Screenshots of the Teaser-PDF of the Staff of Serapis

'Staff of Serapis' is another cross-over short story sprung from Rick Riordan's annoyingly creative mind which bumps the two dire worlds of Sadie Kane (one of the lead characters from Kane Chronicles) and Annabeth of the Percy Jackson Series.The announcement of the information about this short story was made Public by Rick Riordan thru his blog on February 14, 2014 dubbing it as his Valentine Gift to all his massive buffs. The complete story is appearing soon in the paper back copy of 'Mark of Athena' set to be released in April.

Happy Dancing Over A New Read

 

Have you ever heard of Nikki Maxwell’s happy dance? Well, I am actually doing it right now! Hoo!

Yesterday, a friend of mine broke the news to me that she just purchased the first installment of Rick Riordan’s hit series, The Heroes of Olypmus: The Lost Hero and guess what? She’s loaning it to me. *Another and more intense Hoo!*. Though I was not showing it, I got really moony-eyed when she plucked the book out of her bag. 

1.. 2.. 3.. and the whole book package materialized in my very front.

Even though I had seen it a couple of times before every time we stopped by a book store and briefly catch some reads, it still had not lost its engrossing aura that always sends my system in an uncontrollable state of excitement. The book cover, I can tell, has really sent me an invitation I can never turn down. It gave me hints of a fun, cleverly-plotted and never-will-be-flat story line fermenting.

 I am now super eager to get to know the characters and how Rick has breathed air into their noses. 

Synopsis:
( Retrieved from: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7624272-the-lost-hero)

Jason has a problem.
He doesn't remember anything before waking up on a school bus holding hands with a girl. Apparently he has a girlfriend named Piper. His best friend is a kid named Leo, and they're all students in the Wilderness School, a boarding school for "bad kids", as Leo puts it. What he did to end up here, Jason has no idea—except that everything seems very wrong.

Piper has a secret.
Her father, a famous actor, has been missing for three days, and her vivid nightmares reveal that he's in terrible danger. Now her boyfriend doesn't recognize her, and when a freak storm and strange creatures attack during a school field trip, she, Jason, and Leo are whisked away to someplace called Camp Half-Blood. What is going on?

Leo has a way with tools.
His new cabin at Camp Half-Blood is filled with them. Seriously, the place beats Wilderness School hands down, with its weapons training, monsters, and fine-looking girls. What's troubling is the curse everyone keeps talking about, and that a camper's gone missing. Weirdest of all, his bunkmates insist they are all—including Leo—related to a god

The Host

Three-Year Old Balbal

Al Francis B. Verbal,17, is a second year college student who writes on and hosts blogs to pass time. He is based in Davao City, Philippines. However odd may it sound, he likes to be addressed as "Balbal". He is currently earning Bachelor's Degree on Secondary Education Major in English. Not that he has a heart to educate the world nor any corny advocate, but because salary really fills in an empty pocket. It's insincere. Yes, he knows that. But it is also practical. And mind you, practicality these days waters more plants than sincerity does. He works as an English Literary Editor for a college publication. This is his second blog, you can visit his youngest by clicking this. But please, not now. You still have to read this mini-biography away. 

Balbal, aside from blogging, also takes pictures occasionally. Frustrated Photographer. Yes, that's the term. His photos are of random themes. Streets. People. Nature.  Whatever-he-likes-to-shoot. Whenever he carries a camera and chances upon something melancholic, colorful, of complex patterns or of awesome textures, expect him to squat, lay, crawl or do any imaginable and unimaginable positions he can just to shoot it from a very good angle. Talk about obsession!

Balbal, feeling pro  with a Digital SLR that his journalism professor loaned their class to cover an event.

He frequently wanders barefoot around the world through books and movies. He loves to dive into fictional pieces. Mainly because powers, incantations, divination, necromancy, magic, human flight and earth benders are non-existent in the boring real world. He is obsessed with reads penned by Rick Riordan. Rick’s smartness and creativity always captivate him in any way he can be. Few of the incredible stories he has in his recesses come from his (Riordan) books. Currently, he is journeying around Egypt, Brooklyn, Russia and Duat with Carter and Sadie Kane to discover and bind the Shadow of Apophis, the Chaos god through the Kane Chronicles Book Three: The Serpent’s Shadow. His list of marvelous authors also includes Michael Scott (Author of the Secrets of The Immortal Nicholas Flammel Series), Keira Class (Author of the Selection Series), Suzanne Collins (Author of the Hunger Games Trilogy), John Green, John Grisham and Danielle Steel (though he loathes love stories). He finds books that are shelved in young-adult and middle-child section the most appealing among others in a bookstore. Whenever his sensory nerves stretch to perceive new releases under those sections, he is likely to run toward it baby-like with starry eyes. On the other hand, he, if not always, most of the time refuses to venture reading love story books. Nicholas Parks? Message in a Bottle? Dear John? A Walk to Remember? Ah, certainly not his thing.

He doesn’t like to read novels set on eBooks. He, without doubt, cannot sustain reading without eventually sniffing the brownish or yellowish pages. 

Whenever he finishes reading a novel, he likes to blab about part or parts of the story that stunned him most, the downsides of reading it, the characters he would love to remain in a sequel, his commentaries about the ending, events that should have happened instead of what has actually happened, criticisms on the plot and anything he can blab about the book.

So from being a blabbermouth, he came across a thought that why not go wired, go online. Why not share with you what he has been sharing with his friends through blogging. He’s afraid it does not make sense but like what is said, why not?

For Rick Riordan

Every day, 2014

RICK RIORDAN
The smartest author by far
Earth

Dear Rick Riordan,

Before any word, can I address you Rick? I just love it. It makes you seem a close friend.

I know this letter’s chance of ever finding you is slimmer than a barbecue stick. And if this even reaches your mailbox and lands on your hands, I know these words are too feeble to have you respond positively. But as Carter Kane once said, “Still, it felt good to have a plan of action. That was much better than standing around, dwelling on the hopelessness of the situation (Serpent’s Shadow)”. You once said on an AMAZON Q and A that you are a writer because you want to tell a story and not to preach but the line I cited really left an impact on me and that I am giving this yearning of mine a try even if it be super impossible. I know (there are so many things I know, haven’t you noticed? lol) so many stuffs may be keeping you busy right now but I wish you could read on. 

First of all, I would like to thank you for turning me into a religious reader. From an average person who only feeds on TV and internet as source of entertainment, you had morphed me into a not-so-shallow humani the way Sadie morphs her staff into a wild animal. After having read your books, I’ve developed more interest in things that need greater and deeper thinking. The way I studied the twists in your plot, the way I speculated in early pages that Zia Rashid might have tickled Ra to opt her as a host, the way I turned upside down the events in the dawn of Serpent’s Shadow just to weave a good guess on the Kane Chronicles Trilogy ending, you have really enlarged and enhanced the critical thinking in me in a marvelously entertaining way. Also, because of your books, I think I just seem to outgrow few series I’ve been reading before like the Huger Games Trilogy (hush! Keep this from Suzanne, will you? Haha). Plus you are an expert in misleading the readers that the so-called recording that you so-called transcribed actually happened and the world was actually ending in the hands of a Chaos god that would swallow the sun. It is an understatement that I call you clever, creative and brilliant. You are a modern-day Shakespeare that’s fond of a different genre and made genius ten times.

Back to my missive’s intent. The book package of the conclusion to one of your incredible series, Kane Chronicles Trilogy, has, I can tell, struck me in my recesses twice (which seemed a million times). I was flabbergasted by how you ended the adventure Sadie and Carter embarked on where you introduced us entertainingly to Egyptian Mythology. If I were to tell more about it, I think you’re gonna have to deal with few more pages. So there, in a word, I was really flabbergasted. Just when I thought I couldn’t be more stunned, I arrived at the 409^th page of the book. It says, “The Son of Sobek, a Carter Kane/Percy Jackson Adventure”. I discouraged any second thoughts forming in my head and flipped and read on (which what might exactly other Riordan buffs have done out there). The instant I got to its end, I thought “Riordan deserves a slow clap for this”. Carter Kane Meets Percy Jackson. It was stylish how you attempted to bump the worlds – the dire worlds – of two of the characters that kept you sought after by readers who wanted to get out the box of love stories and heavily dramatic pieces to pig out on something new. Your way of telling the story from Carter’s viewpoint still has efficacy that it made me feel I was the one locked in the stomach of a giant crocodile. As for Percy’s being in the story, though I haven’t already read the series about him, you seemed to squarely hit the clamors of his massive buffs – to once again be with him in a whole new story, a whole new journey through a book that fuses humor, romance, adventure, thriller, mythology and twisted history in a brilliant telling. The story was totally great. Only, it came out as a short story.

 This is why I am writing to you Rick, you can’t just let us to hang in there. You stimulated us too much to expect us to just settle the urge that keep pressing us to ask more of the Son of Sobek. You can’t just leave it permanently the way you left it. I request humbly that you go back to your computer and work on its manuscript, this time as a novel. I know your brain cells have the most beautiful of teamwork-s. Sustain the story, Rick. Make Percy to call on Carter. Don’t let Carter’s notion that he is potassium and Percy’s water be a reality. Make them meet each other again. Make them work together possibly against combined forces of villainous Egyptian, Greek and Roman gods. Or anything you want to happen to them. Make the Brooklyn House and Camp Half-blood existent co-working agencies or whatever you wanna call them. We have fire of excitement wildly burning in us, Rick. And this can’t be extinguished unless you work on the short story (augh, it just hurts saying it is just a short story) and turn it into a series of perhaps 10, 15, 20 books.

  

Behave your buffs. Behave us. We want more. Give us just that.

Yours madly,

(SGD.) Al Francis B. Verbal

P. S. Send my regards to your son, Haley. I know he too requests what I and a million more request.

Spontaneous ComBOOKStion Dawns

Hello! Good day!

Welcome! The blog you just crawled in has just dawned.

The host centers this blog on reviews, updates and quizzes on your favorite reads. As the description announces, this only feeds honest reviews coined from a common teen's standpoint. This is not just another book-reviewing site, at least the host can tell. The very reason this blog wears the name "Spontaneous ComBOOKStion" is because entries here, the host promises, will be fearless (ow!), wild and really spontaneous. If you don't get it, its name is derived from the term "Spontaneous Combustion". Reason: Because everything the host enters will be just exactly like spontaneous combustion -- under no control, and feeds on no dictation. 

On a different note, types of books featured in this blog of course coincide with the host's genre preference -- Adult, Fiction, Science-Fiction, Young Adult and Historical Fiction. What do you expect from a teenaged host? 

The host is a student and a full-time worrier of things so expect rarity of posts entered herein.

Once again, Welcome and enjoy the growing up of the "Spontaneous ComBOOKStion".