Hopefully I’ll be able to find the second soon.Tom wasn’t listening. I picked this one up on a whim at a library book sale and I’m glad I did. It felt like a classic almost Indiana Jones-like storyline. Though I can understand why some would think the pacing felt slow in some sections, I just enjoyed it the entire time. I also enjoyed all the little mysteries that Christopher had to solve and all the tricky situations he had to get himself out of. I found it interesting that the apothecaries in Sands’ world wrote all their recipes in code, just in case other competing apothecaries should spy on them. With a mix of historical details about apothecaries in the 1600s (perhaps little known to readers like myself) and a plot that seems to race along, The Blackthorn Key was great fun to read. Kevin Sands’ recipe for creating a historically interesting world is brilliant. When Blackthorn gives Christopher a coded puzzle to solve and a key to find, it leads him on a quest he must complete, especially as it’s not only his future that hangs on his success. One by one they’ve been brutally murdered and the culprit has yet to be caught, despite extensive searches.īoth Christopher and Tom are worried that Blackthorn will be next, despite the apothecary’s assurances that he’ll be fine. Someone has been killing off apothecaries in the city. However, even when Christopher gets into trouble for his explosive mischief, he quickly learns that there’s far more trouble than a loose cannon or two on their doorstep. Right from the first scene in the book, Christopher drags Tom into helping him make a cannon in the apothecary shop and setting it off. Christopher is always getting the ever-loyal Tom into trouble. Rowe is an orphan, who, besides his master, has only one friend in the world Tom. Set in 1665 in England, the story is centered around Christopher Rowe, a young teen who is apprenticed to apothecary Master Benedict Blackthorn. The Blackthorn Key is one such book, though in the end, the protagonist’s cleverness is actually his saving grace. Re-readability: I might come back to this one someday.Īll the best adventure stories have at least one rebellious character who is a bit too clever for their own good. Genre: Young Adult, historical fiction/fantasy It’s the hands- and the heart- of the one who wields it,” Kevin Sands

“It’s never the tool itself that decides.

The blackthorn key book 5