Review Rating
With the October 2004 review, we began rating the books on the basis of one to four trowels;
one trowel= don’t bother, to four trowels= run right out to your local book store and buy the hard cover!
Rise of the Snake Goddess (for young readers) by Jenny Elder Moke
Reviewed on: October 1, 2024
Disney-Hyperion: Los Angeles
2022 (HC)
YA
The second entry in the Samantha (Sam) Knox series is every bit as beguiling as its predecessor, Curse of the Specter Queen. The year is 1925 and Sam has worked hard her freshman year at the University of Chicago, earning top of her class honors to assure her of a spot in Professor Atchison’s field school to the Greek island of Crete. Field school participants will join the famed dig at Knossos, which will be celebrating twenty-five years of excavation under the direction of the legendary archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans. But the incurably misogynistic Atchison rejects her application out of hand, demeans her in front of classmates and even questions her right (and every other female) to be students at the University of Chicago. As the daughter of a washerwoman and a father killed in the Great War, Sam is well-acquainted with the prejudice directed at working class girls by their “betters.”
But Sam continues to be championed by her wealthy friends Joana Steeling and her brother Bennett (with whom she is deeply in love)—children of a Chicago industrial tycoon, who had taken Sam under his wing since her father’s heroic death. Fortune seemed to favor Sam and her two friends when, in the process of checking the office of U of Chicago archaeologist Professor Barnaby Wallstone while he on leave and in psychiatric rehab (read Curse of the Specter Queen for Wallstone’s unfortunate situation). Buried among the professor’s accumulated correspondence and academic detritus is a letter postmarked Crete from Hector Killeen, director of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. In the letter, he seeks Wallstone’s help in deciphering a symbol said to date back to Bronze Age Greece (3300-1200 BC) and linked to an ancient goddess. The symbol was found deep in a subterranean cave and if deciphered, could reshape understanding of the Minoan civilization, the subject of Sir Arthur Evans’s excavations. Furthermore, Killeen believes he is in imminent danger from tomb raiders whom he had unfortunately hired to do the physical labor of excavating the cave. A badly focused photo of a carved snake accompanies the letter and Sam is convinced that the image provides important clues to what may lie still hidden.
Despite grave misgivings on the part of Bennett, and to a lesser extent Joana, Sam can cajole her friends into embarking on a steamship voyage to Crete to aid Professor Wallstone’s colleague, who appears to be on the cusp of a major archaeological discovery and at the same time facing grave personal dangers. They meet up with the elusive Hector Killeen, who reluctantly the three young adventurers to the Skotino cave, one of the largest caves in Crete, and the site of his excavations. They make a difficult descent to reach a chamber replete with Minoan cave art, including the intricately exquisite likeness of a carved serpent, the subject of the photo sent to Professor Wallstone. Sam’s interpretation of the carving leads them ever deeper into a labyrinth of caverns to a small circular whose walls are covered with brilliant murals and a floor to ceiling etching of the Minoan Snake Goddess—the goddess of hearth, home and fertility in Cretan mythology. Sam is viscerally troubled by the enduring image of the goddess as little more than a fertility symbol and offers up a precious personal memento in a sacrificial bowl on the goddess’s altar. The offering triggers the opening of a chamber that holds a golden girdle, obviously crafted by highly skilled artisans. The golden object, it soon becomes obvious, is more than just a fabulous artifact steeped in mythology. It begins to work its otherworldly powers on Sam, and then Hector Killeen (who is not who he seems!) and even the most unlikely member of their acquaintances.
Author Moke spins a marvelous tale of adventure as her heroes race to un-do the danger that will result if ancient powers are unleashed in the modern world. The mythology that both Bennett and Sam learned and thrilled to as youngsters suddenly becomes something more than mythical, and in their struggles, the young adventurers find themselves confronting unimaginable dangers – including facing the very un-mythical Minotaur!
Four trowels for this second highly imaginative and satisfying Samantha Knox adventure—written for a YA audience up to and including septuagenarians!
