The Emperor's Code by Gordon Korman [The 39 Clues, Book Eight]
Post number thirty-eight is for Gordon Korman's The Emperor's Code, which is the eighth 39 Clues book. And boy, does this one start off with a bang!
Spoilers follow.
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This book starts with Amy, Dan and Nellie on a plane to China. They figure out where to head in China thanks to a video streamed to their seat, and their first stop is The Forbidden City, where Dan finds a clue. However, Amy has been dealing with some severe anger management issues related to her parents and the family branch they belong to, and loses it; she basically says really terrible things to Dan, who, in a fit of his own anger, tells her he hates her and storms off … where he's promptly kidnapped by Ian and Natalie Kabra. Go figure. :-P
Amy, meanwhile, calms down and freaks out; her and Nellie spend a lot of time trying to find Dan, and it turns into one of those obnoxious plotlines where, if they'd just pay closer attention, or look down at certain moment, or stay somewhere 15 seconds later than they did, they would have found each other much sooner. But, then again, as with those plotlines, had that happened we wouldn't have had much of a book.
Anyway, Dan is kidnapped by the Kabras, who can't get anything useful out of him and dump him in a factory that happens to manufacture Jonah Wizard mechanical lollipops; and Jonah just happens to be visiting the factory on that day, so promptly takes Dan along with him. (It is fairly clear to the reader that Jonah does this just to use Dan, but it takes Dan a ridiculously long amount of time to figure this out for himself.)
So basically there are two separate adventures in this book: Dan's (he spends the majority of his time with the "Wizard Entourage") and Amy and Nellie's. In the end, they figure out that the only way to find each other is to follow the clue hunt, which is exactly what happens. The clue hunt brings the three of them (and Saladin, the cat) to Nepal, and Mount Everest. Meanwhile, the Holts and Ian Kabra are also headed to Everest, which culminates in an interesting altercation at the summit of the world's highest mountain.
In the end, Amy and Dan again triumph, get the clue, and a vague notion of where to head next. Oh, and also, lots of suspicion regarding Nellie's true motives.
Also, this book was neat because it had a clue actually inside of it for the readers to figure out. There were circled words that, when read in order, revealed a clue. Cool!
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