Annette's Reviews > The Blackthorn Key

Reviewed by James, age 12, 9/4/21

If this book was food, it would be most like: Chicken & Corn (better than fast food, not as good as steak)

The Elevator Pitch
In 1600’s London, Christopher is apprenticed to an apothecary. All is going well for him, except that shortly into the book his master is murdered! His master’s will has been stolen from the apothecary guild’s archives because someone didn’t like what it said. Christopher, knowing his apprenticeship is at an end unless something turns up, sets out to follow the clues his master left for him just before he died.

The Review
In the first sentence of this book, Christopher says to his friend “Let’s build a cannon!” This might seem a little bit obscure, but as it turns out, Christopher has just cracked the code on the recipe for gunpowder that his master has. He is apprenticed to an apothecary in 1600s England. Although it appears that the cures and remedies work quite a bit better than they probably did in real life.
So, they set about to build a cannon. Needless to say, this does not end very well. Sure, they create functioning gunpowder, and sure, the cannonball leaves the cannon. The problem is they had the stupidity to fire it inside. The cannonball disintegrates one of his master’s prized hunting trophies. Needless to say, his master isn’t very happy.
A few days after this, his master is murdered. There have been actually quite a few murders of apothecaries during this time. Christopher learns that the bad guys who murdered his master are looking for something called “The Fire.” At the time he doesn’t know what this is, although he follows a coded list of clues his master left him. He knows that now that his master is dead he will be kicked out of the guild and does not have enough to pay for a new apprenticeship. Even if it did, the new master probably wouldn’t be as good. Also, his master’s will is missing. So he decides that he has nothing better to do than to follow the clues, in hopes that they will lead him to justice for his master’s murder.
He decodes and follows the first clue to someone’s grave where there is a statue of St. Peter with his sword hovering an inch above the ground, almost as if he’s pointing at something. It turns out he was. And now I can stop on that perfect cliffhanger.

Characters in this book showed these Virtues or Fruits of the Spirit

Christopher showed loyalty to his master, and his best friend showed an insane amount of loyalty to him. He also had a lot of courage to keep on going after people tried to kill him once or twice. So did his friend

Characters in this book showed these Vices or Sins

The main bad guy showed quite a lot of greed. He really wanted the power he could gain from “The Fire.” He also showed violence.

Christopher had some pride and foolishness. He might have improved during the book, but he never really had harmful amounts of it.

This book had a primarily Negative / Neutral / Positive (Virtuous or Fruity) message
Relatively or moderately positive. Pretty much everyone was Christian at the time and talked about Christianity. My guess is that the author is either a Christian or did really good research and didn’t add any snarky comments.