TABLE TITANS CLUB

At their live-action role-playing camp, will two feuding gamers pause their hostilities when one member sights a troll?

Attending Camp Owlcare with all five Table Titans gamers thrills Valeria, but it isn’t as exciting for Titans newcomer Kate, who’s furious with Alan for an in-game incident that crushed her feelings. Confident that he’s justified in his actions, Alan apparently doesn’t care how much he hurt Kate. The emotional fallout of their feud leaks into every camp activity—centaur archery, a merfolk swimming race, and more—despite their friends’ trying to broker peace. Val just wants everyone to have fun—and for them to help her track down the legendary camp troll she knows she saw eating food from a dumpster. Alan and Kate’s feud illustrates how deeply gamers feel about their characters and their quests, but it also goes on for too long, bringing down the fun summer camp vibe and overshadowing other interesting and quirky characters and storylines, including Kate and Val’s up-and-down friendship. The colorful, cartoonlike artwork effortlessly builds both the camp world and the scenes of game worlds. The camp itself may disappoint readers who are gamers, offering mostly rebranded traditional camp activities rather than actual LARPing. Fans of the series, though, will jump right into this second volume. Most characters are light-skinned and appear white. Brown-skinned Darius presents Black.

An action-packed if slightly unbalanced foray into a gaming summer camp.