!

My first clue I was going to love it was the dedication: "To clever girls everywhere who get tired of feeling like no one's listening."

Theo is nothing if not a clever little girl. But she's also deliciously sassy, which kept me chuckling throughout the book.

The book is set in London in the early twentieth century, and I'm a sucker for British language in a children's book (thank you, J.K. Rowling)—lots of "bother" and "boiled cabbage" and "don't give a fig."

I gobbled this book up as fast as I could, and now I have to wait until the library gets copies of the next book in the series, Theodosia and the Staff of Osiris. It just so happens to release today, but the store-release-to-library-shelving interval will keep me waiting for at least a couple weeks. Bother. ( )