Oliver Blue and the School for Seers #2: The Orb of Kandra by Morgan Rice

My name is Esther, and Oliver's plans to save his mentor have been sidetracked since the Orb of Kandra was stolen from the School for Seers. The school will implode and be destroyed if the orb isn't returned in twenty-four hours. We have the only school for seers, or so we've been told, but it looks like seers may have taken the orb. Oliver's specialism is atomic, the most powerful specialty, and he's the only one who can get the orb back. I'm happy to help and Ralph has joined us too. It looks like we'll need to visit Sir Isaac Newton, so we'll be time-traveling back to the 1690's. The jumps through portals have been making me weaker, but I can't tell Oliver what's really going on. He has enough to worry about, especially now that his brother Chris has shown up helping the Obsidian students. How is that even possible? You can't make someone a seer, so what have they done to Chris?

You need to read this series from the beginning. The seers are able to manipulate their environments based on their specialties, although it comes across as almost magical. I like Oliver's character and his relationship with Esther. He comes from an abusive background, but this book introduces the probability that he hasn't been raised by his actual parents. Time travel is the backbone of the plot, as there are opposing groups battling to maintain and disrupt history. The Obsidian school is introduced as the antagonists, but the big surprise is the reappearance of Oliver's brother. He adds a personal twist to the overall conflict. The thing that most bugs me about the book is how quickly Oliver has mastered his atomic specialty. No one else has that power, so he isn't trained at all, but his body seems to have miraculously enabled him to easily transform things at their atomic level. There's been a minimal learning curve. Despite that, I've enjoyed the overall story of trying to preserve the integrity of historical events. It's easy to connect with Oliver, and he's a bit of a renegade like many middle grade heroes. I'm a little bummed my library system doesn't have the rest of the books in the series, and I can only find them offered for purchase through Kindle or Amazon.