Description
A chance reading of a newspaper ad will send 16 year old Thomas Byrne into the world within our world.
Following the ad he will find Guardians Incorporated. A seven thousand year old organization charged with protecting the balance between Magic and technology.
Through their guidance technology has kept Magic at bay since the Renaissance, but the balance is shifting and soon all those creatures we’ve driven into myth and legend will come back with a vengeance.
To protect the present, Guardians Incorporated needs to know the future and to unlock the future they need a cypher.I really enjoyed this book, I do wish it had been longer, that’s just a personal thought, when I enjoy a book I want it to last.
Thomas is in trouble at school, the book opens with him sitting outside Killjoy, the Vice Principal’s office waiting for his grandfather, who is inside discussing Thomas with her. Thomas had been bullied by three other boys and used his Karate skills to get even. He is suspended for a week, but ends up better off than the other boys who get various punishments, also he is told it will not appear on his records. You feel there must be some connection here, Thomas hears his grandfather laughing with the Vice Principal behind closed doors.
The links with his school and Killjoy, is an area that it would have been good to have more back story, I felt part of that was never really explained, how did he end up at that school, we are told the back history of his parents off on a two month cruise and disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle, but it is almost as if Killjoy knew that Thomas was special before the advert for the job appeared in the newspaper and they met at the library.
By the end of the day Thomas and his father had both seen and read an encrypted message, not realising it is encrypted straight away, and is offered jobs with Guardians Inc.
It turns out both Thomas and his granddad are cyphers, and they are needed to track down a book that has chapters added by the Oracle every 500 years, and helps keep the peace between the magical world, humans and other beings.
A story that is YA fantasy about good v evil and about magic and amazing creatures, statutes that come to life and even a robot. I have seen suggestions of its likeness to Rick Riordan, but I think this book has its own tale to tell and does it fairly well.
What can I say about Guardians Inc. headquarters, except I want to live there, a large library that houses every lost book and book known and unknown to man, where you can walk through a door and be in another country, and where ever you are you go two and half blocks left and you are at the building.
Thomas is an assistant librarian and his granddad Morgan is employed in the financial department, Thomas meets killjoy again here when she comes to borrow some books, and you get a sense of the magic that is involved when Thomas reads the instructions from the computer screen and the books arrive and disappear instantly.
Things soon turn more interesting with Thomas’s house being burnt and demolished, his granddad disappearing, and finding out the girl he has a strong crush on is thousands of years old and elven.
Thomas being a cypher can read any code and any language, it soon becomes clear in the hunt for the book and new chapters that Thomas cannot share that information with anyone, the things he cyphers that are connected to the book stay inside his head, he knows what it means the clues, but he cannot share at this point. No one is sure how many clues there will be before the book is found, and towards the end of this book we find out that he is competing with his granddad who is working for the other side, and he seems to always be one step behind him.
Thomas has a good support of characters, and it will be interesting to see how they all develop over the course of the next book in the trilogy.