Endymion Spring

Endymion Spring by Matthew Skelton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A semi-historical fantasy novel for children that jumps between past and present.

The eponymous Endymion Spring is an apprentice to pioneer printer Johann Gutenberg, living in 15th-century Mainz, in Germany. Johann Fust, or Faust, is a financier who backs Gutenberg's startup business, and Endymion steals some special paper from Fust to make a book, the existence of which comes to the attention of Blake Winters, a 12-year-old American boy living in Oxford, England, where is mother is doing research into the legend of Faust.

Blake, helped and sometimes hindered by his younger sister Duck, searches for a lost book that has the secret of another lost book, and discovers that several academics are also searching for it, as it is rumoured that it contains the secret of limitless power.

The plot and the setting have echoes of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and people who enjoyed those will probably enjoy this one too. It has flaws, certainly, but I enjoyed it all the same.

View all my reviews