This entry of Goosebumps is a sequel to The Mummy’s Tomb. The first book was pretty weak, but maybe the sequel will be better. However, this review did take eons, so maybe it’s not that great. Either way, a mummy is returning, unless I’ve been click baited by R.L. Stine.

Synopsis:

The book opens with Gabe returning to Egypt. He’ll be staying with his Uncle Ben and his cousin Sari, again. Even more surprising, his uncle has discovered another pyramid. You really have to keep an eye out for new pyramids, they pop up everywhere, just last week I found one in my backyard.

Gabe has brought his mummy hand again, which definitely won’t be a part of the plot, again. This time, the book makes you very aware Gabe is on an airplane, and there is a surprising amount of time spent discussing common things on an airplane. Truly exhilarating.

Gabe holds his mummy hand on the airplane’s descent and notices it becoming cold. I think your mummy may have a cold.

After landing, Gabe departs to find his Uncle Ben. While walking, Gabe is bumped by a woman with her luggage. This causes him to freak out and run away. Luggage, the most dangerous animal in Egypt.

Gabe goes to look for a phone but then considers how dumb it would be to ask the operator to patch him through to his uncle at a pyramid. I agree Gabe, I’m sure you would be dealing with a very confused operator, since you don’t have a number for your uncle and pyramids aren’t typically known for having phones.

Gabe walks out front instead and finds Uncle Ben driving a cab. Plot twist, it’s not Uncle Ben, and it’s just a cab driver, who thinks Gabe needs a ride. Gabe then sees Uncle Ben and Sari parked across the street. He runs over to them while being cursed in Arabic by the taxi driver.

Gabe then realizes he forgot his suitcase in the airport and goes back for it. He finds his luggage. However, his suitcase is so heavy he can’t lift it. What did he put in it, bricks?

The three of them head to the pyramids after helping Gabe carry his suitcase to their vehicle. Ben announces they will be staying at the pyramids instead of a hotel. He also says they will be entering the pyramid tomorrow.

When they get to the outside of the pyramid, Ben has to show his identification to get in.

At the pyramid, Ben has a gift for Gabe. The gift is a real-life mummy coming up to them. Gabe freaks out and runs away, but it’s actually John, an actor. Despite the high security, actors are free to shoot commercials at the pyramid whenever.

Gabe doesn’t like the prank. Ben then gives Gabe the actual gift, which is a scarab encased in amber. Sari then pranks Gabe by pinching him. The pinnacle of comedy.

That night, Gabe can’t sleep. He then foreshadows the plot by saying the amber scarab will either save him or kill him. Turns out, neither of these things are either remotely true, but we’ll get to that.

The next day, Ben says the pyramid contains the remains of King Tut’s cousin’s, uncle’s, friend’s, roommate. I kid, but it is King Tut’s cousin’s tomb they seek to unearth.

Later, Ben, Gabe, and Sari head to go into the pyramid. Ben warns them not to get lost like last time, yeah, that’s like telling Gabe not to bring his mummy hand with him. Before they can enter, a woman shows up and tells them not to go in.

She’s a reporter named Nila, and she wants to go with them. Ben then says yes, for some reason. Security must be pretty lax.

Nila notices Gabe’s amber scarab, and they are now twins since she has the same one as him.

The four of them enter the pyramid with each of them wearing head lamps to light the way. Gabe gets lost. Literally five seconds in and he’s already lost. Then his Temu head lamp goes off. This is absolutely fantastic. Classic Stine.

Gabe then falls through a wall. What are these walls made out of, paper? Anyways, he then falls down a chute, yes, there’s a random chute, which leads into a pit of spiders. Yes, this does happen. No, it’s not a crazy dream sequence.

His head lamp starts working again, perfect timing, since he can now see the pit of horrors, he’s ended up in. Luckily, he is almost immediately saved. Amazing.

After getting back up by climbing a rope, Ben says that’s a really big fall. So, Gabe now has plot armor, since he should be either injured, or dead, but he’s okay.

Gabe takes the opportunity to pull out his mummy hand and says it has more powers. Yeah, I guess the severed mummy hand must have caught you on your way down the chute. After everyone turns around the mummy hand starts to throw gang signs then flips Gabe off. This isn’t exactly what the book states, but this is what I imagine when the book says the hand moves its fingers.

Also, Nila was impressed by the hand. Most kids don’t carry severed hands with them that they found in a garage sale, so that’s kind of understandable.

Two days pass. This means that nothing interesting happens for two days. Uncle Ben has been spending a lot of time with Nila. Ben really has it going on, archaeologist, explorer, and a lady’s man, based upon what the book says.

That day, they have finally found the entrance to the mummy’s tomb. Ben, Sari, Gabe, and Nila enter the pyramid. They head to the tomb’s entrance. Ben is about to open the seal on the door, when a voice says, “Let me rest in peace.”

It’s Omar! A scientist from the university in Cairo and a person who works with Ben. He doesn’t want Ben to enter the tomb because of the curse. So, is this the new Ahmed?

Omar and Ben argue over whether to open the tomb. This is when Omar reveals if they repeat a phrase five times the mummy will awaken and seek revenge. I guess Candyman has become a mummy. Anyways, I’m curious if the Bloody Mary mummy will only awaken if said exactly five, or if six also works, or if it’s only in the multiples of five. Secondly, does it matter what language for the phrase has to be in ancient Egyptian, or if English is also acceptable?

Omar leaves. Ben states he doesn’t trust Omar. I mean, after Ahmed from the last book, I don’t think I’d trust anybody from the university.

Ben breaks the seal. He enters the room and everyone follows him. However, the room is empty. It’s another hallway, with another seal to another door. I enjoy repetition and padding.

Unlike the first door, it takes hours to open the second door, despite being the exact same door with the same seal. Stine is really trying to hit those word counts.

After getting the second door open, Ben looks into the tomb. There’s gold and jewelry everywhere. Nila then takes a bunch of photos, despite being told earlier not to, but this isn’t important, but I guess it’s worth mentioning.

Their next discovery is the mummy’s sarcophagus, which the book refers to as a plain case every time it’s mentioned. Yes, a plain case in a room that Ben otherwise describes as the greatest discovery of all time and grander than Tut’s tomb. Also, this doesn’t match the book’s cover.

Out of nowhere four cops pull up with them handling their holstered guns. What? Then Omar appears from behind the cops like a B-movie villain. Did Omar seriously call the cops just to come off more like a villain?

Omar explains he called the cops to make sure nothing is stolen from the tomb. First, why? Second, what? Third, he somehow has perfect timing for them entering the tomb. Omar then says he’s changed his mind about the curse. This makes no sense.

The cops leave shortly after. This probably wasn’t the type of policing they wanted to do, but Omar had to be dramatic.

That night, Ben, Sari, Gabe, and Nila have dinner together. After being asked by everyone what the phrase to awaken the mummy is, Ben says the phrase. Great, now someone is going to accidentally cause an Egyptian type of Evil Dead scenario to happen. He says he doesn’t trust Omar again. Ben then leaves to make non-descript calls.

Later that night, Gabe says the phrase five times to scare Sari. This doesn’t work. Omar jump scares them by popping into their tent and asking where Ben is at.

After answering him, Gabe and Sari follow and spy on Omar. They watch as Ben and Omar have a heated argument, again. Gabe states Omar can’t be a criminal, he’s a scientist. My guy has the memory of a goldfish, did you forget last year when a scientist named Ahmed tried to murder you, Sari, and Ben? I guess he did.

Omar and Ben go into the pyramid, but only one comes out. I guess we missed the pyramid cage match between Omar and Ben. As only Omar comes out of the pyramid.

Gabe and Sari try to confront Omar, but he runs away. Now, if this was Ahmed, he wouldn’t have run away. I feel like Omar may be downgrade.

Sari heads to the pyramid to find Ben. Gabe grabs flashlights so they can see. After retrieving the flashlights, Gabe and Sari enter the pyramid.

They find the main tomb after searching for Ben for a while. The lid to the sarcophagus is now closed, however, when they left it was open. Gabe and Sari open it to find Ben inside.

He seems to be dead at first, which would be another tragedy for Uncle Ben’s everywhere, but he’s actually just knocked out. However, the mummy is now missing. The mummy is no longer missing, since it shows up as soon as Gabe thinks about it.

This happens over 83% of the way through the book on page 99 of 118. The mummy is severely decayed, doesn’t have eyes, and looks decrepit, as you would expect. He still looks pretty good after over 3,000 years entombed, must be all of the weight loss helping to keep him young.

The mummy corners Gabe and Sari at the back of the tomb. Our heroes are in peril as they have a two-hour podcast discussing how to outrun the mummy and save Ben. How? Well, the mummy is going about 1 mile per hour. This has got to be the least terrifying villain in any Goosebumps book so far. The mummies from the first book were able to keep up with Ahmed, an average human.

Gabe grabs for his mummy hand to control the mummy, but it’s missing. Great, the dues ex machina is missing. Luckily, they are easily able to dodge and run around the mummy. How is this our monster? If you walk at a normal pace, you will never be in trouble with this mummy.

As they go to leave the tomb, Nila shows up. Nila has Gabe’s mummy hand. She’s also the twist villain and controlling the mummy. Even bigger plot twist, she’s the brother of the mummy. What?

As like in the last mummy book, she has a villain monologue. She states she’s 4,000 years old, but that’s not right, since her brother was entombed only a bit over 3,000 years ago when this book was released, so I guess she figured out how to get an extra 800 years in somehow. This is also when the book officially falls apart.

It’s revealed she needed the mummy hand from Gabe, and the chant to awaken her brother, but she somehow couldn’t figure out the chant written on the wall in ancient Egyptian, even though she would be able to speak ancient Egyptian, since she’s from back then. Second, if she needed that specific mummy hand, it’s really convenient Gabe happened to come back this summer and happen to bring it with him, and that she was able to get a hold of it.

Also, she’s had literally over 3,000 years to awaken her brother, but she’s waited all of this time. Nila says it was because the tomb was sealed, but with enough money, time, or resources, I’m sure she would be able to enter the tomb many years ago. The number of plot holes created in a single speech literally causes the book fall apart.

Nila then tells the mummy to destroy them. She says no witnesses, which means no case, but there will literally be a case and investigation if an archaeologist, and two children are found dead in a pyramid.

However, the mummy attacks Nila instead. This completely breaks the logic of the mummy hand that Nila is using. The hand was used to control the mummies in the first book and was how they defeated Ahmed. This means that the mummies still had free will all along, but in the first book Ahmed was literally on the mummies side, at least in the way of preventing the tombs from being desecrated, which would mean that the mummies may have been forced to attack Ahmed against their will. However, in this book, it’s just ignored. So, the mummy hand only works sometimes, I guess. Probably only for plot convenience.

Also, the mummy is now able to move fast enough to grab Nila from across the room, without her having time to react. Wow.

The mummy also speaks English now. This guy would crush Duolingo.

Gabe, for plot convenience then jumps on the back of the mummy to save Nila. This makes no sense, since Nila plans to kill them, and I’m sure she won’t stop trying to kill you, even if you stop the mummy.

During the struggle, out of even more convenience, Gabe accidentally breaks Nila’s amber scarab. How? Gabe, a child, is on the back of the mummy. He is touching Nila in no way, but he somehow tears her amber scarab off, which then breaks after falling on the floor. Okay, this makes no sense, for hopefully obvious reasons. It also doesn’t make sense, since despite amber being slightly fragile, it’s not that fragile, and I’d assumed it either wouldn’t break, or it wouldn’t shatter like described in the book.

Turns out, Nila has lived so long because of the amber scarab, and she becomes the beetle at night. What? I guess she just becomes a beetle at night, but it’s night and she’s not a beetle, and how does that work in regard to immortality?

She then turns into a beetle since her amber scarab is broken and scurries off to likely form a beetle army. Anyways, this also makes no sense, since she’s still a human, but sure. People are also now insects in Goosebumps books.

The mummy then dies, or I should say dies again.

Later, Uncle Ben wakes up. He missed out on the greatest worst series of events ever.

So, it turns out this entire time Ben has been suspicious of Nila. Huh? He thought it was weird she wanted to know the phrase, but everyone wanted to know the phrase, and that she didn’t speak ancient Egyptian. This is what made him suspicious, great, this makes no sense. Literally, who speaks ancient Egyptian except Ben and why would he be suspicious of her for not speaking ancient Egyptian before she turned out to be a villain.

Omar was also in on this all along, but everything that has happened suggests otherwise. First, why would Ben keep saying he doesn’t trust Omar, even before being suspicious of Nila. Second, why did he bring the police when they first entered the tomb, this makes no sense even with context. Also, why have the heated arguments, if you think about it for longer than two seconds, this wouldn’t change any of Nila’s actions or be able to get her to reveal herself as a villain.

Omar then returns with the police, again. I guess the police now have to go arrest a bug.

The book ends with Gabe being bitten by something at night. Probably Nila getting her revenge, luckily, scarabs aren’t dangerous to humans, or maybe it’s another prank by Sari. Either way, I’m thankful this book is over.

Review:

This book sucks. It’s like listening to the whole discography of Nile in one sitting at .25x speed while suffering a concussion, and strong stimulants. This is meant in the worst way you can imagine. I do enjoy Nile and any song by them is better written than this book.

Starting off with the good. The mummy description is good, Nila is a good twist villain, Uncle Ben survives, the setting is interesting, and the book is short.

The bad is much longer. The book takes 3,000 to 4,000 years to get anywhere. Once the book gets anywhere, it is prolonged or is poorly written. The book can’t follow the continuity or facts set up in the last book and even fails to follow the same things set up in this book. It feels like one writer wrote the first half and then another writer started the second half while only receiving a brief outline without any details and some pictures of pyramids.

Every character is paper thin or suffer from not being developed from the last book. You could have explored Gabe, Uncle Ben, or Sari, and how they’ve grown over the last year, instead none of that happens. Somehow, there are fewer mummies in this book than the previous, and the one mummy is inconsistently written over the span of fewer than 18 pages.

Nila doesn’t work as a twist villain, since she isn’t set up as a villain in any way, and nothing about her makes sense, as explained in the synopsis. Omar is a red herring, but honestly, if he was the villain, the book might have been better. It might have been obvious, but at least it would make sense.

Even better, it would have been cool, or better, if Gabe just repeated the phrase which awakens the mummy and from there, Gabe, Sari, and Ben have to figure out how to deal with the mummy.

There are a ton of small continuity issues. First, Sari is older in the first book, but appears to now be possibly younger than Gabe, unless Gabe had a huge growth spurt. Next, Ben says he doesn’t believe in superstition the whole book, but in the last book he saw the mummies come to life, so this doesn’t add up. The mummy hand is completely changed in this book, and the other characters forgot it worked in the first book. Finally, the last book was set during the holidays, but this time, they say it was last summer. Great, who cares about continuity.

The character decisions remain bad, especially at the end, and the lack of peril due to the slowest mummy and incompetency of characters in this book causes the story to spiral into a pit of spiders without a hope to escape.

While bad decisions remain consistent for a Goosebumps book, in this one, it’s especially heinous. In other Goosebumps books, at least the characters didn’t try to save the villain.

This Goosebumps entry may be one of the worst I’ve read so far. At least it has a few things going for it. I hope R.L. Stine’s future mummy books are better and I’m happy there isn’t another one in the original series.

My rating for this Goosebumps entry: 3/10. Now, I must return to my scarab amber until the next entry. I have to stay young somehow.

Twist ending:

Nila is the villain. Who would have thought? Nobody, literally nobody. The other twist might be the cops actually being in a Goosebumps book. Since in the majority of Goosebumps books, the cops are never utilized.

Memorable line:

Ben: “Do you know what they call flies in Egypt?”

Kids: “No.”

Ben: “Neither do I.”

Great, this is peak writing.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

The mummy’s alive! He’s coming for us! Just give him ten years. This is reminiscent of the steamroller scene in Austin Powers.

Bad parenting:

Maybe, don’t let Gabe into the pyramid. He will get lost.

Random references:

National Geographic, Hilton, Frosted Flakes, Raisin Bran, Michigan Wolverines, and Bart Simpson. This book can eat my shorts.

Tropes in book:

Staying with a relative, Omar jump scare, pranks, crazy cliffhangers, and twist ending.

TV tie-in:

This Goosebumps episode isn’t much better than the book. The first issue is the episode has a budget of five dollars. Egypt is never shown, except through stock images and the set seems to be just the pyramid and their cot. This isn’t too bad, but it makes the story feel much smaller than the book.

Sari in this episode manages to be way more annoying in the book with constant pranks, rude remarks, and being generally intolerable. Ben isn’t much better, he somehow has even less character development than in the book. Finally, Gabe gets even more lost in this book, and he doesn’t move the plot forward or have any impact, except for existing.

Also, in this well-lit pyramid with lanterns everywhere, Gabe somehow gets lost and falls into a pit, which happens to have the door to the tomb, and Gabe proceeds to do nothing throughout the rest of the episode.

Nila is also in this story. The episode doesn’t fix any plot holes, except she remembers how old she is this time. Also, in this episode, the mummy just grabs her necklace, which makes her turn into a beetle, and the mummy doesn’t die after this, so he’s just trapped as a mummy forever, great.

The mummy also speaks English again, which makes no sense.

The biggest changes to the plot include Sari being significantly younger than Gabe, Nila has a personal driver, Gabe just got the mummy hand at the airport, the mummy hand likes to crawl around, and Nila was the ruler of Egypt at some point. None of this makes the story better.

This Goosebumps episode suffers from staying too close to the source material and the changes made don’t fix the plot holes of the book. This is also the first Goosebumps episode for a sequel, without the first book being released as an episode.

I think adapting the first Goosebumps book, Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb. Would have been a better choice. Even though the first book is also boring, at least Ahmed was a better villain, and that Goosebumps book had more than one mummy.

I’ll give this Goosebumps episode props on having a pretty cool looking mummy, but outside of that, not too much great with this one.

I’ll give this episode of Goosebumps a 3/10. Not good.

Memorable episode line:

“We’ll be the world’s richest skeletons.” This is because the world’s richest mummy has a much greater net worth.

Famous cast:

Daniel DeSanto, Annick Obonsawin, and Gerry Mendicino.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-22-ghost-beach/

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