Temple of Eternity

In the style of James Rollins’ Jake Ransom young adult series, along with a healthy dose of the Percy Jackson series, R. Scott Boyer returns with his second book featuring Bobby Ether after his first appearance in Bobby Ether and the Jade Academy, in Temple of Eternity. The adventures continue, with more mysteries to be solved in the land of the mystical and enigmatic.

After his previous escapades, Bobby Ether barely has enough time to get settled and collect his thoughts together before he’s called back to the Jade Academy for more training and learning, as well as to better control his newfound abilities. Joining his cousin Jinx, they soon discover some friends have gone missing, been kidnapped in fact – which the reader learned of in the gripping prologue – and must now travel deep into the jungles of Guatemala. Their friends are spotted near the Temple of Eternity, so Bobby and Jinx are quickly on their trail while also finding themselves a part of an ancient prophecy of the Maya. They quickly find themselves dealing with much more than basic kidnapping as they confront all manner of beasts, both of the tooth and claw kind and the supernatural. But these are not the same kids who barely knew what they were doing before; they have some experience under their belts, and have some idea of what they are now facing. They will also learn and adapt along the way, working together, even as they find themselves very much alone. This time they find themselves deeper than they might’ve expected and the question is whether they will be able to do what needs to be done to avoid becoming a part of the history and myth of the Temple of Eternity.

Boyer certainly has a knack for bringing to life a story about a couple of teenagers getting up to mischief. The pages are filled with the perfect balance of detail and action, drawing the reader all the deeper into the story with history and legend. There is magic alive and well in these pages, but also spirituality and faith, pulling on the author’s own interests, which adds all the more the story as well as giving it a stronger sense of realism. The characters aren’t one-dimensional but complex and interesting, and it is not always clear where their allegiances lie, or where the lines of good and evil truly lie for that matter.

Temple of Eternity, even though it is a sequel, brings the reader up to speed with a summary of events from the previous book and hits the ground running with constant activity and conflict, keeping the reader glued to the next chapter, wanting to know what will happen next. While it is called a young adult novel, there is plenty within this book to be enjoyed by adults.