PANDORA 5

 
Like the second book, this one is almost non-stop action. This might be my favorite one, though I do love the Egyptian setting for #2. 

Iole, Homer and Pandy are struggling through the Arabian Desert trying to get to Baghdad. They meet up with a caravan, which contains Mahfouza, one of the dancing girls from Wang Chun Lo's carnival. The point of the caravan is to take a famous physician and his son to Baghdad, where the physician's execution will take place. This is a story from the Arabian Nights, where the physician is executed, but he gives the prince a book with poisoned pages, so he dies as well. Pandy and Iole trap some lesser evils that were stuck inside the prince. 

Meanwhile in the underworld, Alcie is being shown around by Persephone, who is decidedly goofy but also loveable. I like their version of Hades, who isn't really scary at all. At least they did well by him, despite falling into the trope of making Hera the big bad. Hades goes to Lachesis, one of the fates, and she brings Alcie her life thread. Because Hera's actions went against what the fates had planned, they did cut the thread but had not yet cast it into the final flames, so they were able to attach a new thread to it. Alcie is now the only person in Greece who has control over her own life. (There was a heavy belief that everything was fated.) Thanks to one of Hades' devices, Alcie is able to talk to Pandy not once but twice. Hades sends her to Earth, but she's stuck in a tree in the hidden garden of the djinn, so it's up to the others to go find her. 

The garden adventure is really good. I feel like this was also in Arabian Nights. I need to read that. They go one by one through a pitch black room surrounded by snakes, then into three successive rooms, each filled with either copper, silver or gold. Voices tempt them to pick up the coins or try to frighten them. As soon as a coin is touched, the person becomes a black rock on the floor. Pandy, Iole and Douban (the decapitated physician's son and Pandy's love interest) each try and fail. It's Homer with his love for Alcie who's able to resist and get through the rooms to her in the garden. He gets her down from the tree, though she does have a small branch growing through her shoulder. Then the two of them discover that the black stones are transformed people and using oil from the djinn of the garden's lamp, they restore them all. All the djinn who created the garden are grateful and give them jeweled fruit from the trees, then move the garden so no human can find it again. 

Next, they're off to Mahfouza's house. The point of the Baghdad adventure is to capture wrath/rage and they discover it's in the djinn who was trapped in the garden but learned how to escape. Mahfouza's youngest sister was poisoned by three lesser evils and her actions led to the family peri being killed. The garden djinn loved that peri, so he's filled with rage and cursing the family members. Mahfouza's parents were killed, but her brothers and sisters all have had horrible, body-mangling punishments. When she returns home, while the others are in the garden, Mahfouza gets taken apart and put back together incorrectly, so she's a mess of mixed up body parts.

The others realize that the fix is in the jeweled fruit, so they slowly figure out which fruit is which person, feed it to them and they return to normal. Each is a small riddle. Mahfouza had her pieces mixed and the only fruit that can be in segments is the orange. Another person is being pitted like a peach, another was split into halves (a pair/a pear), another is being cored like an apple. This is definitely the most gruesome part in the series so far. I love that it doesn't shy away from being more realistic in that way. It's not light and fluffy, no way. 

Pandy is able to defeat the garden djinn using the old "I don't believe you fit in that tiny lamp" trick. Ah, they always fall for that. Then they save everyone in the house, box up the lesser evils that had possessed the youngest sister, and...then Hera shows up. The sidestory with Hera in this book was so annoying. I hated it. Like every bit of it. Enough crazy crap happened that they could have skipped her part entirely and it still would have been well dramatic enough. Hera's taken care of with some help from the tiny rocs (which control djinn and magical powers in the land), then they're off to Rome to capture greed. 

Despite the boring, annoying Hera bit, I think this is my favorite so far. Lots of good characterization, characters and details.