Kingston and the Echoes of Magic

by Rucker Moses, Theo Gangi

Overview

In this duology's finale, Kingston travels back in time and uses his growing magic to save the world.

Kingston might have saved Echo City but the victory is bittersweet without his pops by his side. The holidays are approaching and if Kingston could have one wish, it would be to have his father, who is trapped in the Realm, come home. But as new problems arise and blackouts blanket the city, Kingston begins to have a persistent feeling of déjà vu, as if he's lived this same day before—and he has. Echo City living up to its name, is caught in a repeating time loop.

Maestro, his father's old rival, has found a way to overwrite reality with an alternate timeline where he rules over all. It will be up to Kingston, Too Tall, and V to find a way to enter the Realm and travel back through time to stop him. But with a magic he still barely understands, Kingston will needs his friends’ smarts and their collective courage to figure out the mystery and find Maestro before Brooklyn as they know it is erased for good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525516897
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,045,530
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)
Lexile:	640L (what's this?)
Age Range:	10 - 13 Years

About the Author

Rucker Moses is the pen name of Craig S. Phillips and Harold Hayes Jr. They both hail from Atlanta and started telling stories together at the University of Georgia. Together, they've been nominated for three Emmys for writing in a children's program and have written for TV shows based on books by R. L. Stine and Christopher Pike. They also make virtual reality experiences and own a production company named SunnyBoy Entertainment. In no particular order, their favorite things to write about are ninjas, magic, space, and abandoned amusement parks. When not doing all that, they are hanging with their wonderful families at home in Los Angeles.

Theo Gangi is a novelist and writing teacher based in Brooklyn. He's written several acclaimed novels and short stories, and he's worked on shows for Netflix. He writes far-out adventures that happen right next door. He directs the MFA program at St. Francis College and lives with his wife, young son, and their dog.

Read an Excerpt

As we get off the train, Veronica can’t contain herself.

“Okay, are we all just going to act like we didn’t just get on the train at Ricks Street, turn around, and get off the train at Ricks Street?”

Too Tall and Crooked Eye look at V like she’s lost every last marble.

“Um, you mean Barclays Center?” says Tall.

“Yeah, that’s all she meant—get on and get off, what a fast ride, huh?” I say as we file out the turnstiles.

“What are you talking about?” she asks, eyeing my wheat Timbs, green bomber, and hoodie. “Those aren’t even the same clothes.” Then she checks her own outfit from yesterday, and she shrieks.

I take V by the elbow and whisper, “V, we don’t need to freak everybody out.”

“Are you sure?” she says, loud.

“Yes! No—I don’t know,” I say. “I sorta thought I was imagining it until just now.”

“What do you mean? You told me yesterday—wait, I mean today? After we ate Not Not Ray’s and Matteo gave you the cannoli and—oh my god, that hasn’t even happened yet, has it?”

I shake my head.

V rubs the shaved part of her head with her fingertips like she’s trying to make sense of where and when we are, exactly.

“I told you it feels like a dream,” I say.

“I mean, I get why this may be happening to you, with your hand and all. But why is it happening to me? Tweedledee and Tweedledum seem clueless,” she says, motioning toward Crooked Eye and Too Tall. “Why me?”

It’s a good question. I mean, we are related. Her dad’s been to the Realm just like mine. So, maybe it’s a James thing? But why doesn’t Ma or Crooked or Long Fingers remember?

“King, this is what it’s been like for you? You just keep living the same day?”

“I guess. I don’t know, V, it’s like I get to the same moment, and I know it’s happened already, but part of me forgets, you know? Part of me is totally in it, in each moment, as if it never happened. But part of me—”

“You guys coming?” Crooked Eye calls down from the top of the subway stairs.

Veronica and I have been exchanging rapid whispers in front of the subway booth.

“We have to get rid of them,” she says, and marches up the stairs.

I follow her.

So this is really real, I think as the streets go dark. It’s not all in my head.

“Okay, wow, what a crazy blackout, huh?” V says to Crooked Eye. “So dark! Say, Unc.” Veronica yawns. “I’m feeling kinda tired, what say we skip dinner and just head home, how ’bout that?”

Tall and Crooked are caught a little off guard, but it’s Veronica, so they’re used to not knowing what she’ll say or do next. We say good night to Tall, who looks particularly hungry for a cannoli as he shambles off.

We head home. V and I grab a couple croissants from the café before Mom throws them out and go upstairs. My room is a mess. Clothes in one corner like a pile of leaves. Threadbare books I borrowed from Long Fingers’s library stacked in another. The laptop Ma passed down to me last summer sits on the edge of my bed. My desk is littered with playing cards, coins, sketch pads, and journals.

On the wall above the desk, though, is one thing that’s always straight and always clean. The framed poster of Pops, Preston the Great. A lightning bolt in one hand and cards in the other. His classic porkpie hat on his head. My uncles took it off the wall downstairs before Ma and I arrived. After everything that happened this past summer, Ma had Crooked Eye put it up in my room.

Dad, I think. It always comes back to him. Every time the world turns and my stomach lurches because something happens that can’t be explained by logic or reason, he’s there, somewhere, the magician just offstage.

Veronica jumps onto my bed and turns to me with a flake of pastry on her lip.

“So, do I have to say it?”

“Say what?” I ask.

“We’re in an echo. I mean, right? We got on the train, maybe four o’clock or so, Friday evening. We get back on the train, what? Six o’clock, on Saturday? Do I have to count?”

“Twenty-six hours,” I say.

In the Realm, there are all these echoes of realities. Moments in time that loop over and over. Those echoes are full of copies of people, created every time a portal to the Realm opens, living life exactly as they did in those twenty- six hours surrounding that moment.

“In an echo, like Dad. But how? I mean, unless . . .”

“Unless we are echoes of ourselves and not actually ourselves?” she asks.

We take that thought in for a moment.

“Um, maybe?” I say.

“But I remember my whole life!” says Veronica.

“I think echo people do, too,” I say.

“But they never realize they’re in an echo. They never wake up. We did.”

“What changed for you? How did you wake up?” I ask.

“It’s weird. Remember you asked me about déjà vu and all that?”

“Yeah, I think that’s the first time I did that. I think every time before that we just talked about how much we like cannolis.”

“Interesting. Well, remember I suggested you touch every doorway and say ‘I’m not dreaming’ out loud?”

“Yeah. I tried that.”

“So did I. Not sure why, just thought it’d be cool if I had a lucid dream, you know? Like, if you’re aware you’re dreaming, you could maybe control it and fly around like a bird?”

“Did it work?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember my dreams at all. But then we get on the train at Ricks Street and I touch the doors and whisper, ‘I’m not dreaming,’ and next thing I know, we’re getting off the train at Ricks Street!”

“So it worked. It woke you up, anyway.”

“Maybe we need to wake everyone up?” suggests Veronica.

“Maybe,” I say, staring up at my poster of Pops. “The way I figure it, we have two options.”

“And those are?”

“One, we’re echoes of ourselves. We just woke up somehow. In which case, we’re better off going back to sleep.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, V. Remember what happened to Urma Tan when she left her echo?”

“Yeah. That wasn’t good. At all.”

An echo of Urma Tan slipped into our reality. To stay alive outside the Realm, she had to wear a charged Realm crystal around her neck at all times. She lived here, had a kid, but it was a bad look all around. She drained her son like a vampire, then opened a Realm portal and tried to absorb so much Realm energy that, when she lost control, it covered the whole theater and crystalized into the Black Rock of BK.

“I don’t really wanna go back to sleep,” says V. “What’s the other option?”

“The other option is, we’re in an echo loop somehow. And we gotta figure it out. Otherwise, remember this day you just lived? Well, get used to it.”

Editorial Reviews

2021-09-01
Kingston; his cousin, Veronica; and his best friend, Too Tall, return to the Realm after King realizes they’re stuck in an echo, or time loop.

Days may often feel the same, but King and everyone else in his Brooklyn neighborhood are actually reliving the same 26 hours leading up to Christmas Day. Once King realizes this feeling of déjà vu isn’t just in his head, he seeks Sula and Sol, the children of Maestro, his father’s former friend. They inform King of Maestro’s nefarious plan to destroy the current timeline and make a new primary timeline in which magic reigns supreme—and their world is no more. With the help of King’s Pops—who is stuck in his own echo—they can reopen the portal in the now heavily guarded Mercury Theater. Armed with the Echo Stone, a powerful artifact that can be used to see throughout the Realm, and their knowledge of ancient Egypt, King and his friends follow Maestro through various portals, a journey that offers King insight into his family lineage and Maestro’s motives. Their hope is to prevent Maestro from ending the world as they know it. Readers who enjoyed Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found (2021) will welcome this brisk sequel that maintains the engaging tone of the first series entry and entertainingly incorporates information about ancient Egyptian gods. King and most other characters are Black.

An illuminating sequel. (map) (Fantasy. 8-12)

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Kingston and the Echoes of Magic:

“Readers who enjoyed Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found will welcome this brisk sequel that maintains the engaging tone of the first series entry and entertainingly incorporates information about ancient Egyptian gods. . . An illuminating sequel.” —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Kingston and the Magician's Lost and Found:

★ “A fast-paced, magical read set in an accessible, vibrant world where Black magicians and a mainly Black cast take center stage.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Intricately crafted twists at every turn keep the determined crew on their toes. The action is well paced, giving readers time to savor the myriad colorful characters who interact with the clue chasers. . . An enjoyable addition to most middle school mystery collections.” —School Library Journal

“Full of heart, magic, and mystery, this is the kind of book that makes you love books. Absolutely fantastic!” —Sarah Beth Durst, award-winning author of Catalyst

"Coded messages, characters who plainly know more than they're saying, doppelgangers, and secret schemes...all come together in a...breathlessly paced tale...should leave readers even more delighted that the stage is set for sequels." —Booklist

“Inventive, authentic, and razor-sharp, Kingston and the Magician’s Lost and Found is at once an exhilarating fantasy and a moving tale of how far a father and son are willing to go for one another. Rucker Moses and Theo Gangi put aside familiar tropes to build something new, an underground New York City, filled with magic and secrets, that challenges readers to solve its mysteries alongside its main character. As for Kingston, we’ve never seen anything like him—a young Black superhero determined to put the magic back in Brooklyn. He’s sharp, feisty, funny, and always a step ahead. This is a special book, the kind that you fall in love with, because beneath the fun and twists, shining through is Kingston’s big, bold heart.” —Soman Chainani, New York Times bestselling author of The School for Good and Evil series

"This brisk first-person narrative will appeal especially to readers who like puzzles and illusions… engaging plot and history of Black magician....A likable, otherworldly adventure with a bit of a mystery." —Kirkus Reviews

“The text is zippy and animated, reading more like a screenplay than a novel, and the secondary characters are splashy . . . Kingston is a carefully balanced mix of optimistic, jaded, and grief-stricken, moving through the world with more hope than the grownups who surround him.” —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

From the Publisher