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. ( )