Relic Hamilton, Genie Hunter

Gr 4-7–Twelve-year-old Relic Hamilton is living what he believes is a mundane existence in London’s Chinatown with his grandfather, going to school and helping out in the family antique business. One day he discovers a buried box in a corner of his basement. Opening the box and polishing the lamp he finds inside releases a terrifying presence with white eyes who immediately attacks and injures Relic and his grandfather in its attempt to escape the basement. Relic discovers that his grandfather has been living a double life and there is an entire secret world just beneath the surface of this one—a world where his grandfather is a member of the London Chapter of the Hermitic Sodality of Genie Hunters and where Relic himself is destined to become an integral part of the fight to keep humanity free from enslavement by genies who are not bound by good intentions or rules. This latest work by UK Children’s Laureate Coelho is an engagingly fast-paced romp that will captivate readers as they accompany Relic on his travels around London and through time in a fantastical battle against the genie king and his minions. Korean artist Hyun Song We brings this first volume of a trilogy to life with 20 black-and-white illustrations. Relic and his family are British Jamaican, while other main characters present as white. Fans of Tyler Whitesides’s “The Wishmakers” and M. Tara Crowl’s “Eden of the Lamp” series will love this.