by Xiran Jay Zhao

This middle grade story is a beautiful mix of Chinese history, fantasy, mythology, and science fiction technology. It has all the adventure of a Rick Riordan gods & goddesses mythology book, but using the stories of ancient Chinese Emperors and their complex machinations as the myths. These are the stories of China that have been passed down and have been woven into modern Chinese and world culture, including manga & video gaming. The story centers around Zachary Ying, a modern Chinese American kid who loves to play the video game Mythrealm using his special portal goggles. Things go awry when the ancient Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, tries to possess Zach, but ends up stuck fused to his portal goggles. They embark on an epic adventure with several others to try to stop the spirits from breaking more completely into our world from the spirit realm. The book is sprinkled with history lessons to help familiarize students with Chinese history they may have never learned – like Zack and me. Water dragons, crazy battles between immortals, and trying to find one’s moral compass make this action-packed adventure worth the read. Those unfamiliar with Chinese names, may mentally destroy & horribly mispronounce some of the names of characters or could find it a stumbling block. It’s worth reading despite that and might be an opportunity to share the audiobook version as a way of learning how to pronounce some of the names. (It helped me!) I think students who love mythology adventures will probably love this addition to the genre. This appears to be a first book in a series as it leaves a major cliffhanger at the end of the book.