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Geronimo Stilton has to leave all the comforts of home, not to mention his work at the Rodent Gazette, to travel to Ancient Egypt. Professor Volt’s new tempograph machine has indicated the Pirate Cats are attempting to change history again. If the present is to stay as it is, Geronimo and company will have to stop them; if they can’t, the Sphinx will have a new look. With language decoding devices in their ears, Geronimo Stilton, journalist Patty Spring, Geronimo’s nephew Benjamin, their friend Pandora, and Geronimo’s cousin Trap travel back to the year 2484 B.C. in the Speedrat.
While enduring the desert heat, Geronimo and his group witness a pyramid being built, eat a twenty-course dinner, and visit the Royal Palace - which thanks to the Pirate Cats, is looking more luxurious every day. Luckily, they have time to save the Sphinx because work has halted on the face. A disagreement has arisen about which face should be on the monument: should it be the face of a cat, or the face of the Pharaoh Chephren.
A life saved is rewarded with jobs in the Royal Palace. Geronimo Stilton is given the job of scribe (just as in book one of this graphic novel series); Patty becomes the queen’s companion, Benjamin and Pandora become playmates for the pharaoh’s son Micerino, and Trap becomes a food-taster. While in the palace, Geronimo and his friends are temporarily fooled by the Pirate Cats’ rodent disguises, but only until they overhear a feline expression of pain. These mice know a real ‘meoowww’ when they hear it!
Although the Pirate Cats befriend a traitor in the palace and are well on their way to changing history, Geronimo and Trap are “extra motivated” to push their boat to the pharaoh’s ship just in time to thwart an act of treason that would have had history changing consequences.
This all-new Geronimo Stilton story appears for the first time in America with all the same features that appear in the novels but in fewer numbers. The author plays with several of the words in terms of color and shape, as well as adding mouse and cat-inspired vocabulary to the dialogue. History is examined more closely in the side scrolls, and a reference guide to the main characters appears on the book’s front and back endpapers.
With a preview of the next graphic novel in the series (The Coliseum Con) appearing at the end of the story, the author ends this book just as he started - with us wondering what the Pirate Cats are up to now, and whether or not Geronimo Stilton ever get some much-needed peace and tail-healing time!
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Geronimo Stilton #2: The Secret of the Sphinx