Attention, fans of The 39 Clues, Infinity Ring, and Spirit Animals series: we’re thrilled to announce that we are launching a new multi-platform adventure series, TombQuest. Written by acclaimed author Michael Northrop, this new series will span five spellbinding books and will take readers through the mysteries of ancient Egypt. Check out more details about this exciting new series in the official press release and in an exclusive story in Publishers Weekly.
We chatted with Michael Northrop about TombQuest and his research on Egypt. Take it away, Michael!
How is TombQuest different from your other books? What about it excited you?
TombQuest is a new direction for me. It follows two best friends, Alex and Ren. Alex’s mom uses the Egyptian Book of the Dead to bring him back from the brink of death and inadvertently opens a door to the afterlife in the process. Evil spirits escape, his mom vanishes, and the adventure begins. My other books are more realistic: no magic, no mummies, very little in the way of evil cults. TombQuest is much more like the stories that drew me to reading in the first place. The first books I read on my own all had some sort of magical, mysterious element: The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander, Dungeons & Dragons manuals, stories about mythology. Writing this series is exciting because I feel like I’m doing something new as a writer but also returning to my roots as a reader.
What’s your favorite fact that you learned about ancient Egypt while doing research for the series?
There are a lot of contenders, but I think it’s the fact that ancient Egyptians thought they could set their image in the afterlife by having flattering statues of themselves made. That’s why you see so many statues of muscular, square-jawed men and beautiful young women in the museums. They thought they could inhabit these idealized, youthful images in the afterlife. They literally wanted sculpted physiques! I discovered that in the basement of the Neues Museum in Berlin and immediately knew it would wind up in the books.
TombQuest has a whole online game component! Are you a gamer?
These days my gaming is mostly confined to my phone, but I was a major gamer when I was a kid. Of course, back then it was mostly Atari and that one friend with ColecoVision. Kids can do so much more now. In the TombQuest game, they’ll be able to design and share their own mazes. There’s an interactive and social component to it. It actually reminds me a lot of the marathon, up-all-night Dungeons & Dragons games my friends and I used to play—but without the graph paper and pencils.
Can you give us a sneak preview of something to look out for in the book?
Scorpions. By the bucket.
If, like some of the characters in this book, you had an amulet with incredible powers, what would your amulet be and what powers would you have?
It would probably have something to do with the ibis-headed god Thoth. He was strongly associated with writing. In some stories, he actually created himself through the power of writing. He was his own author—amazing! He was also an unusually diligent deity. In the weighing of the heart ceremony that determined who made the cut in the afterlife, he was always on hand to record the result.
The amulet would be in the shape of a crescent moon. An ibis is the more obvious choice but, well; I’ve got plans for that one. As for the powers, I’m thinking lie detection, levitation, night vision, and, hopefully, hitting my deadlines!
