This series was made known to me by one of my classmates in a literature class, who wrote one of her essays on the first book. (Yes, it's the same literature class for which I've been doing essays on things like A Tale of Two Cities and All Quiet on the Western Front. There aren't any actual rules about how highbrow your essay subjects have to be, I just feel silly doing literary analysis on unserious things.)
Anyway, on to the series! I'm not going to bother blacking out the spoilers; ye be warned. There's ending spoilers in the book 6 review, so if you don't want to know how it ends, maybe don't read that one.
Book One: Target Practice
Fifteen-year-old Cleopatra VIII Philopator (the only Cleopatra most people ever know about) gets isekai'd into the future when she finds a mysterious tablet, leaving her friend Gozi behind. Despite this being middle-grade fiction, she isn't twelve, so I afford the author some extra points for that.
Could have done without the "you're in the future... but you still have to go to school" bit, but it does serve to introduce some characters who'll be important later (namely her history professor, Khensu the cat, as well as her classmates Brian, Zaid, and Akila). Also, apparently she's the prophesied "person who will save us from the evil overlord Xaius Octavian".
She gets sent on a training mission to retrieve a magic sword, which will be important later.
Book Two: The Thief and the Sword
Remember how I told you that magic sword would be important later? A guy steals it in this one and delivers it to Xaius Octavian. Said guy turns out to be named Antony, so we all know where this will go. Eventually. They spend a lot of time trying to kill each other first.
Did I mention the future world Cleopatra is now in (called the Nile Galaxy) is ruled by a pharaoh, and below her, a bunch of cats? I love the cats. They're awesome. [EDIT: Fixed a there/their/they're mistake.]
Also, it turns out the magic sword wasn't actually a real magic sword. Xaius Octavian breaks it in half when he finally receives it at the end of this one. (According to Wikipedia's summary it's actually also the same sword Cleopatra and Gozi found at the very beginning of book 1 right before Cleopatra gets isekai'd. I don't remember that bit at all.)
Book Three: Secret of the Time Tablets
In which Cleopatra acquires a fedora, only to lose it again before the next book starts. Also in which our heroes (Cleopatra, Zaid, Brian, Akila, and Khensu) travel to the planet Hykosis, a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Antony is also here, as is a bartender named Fod Franze who Cleopatra ticks off. He'll be mildly important later.
This is where the permanent consequences start to set in, courtesy of Xaius Octavian finally confronting our heroes. Cleopatra develops mysterious pink energy powers. Akila loses an arm. Zaid takes a laser from Xaius Octavian (who, by the way, can shoot lasers) and sort of disintegrates.
Y'know how that sword would be important later? It still is. Xaius Octavian has the real one, which has kept him alive for... I think several millenia. He's also actually her friend Gozi, who's been kept alive for I think several millenia by the magic sword. And is very mad at her. And can shoot lasers.
Book Four: The Golden Lion
In which Antony and Cleopatra (yes, I know) traverse the ice planet of Hoth Cada'Duun to try to find the Golden Lion, which is not an actual lion. It's a sort of plasma thing, which apparently renders the area around it habitable no matter what said area used to be like. On the ice planet, it manifests as a village of people who talk in math; they're apparently total jokesters to anyone who can understand their math, which Cleopatra doesn't.
The Cleo-Antony romance starts happening. Also, Xaius Octavian is revealed to have a mysterious patron who manifests as a giant, vaguely humanoid patch of darkness with glowing red eyes, and Cleopatra's pink energy is revealed to be able to heal her.
Cleopatra also gets a pet in this one: Mihos the snow otter. He's adorable but doesn't do much other than "be adorable". He won't even be important later. Plus Akila has a robot arm that can shoot lasers; that will be important later.
Book Five: Fallen Empires
The Empire Strikes Back (Cleopatra in Space edition). Also known as, everything goes to heck.
The book opens with a flashback of Gozi/Octavian's tragic backstory: he got imprisoned for losing Cleopatra. Then Egypt was destroyed by space pirates. Gozi activated the self-destruct on the space pirate ships in retaliation, but survived thanks to the immortality-granting sword. He was rescued by aliens who gave him prosthetic tentacle legs; he had a normal happy life with them, but then those aliens were attacked by different space pirates, and he was the only survivor.
Also Administrant Khepra, one of the cat council, is secretly a traitor working for Octavian. And is Khensu's mom. Plus we learn what Xaius Octavian wanted the plasma for: he made a budget Death Star. Or several.
Book Six: Queen of the Nile
[ENDING SPOILERS IN THIS ONE]
Cleo has acquired a tan over the course of the series. Cleo has also acquired depression over the course of the series. It's understandable, given all the destruction Xaius Octavian has been wreaking and the fact that she's been stuck in the future for at least a year and a half.
We get some background on Octavian's mysterious patron: it's Anubis, who went mad with power/grief and tried to destroy everything. The rest of the Egyptian pantheon stopped him, sort of. It takes the combined power of Cleo's pink magic and Pharaoh Yosira's pink magic (Pharaoh Yosira is apparently a distant descendant of Cleo herself, who gets sent back to the past near the end) to get rid of him.
Fod Franze shows back up and is mildly important. He causes some problems and tries to get Xaius Octavian to pay him for doing so, then gets obliterated by a laser from Octavian.
All things considered, I think this series ended pretty well.
Overall Notes
Don't be like Kittens and start on book 2. It didn't make much sense to her.
Cleopatra in Space is a fun series, and not one I'd have qualms about recommending to kids. If you want a promotional quote from me, use that.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for sequences of stylized sci-fi violence. Nothing untoward. It would probably be a pretty good videogame in the right hands (something action-adventure-y).
4 stars. It's pretty similar to Five Worlds, though not quite on that level. The art is good, and as I've mentioned before, art quality is an important factor in my enjoyment of a graphic novel.
Favorite lines:
Fod Franze: NO ONE SHOOTS FOD FRANZE'S HAT!!
Cleopatra: Well, I just did so... not true?
Akila (in background): Yeah. I'm gonna hide.
Book 3 pages 44-45.
(Endnote: There seems to have been a short-lived TV show of this. It apparently made some pretty weird changes and looked absolutely nothing like the original, so I'm in no hurry to seek it out.)
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