I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING by Kwame Mbalia Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my
post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About the Book:
Title: TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING (Tristan
Strong #3)
Author: Kwame Mbalia
Pub. Date: October 5, 2021
Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents
Formats: Hardcover, eBook, audiobook
Pages: 320
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle, Audible, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, TBD, Bookshop.org
Best-selling author Rick Riordan
presents the finale of Kwame Mbalia's trilogy, in which Tristan Strong faces
off with his archenemy King Cotton once and for all.
"Imagine if you combined Anansi the Spider, John Henry, and Marvel
into, like, one book."--New York Times best-selling author and
Newbery Medalist Kwame Alexander
After reuniting with Ayanna, who is now in his world, Tristan travels up the
Mississippi in pursuit of his archenemy, King Cotton. Along the way they
encounter new haints who are dead set on preventing their progress north to
Tristan's hometown of Chicago. It's going to take many Alkean friends,
including the gods themselves, the black flames of the afokena gloves, and all
of Tristan's inner strength to deliver justice once and for all.
Shocking twists, glorious triumphs, and a cast of unforgettable characters
make this series conclusion as satisfying as it is entertaining.
Grab the first 2 books in the series
now!
Excerpt:
1
Stay Strong
It should be
physically impossible for the human body to burst into flame. Aren’t there
rules against that? I’m pretty sure my Life Science class covered it last year.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a firm believer that people aren’t meant to be
matches.
So that’s
why I stared in utter horror at the small silver flame popping out of my
knuckles.
“I don’t
like that,” I said, my voice sounding faint and distant to my own ears.
That was
probably wrong to say. For several reasons. First, I was already trying my best
not to lose my temper and attract attention. Our tour guide kept shooting angry
looks at our group and shushing us. And we weren’t even being that loud! No
more so than anyone else on the tour. Still, I was pretty sure my bursting into
flame would get us more than a mean look.
We were
stuffed in the middle of a crowd in a tiny museum crammed with fascinating
exhibits. Granddad called it the Pharmacy Museum. From that name I expected to
see boring displays, like the history of headache medicine or something like
that. Instead, I learned about century-old tools used to probe, prod, and
investigate the human body. Pretty cool! But again, the place was jam-packed.
Everybody in the French Quarter must’ve come for a tour. So I definitely didn’t
want to cause a panic because my fist had turned into a Flamin’ Hot.
Yes, the
Strongs were in New Orleans. One last adventure before I headed back to
Chicago to start the new school year. It was bittersweet. I mean, I was looking
forward to getting home, being back in my neighborhood, and seeing my parents.
Still, I’d had fun with Granddad and Nana. I’d eaten a bunch of key lime pie,
done a little boxing, fallen into another world with powerful gods and made a
bunch of folk-hero friends.... You know, the normal summer.
I was
excited to visit the Big Easy, but this trip had come with a few strings
attached. And—
“What don’t
you like?” someone said over my left shoulder. “The artificial leech? C’mon!
That’s so cool! Apparently back then you’d jam that thing into your—”
“Thank you,
Terrence,” I whispered, covering up my burning hand.
The tour
guide glared as Terrence continued to hiss facts
at me. I
shot a glare right back, and the guide huffed and turned around. Then I looked
at the walking encyclopedia behind me. Terrence was a short, thin Black boy
with a red-tipped lightning bolt dyed into his close-cropped hair. He was also
one of those aforementioned attached strings.
“No more
ancient surgery lessons,” I said in a low voice. “Please.”
He shrugged
and continued to mutter trivia to the stranger next to him. I shook my head.
Terrence was my nine-year-old cousin, Dad’s brother’s son, and the second
reason I had to keep things to myself. The powers that be (Nana) had decided
that Terrence needed a buddy, someone to partner with as we toured New Orleans,
and guess who that was?
Lucky me.
Terrence
wore an oversize lime-green T-shirt with an icon of a flexed bicep on the front
and strongs on the move written beneath it in bold black letters. On the back,
black is a rainbow arced over interlocking hands in different shades of brown.
Yeah. Brown and lime green. The message was great! The aesthetics? Eh. I
(unfortunately) was wearing the same shirt, and four or five others in the
Pharmacy Museum were sporting it as well.
You’ve
probably figured out what was happening.
It was a
Strong family reunion.
Relatives I
hadn’t seen in years—and some I’d never met at all—had made
the trip. Great-aunts, cousins, their children. I met my Uncle
Jeff-Jeff and what he called his emotional support pug (also, strangely,
called Jeff-Jeff). In fact, it seemed the only ones not here were my parents.
They’d been unable to make the trip—something about car trouble—and Mom had
stressed the importance of me representing for the Chicago Strongs. What I did
would reflect on them. So, you know how it goes. Best behavior and all that.
Which brings
us to the third reason I had to avoid making a scene. I was on a mission.
Two weeks
ago I had returned from my second trip to Alke, the magical world where storied
folk heroes like John Henry, heroines like Keelboat Annie, gods like Anansi and
Nyame, and goddesses like Mami Wata reigned.
Unfortunately,
it was also my last trip there. Alke had been destroyed, and the only way to
save its inhabitants had been to weave the story of their world into mine. Now
Alkeans were scattered across the country, and it was my responsibility to
help find them and make sure they were okay.
Whiiich you
can’t really do when you’re a line buddy for your cousin.
“Where
should we visit next?” Terrence asked as we exited the museum. “I could use
some dinner first.” He pulled out his phone and started scrolling different
travel websites, then gasped. “Tristan, look! There’s a pizza parlor that gives
you an oversize spatula if you eat a whole supreme pie!”
He looked at
me with way too much glee in his eyes (could that be a medical condition?) and
I shook my head. “We’re supposed to wait here for Granddad, then we’ll move to
the next stop.” The hotel, I hoped.
My phone
vibrated. I froze for a second before reaching for it. Fortunately, the flame
had disappeared from my knuckles, and Terrence was still busy reading about
pizza. I pulled a sleek black smartphone from the back pocket of my basketball
shorts.
The SBP, or
Story Box Phone, was the magical treasure chest of Anansi tales. Nyame the sky
god had transferred the stories from an actual box into my phone and then
trapped Anansi himself inside with them. That hadn’t stopped the spider god
from bossing and heckling me at every opportunity. The plus side? Anansi had
turned out to be a talented web designer and had added all sorts of cool apps,
including one that alerted us to the location of Alkeans. I now had the most
advanced smartphone in this realm or any other.
The spider
god stared out at me from the home screen. His expression was impatient as he
pointed to the Maps app icon. “What’s taking you so long? We’ve got to get a
move on!”
“Okay,
where’s the alert coming from?” I asked Anansi.
I wanted to
tell him about the knuckle flames, but just at that moment Terrence moved
closer to me. I turned to prevent him from being able to see the SBP’s screen.
I’m on the phone, I mouthed to him, pointing to the buds in my ears. He
frowned but went back to scoping out which pizza he apparently wanted to cram
inside his face.
“Hurry up,
Tristan,” said Terrence. “I’ve always wanted a pizza spatula. I’m going to be a
chef, you know. Open my own restaurant and serve my famous teriyaki pizza.” He
licked his lips, and I shivered. Some food preferences should remain private.
I looked
back at Anansi. “Well? Where should I send Nyame?”
Hey, I was
only twelve. I couldn’t exactly go gallivanting across the country by myself to
find every Alkean. But the sky god could.
Anansi shook
his head. “No, you’re not listening. Right here, just a few blocks away.
There’s an Alkean who needs help in the French Quarter!”
I inhaled
sharply. Yes! We could handle this ourselves! All I had to do was give Terrence
the slip, and then we could—
A tingling
sensation pricked the corners of my eyes.
That was
weird. I squinted. Rubbed at them. Blinked a few times, but the sensation
wouldn’t go away. I had just turned to ask Terrence if there was anything in my
eyes when I saw someone I recognized. He was whistling while walking down the
street in the opposite direction.
Tall.
Neatly
dressed.
Evil.
King Cotton
was strolling through the French Quarter without a care in the world.
The way I
figure it, no one is owed anything. Not an easy life. Not a happy ending.
Nothing. I learned that from Granddad. Life comes at you fast, like a flurry of
jabs and hooks, and sometimes the only thing you can do is learn how to take a
few on the chin and keep on standing.
And not
every story is neat and tidy, either. Sometimes pages are missing, ripped out
by forces beyond our control. Sometimes the villain wins. Sometimes the villain
wins by a lot. And not every question may get answered. I mean, there
are a hundred stories unfolding without our knowledge every day, and the
details will never see the light of day because we either can’t or won’t seek
them out. So, tough luck, the ending to that chapter is forever shrouded from
view.
Until
someone comes along and tries to tell it. Tries to tease out the answers, give
folks some closure. That’s my role as an Anansesem—a seeker, recorder, and
teller of stories. I didn’t ask for the title—the title chose me when I was in
Alke. In fact, I didn’t want the job. I didn’t think I’d be any good at it. But
I was wrong. And despite my best attempts to avoid the responsibility, the
magic of my people’s stories didn’t care
about my
objections. Since I was the reason the characters in those tales were now
scattered around the globe, telling their stories was one thing that only I
could do.
Maybe Nana
had said it best the first week after we’d returned to our world. She’d been
laid up in bed, recovering from being abducted, and the two of us were talking
about Alke. And stories. When I mentioned it was hard to find the energy to
speak about the world I had destroyed, she peered at me over the new quilt she
was working on.
“You gotta
find the pulse of the story, baby,” she’d said. “Let the rhythm beat like a
heart, and hold on to that pulse once you got it. Don’t change it, no matter
what anybody else says. Even if they call you a liar or selfish, or say you
lucky to be here, or tell you to go somewhere else if you so unhappy, you don’t
let it go. Then speak those words. Tell the story.”
Tell the
story. I wanted to
do just that. But how could I when King Cotton, the haint who had corrupted
everything in Alke, now had his sights on my world? I had to stop him first.
“Hoo HOOO!
Boy oh boy oh boy.”
I’d shoved
the phone back into my pocket and was two seconds away from tearing off after
Cotton when Granddad walked out of a seafood grill a few doors down from the
Pharmacy Museum. He was licking his fingers and doing a little jig, something
everyone in the family called his good-eatin’ shuffle. Nana followed
him, no stranger to Granddad’s apparent inability to say no to an order of
battered clam strips. He had a bunch of take-out bags in his hand, and Nana was
scolding him.
“Walter, you
done stopped at every restaurant selling fried clams. You ain’t supposed to be
eating those! What you gonna do with all them, plant them?”
Before I
could duck away, she spotted Terrence and me and steered Granddad toward us.
Granddad didn’t look up from his clam strips. He’d eat two or three, smack his
lips and exclaim how good they were, then roll the bag closed and open another.
It was like watching a squirrel eat nuts, except this particular squirrel knew
how to throw a mean right hook and could ground you.
“Maaaaaaaaaaan,
let me tell you about these clam strips right here!” Granddad said when they
reached us.
I rolled my
eyes. Anytime he started with a Let me tell you, I knew we weren’t going
anywhere soon. Might as well unfurl a sleeping bag and put on your pajamas,
you’re going to be there for a while. Few things riled up Walter Strong more
than a crisp, well-fried clam strip. Which would have been fine any other day
(that’s not exactly true, but what was I, a mere twelve-year-old, supposed to
do?), just not when Cotton was on the loose.
My pocket
vibrated twice. I checked to make sure Granddad was distracted (which was easy,
since his eyes were
as he bit
into another clam strip) before pulling out the phone. Granddad hated how often
I checked it. Meanwhile, Terrence told Nana about the pizza parlor.
The screen
winked to life, and the worried face of a trickster god stared out at me.
On an
average day, Anansi had a contagious smile and a twinkle in his eye. You never
knew if he had your back or had a trick in his back pocket. He was the Weaver,
the owner of all stories, from truths to tall tales, and his name was embedded
in my title of Anansesem. But at the moment, the spider god looked far from his
normal self.
I slipped in
one earbud and his voice, normally melodic and lilting, was flat and strained.
“Well, are we leaving or not?”
I peered
around the crowded street filled with tourists just like me and my
grandparents. It was early evening, but the Louisiana sun still beamed down on
the French Quarter as if focused through a magnifying glass. My own reunion
T-shirt (yes, still lime green) clung to my back, my black basketball shorts
felt like they weighed thirty pounds, and my new all-black Chuck Taylors (That’s
the second pair we bought you, Granddad had grumbled) felt like their soles
were melting.
Still,
everywhere I looked, people were laughing, joking, shopping, eating, dancing,
and carrying on their merry way through what was possibly the most vibrant
square mile in the whole country. Music thumped from Bourbon Street a few
blocks over while the casinos on Canal Street flickered
to life.
Adults and teens and children walked by with powdered sugar dusting their lips
and fingers as they bit into soft, hot beignets and—if you didn’t know any
better—life was all good.
Yet a shadow
lingered now, just out of sight. Cotton. The haint’s specter hovered in my
peripheral vision, waiting for the right moment to strike.
I shook my
head. “Not just yet,” I told Anansi. “But—”
“Time is
running out, Tristan! We have to move!” There was resignation in his voice. He
already knew the answer.
“I know,” I
said. “It’s just... all my family is here.”
Anansi
didn’t respond, and when I glanced at the SBP, I saw he was sitting with his
back against the edge of the screen, slumped and depressed. I realized, too
late, what I’d just said, and I opened my mouth to say more, but no words would
bring back his family—specifically, his son—safe and sound, so I closed it.
Sometimes condolences don’t ease the hurt—they just make things worse.
“Hey now,
what’s with that face?”
Granddad’s
voice came from behind me. He cradled another container of clam strips as if it
were a baby, but he wore a concerned look. Nana was speaking to Terrence a few
feet away, both of them huddled over his phone as they picked the next
destination for our Strong subgroup. “You look like you just got sucker
punched, boy. What’s the best way to defend against that happening again?”
I snorted,
though there wasn’t much humor in it. Granddad always had a boxing analogy
ready to apply to any situation, and he’d quiz me at various points throughout
the day to test my knowledge of the sport. History, theory, techniques—it
didn’t matter. He’d only let me go back to doing whatever I was doing if I answered
his questions correctly.
If Gum Baby
were here, she’d call it a Grandpop Quiz. I smiled, and then it faded from my
face. The little loudmouth was lost out there somewhere, too. As much as I
hated to admit it (and if you tell her, I will sing “The Ballad of the Gummy”
nonstop outside your window), I missed the tiny sap monster.
“Well?”
Granddad asked.
I sighed,
stared into the crowd streaming past, and racked my brain. “Um, dodge it?”
“You take a
sucker punch, you didn’t dodge anything. Not for a good minute. Try again.”
“Keep my
head on a swivel? Make sure I’m always aware.”
Granddad
pursed his lips. “Better, but still not all the way there. Think about it.
Sometimes an opponent will get the drop on you, and they’ll send punch after
punch at you. Those blows gonna land and land hard. Knock you back. Stun you.
How do you defend against a flurry like that? How do you respond?”
I struggled
to come up with an answer, but at that moment
the SBP
vibrated. Three times in a row. That wasn’t a signal from Anansi. That was an
alert.
“Tristan.”
Granddad’s
voice jerked me from my thoughts. He loaded me up with his take out boxes and
bags so he could place both hands on my shoulders. Then he pulled me close,
into a hug. My arms were too full to hug him back, but I was too surprised to
respond anyway.
“Sometimes,”
Granddad said, squeezing me tight, “you just have to hold on. Clinch, and catch
your breath. The world is going to hit you hard, son. Clinch and don’t let go
until you can keep on fighting. Hear me?”
“Yessir,” I
said, my voice muffled by his shirt.
Sometimes I
forgot that Granddad had been violently introduced to the world of Alke when
Bear—under the poisonous influence of the haint King Cotton—had attacked the
farmhouse and kidnapped Nana. Had Granddad felt helpless while we were gone?
Sucker punched?
The SBP
vibrated again. Granddad sucked his teeth and stepped back. “Boy, who is that
blowing up your phone? Tell them Stanleys to give you a break.”
I groaned.
“No, Granddad, no, no, no. They’re called stans. Stans.”
“Stans,
Stanleys, Stanford Cardinals, you need to tell them to lay off.” Granddad took
back his clam strips and popped
a few more
golden-brown pieces into his mouth, chewing angrily. “I’m trying to teach here,
and you, Mr. Popular, can barely focus. Go on and answer that, boy. I won’t
stand in the way.”
I grinned
even as I pulled out the phone and began to back up. “It’s not like that,
Granddad. I just need to check something real—”
“Tristan,
watch out!”
Anansi’s
shout came from the earbud I still wore, even as the SBP was snatched from my
hand. I whirled to see a kid running into the crowd.
“Hey!” I
cried.
“Tristan—”
Granddad began, but I was already tearing off after the robber.
“C’mon,
Granddad!” I shouted and sprinted down the street.
About Kwame:
Kwame
Mbalia is the New York Times best-selling
author of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, for
which he received a Coretta Scott King Author Honor award. The
book was also named to best-of-the-year lists compiled
by Publishers Weekly , the Chicago Public Library, and
the New York Times . The second
book in the trilogy is Tristan Strong Destroys the World ,
and Tristan Strong Keeps Punching is the third . Kwame lives
with his wife and children in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he is currently
working several projects, including a new middle grade series. Follow him on
Twitter @KSekouM.
Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
3 winners
will receive a finished copy of TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Tour Schedule:
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