Arcade Catastrophe continues the children's "realistic fantasy" story started in Candy Shop War. The world is a sightly fictionalized version of today's outer San Francisco suburbs. In this story, an evil magician uses an arcade to recruit kids to do his bidding. By accumulating enough tickets, kids can get "stamped" with a magic stamp that gives them special powers (like flying or swimming underwater.) They later use these in competition with each other to carry out the magicians tasks. The kids from the Candy Shop War get involved in an attempt to rescue the "magic police" who have vanished. There is a ton of action and suspense, with plenty of magic before the kids save the day and live happily ever after. It is not a bad story, but it is not as good as Candy Shop War. It is fun how he uses kid's favorite things (kids and video games) as the mechanism for magic. (Magicians know how to attract them.) I wonder what vehicle they will use for a third book?
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