Product Description

"You've stumbled on to something much larger than you can possibly imagine."

In the dead of night, a cloaked figure drags a heavy box through snow-covered streets. The chest, covered in images of mythical beasts, can only be opened when the fangs of its serpent's-head clasp taste blood.

Centuries later, in an Oxford library, a boy touches a strange book and feels something pierce his finger. The volume is blank, wordless, but its paper has fine veins running through it and seems to quiver, as if it's alive. Words begin to appear on the page--words no one but the boy can see.

And so unfolds a timeless secret . . . .


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16545 in eBooks
• Published on: 2006-08-22
• Released on: 2006-08-22
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7–In 1452, a young printers devil toils for his master, Herr Gutenberg, who is in the process of printing a Bible. On a suitably dark and cold night, sinister Johann Fust arrives at Gutenbergs shop with a mysterious wooden chest decorated with dragons and serpents heads. In a parallel story set at Saint James College in Oxford in the present day, Blake, a professors son, discovers a wordless book with the title Endymion Spring, which was the printers devils name. The present-day narrative and the story of Endymion Spring cleverly intertwine as Blake discovers that the book is the key to all of the worlds knowledge. As Endymion lies hidden in Gutenbergs shop one night, Fust opens the wooden chest and, because of what Endymion learns, he is forced to flee. In an incredibly effective action scene, he eludes capture. Back in the present, Blake and his sister, Duck, find themselves pursued by a mysterious Person in Shadow and discover, as it leads them into the depths of the Bodleian Library, that Endymion Springs book has a mind of its own. Even if the promise of the clearly intriguing premise is not quite fulfilled, this book is certain to reach an audience looking for a page-turner, and it just might motivate readers to explore the true facts behind the fiction.–Tim Wadham, Maricopa County Library District, Phoenix, AZ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Gr. 6-9. This debut novel, when offered to publishers at the manuscript stage, spurred an impressive bidding war. Why the fuss? For one thing, it's partly set at Oxford University, the same backdrop Philip Pullman used in The Golden Compass (1996). For another, its focus on a coveted artifact evokes Dan Brown's adult blockbuster The Da Vinci Code (2003). Blake, an American adolescent visiting modern-day Oxford, stumbles upon Endymion Spring-- one portion of "the most legendary, sought-after book in the world." As Blake attempts to complete the fragment while evading cutthroat members of an antiquarian book society, flashbacks reveal the book's fifteenth-century connections to the original printing press, recounted by an apprentice of Gutenberg himself. Though the pulse-racing descent into Oxford's subterranean library stacks is thrilling, not every reader will respond to the novel's scholarly atmosphere, and subplots intended to flesh out Blake's character (mainly his angst over his parents' separation) seem stiff and forced. Once the buzz surrounding this heavily promoted fantasy subsides, look for it primarily in the hands of bibliophiles who enjoyed Cornelia Funke's Inkheart (2003) and Inkspell (2005). Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“[Endymion Spring] may give Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code a run for its money. . . .
It is unputdownable.”–The Irish Independent


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

Good start...
This book reads like the halves of two promising books: The 15th century story is more gripping but unfinished and sketchy; Blake's story in present day Oxford is closer to a complete story, however, loosely weaved with perhaps too many characters who are shadows of themselves.

Should the book be divided into volumes I and II with more of both the two stories, it would make better reading.

Some of the descriptive passages (esp. those about the quality of the magical paper) are not so clear on first reading, which seems to indicate an older audience, while the story line is believable for a much younger one.

Fun read.
Endymion Spring is first and foremost a book about a book. It follows two concurrent stories, one about the creation of a book hundreds of years ago, and the other a modern day mystery surrounding the location of the book. From a graphic designer's viewpoint, the book is visually well constructed, as each chapter deals with one or the other time period, and the pages of each chapter reflect a different look and feel; the change is subtle and you don't even realize that it is happening until about half way through the book, which I felt was a very clever technique.

The 2 stories themselves aren't much, but when you start to realize how one story is affecting the other, and they begin to weave together, you are left with a well constructed story that has a nice, tidy ending. This book follows a popular trend today, where actual historical facts are looked at from the new point of view of the author, and some adjustments are made to create an entirely new story. In this case, some unexplained mysteries concerning Gutenberg, and some legends concerning Fust/Faust are intermingled into the story to help create the mystery of the book. Sometimes, other authors do not handle these plot points very well, seeming more to force the connections to make the story move along, but Skelton uses them deftly in his plot, not forcing them on the reader, but keeping them more as the mystery/legend that they are to help the mystique of his story. Overall, a well crafted, neatly written book and an exceptional debut novel for Matthew Skelton.

It Could Have Been Great!
I spotted this book on a shelf in a shop. The cover intrigued me, so I picked it up and read the first few pages. I was hooked! This is a fantasy book about. . . books! My favorite subject!

The story runs on two levels. First comes the historical fantasy, well researched and brilliantly written, in which Johann Gutenberg's young shop assistant tells his tale. I ate it up. Dr. Fust (Faust), Gutenberg's business partner, arrives in town with something mysterious locked in a scary looking chest: magic paper that can reveal all knowledge to a chosen innocent. The shop assistant is the chosen one, and soon realizes that he must find a way to keep Fust from exploiting infinite knowledge for his selfish ends.

Fast forward to the twenty first century. A young boy named Blake has to hang around Oxford University while his mother does some scholarly research. He quickly becomes involved in a desperate race to find the pieces of the Book of All Knowledge before the bad guys beat him to it.

As much as I adored the historical fantasy portions of the book, the modern day part just wasn't so well done. First of all, I had very mixed feelings about the fact that Blake's parents were separated. On the one hand, I'm tired of that theme. Could we please have some fiction where the parents are not divorced or separated? Almost half of all real children still live in traditional nuclear families with married parents, but it seems that only about ten percent of fictional children do. On the other hand, Skelton handled it well. The emotions and reactions of the characters in relation to the separation were all honest and believable. On the other, other hand, it was completely irrelevant to the plot and it added about a hundred pages to a book that was nearly a hundred pages too long.

Secondly, in the modern day part, Skelton goes a little overboard with the poetic devices. Sometimes he hits it spot on, as in the following:
"A small rectangular lawn, brilliant green by day, but black by night, lay in front of them: a pool of darkness moated by a silver path."
That was beautiful! I could see it perfectly!

But other times:
"Dressed in a black leather jacket that made a crunchy sound when he moved, he sauntered up to the main counter and deposited an iridescent green helmet, like a decapitated head, on its surface."

Like a decapitated head? Did Skelton really intend to put that much horror and revulsion in that image? And what about the helmet was like a decapitated head? The shape? Maybe. The size? NO! The color? NO! The way the man set it down? Certainly not, unless he's used to handling decapitated heads!

Thirdly, Blake's story needed a little more work. For one, it contained too many characters. I had a hard time keeping them all straight. Also, Skelton began to resort to cheap tricks towards the climax. I mean, if you know the bad guys are hot on your tail, do you ever leave your little sister unattended for even one second? NO!

The reason I have written such a long and passionate review about this book is that I feel it could have been so much better! The ideas were GREAT! I loved the parts of the book that took place in 1452. If only Skelton could have refined Blake's story into a more compelling yarn. Ah well, it is only his first book. Maybe next time.