Started – 16/9/12
Finished – 26/9/12
Format – Hardback Book
Synopsis – England is at war with itself. King Charles I has fled London, his negotiations with Parliament in tatters. The country is consumed by bloodshed.
For Thomas Hill, a man of letters quietly running a bookshop in the rural town of Romsey, knowledge of the war is limited to the rumours that reach the local inn.
When a stranger knocks on his door one night and informs him that the king’s cryptographer has died, everything changes. Aware of Thomas’s background as a mathematician and his expertise in codes and ciphers, the king has summoned him to his court in Oxford.
On arrival, Thomas soon discovers that nothing at court is straightforward. There is evidence of a traitor in their midst. Brutal murder follows brutal murder. And when a vital message encrypted with a notoriously unbreakable code is intercepted, he must decipher it to reveal the king’s betrayer and prevent the violent death that failure will surely bring.
My Thoughts – This was a book that i got sent to me from the Transworld publishers as part of a reading challenge. This book is about Thomas Hill a bookseller who lives with his sister and her two children during the times of the English civil war. He travels away to Oxford and its here that he becomes a cryptographer for the king. He has to decode a series of messages and the war could depend on it.
This book not only has the code aspect too it, its also full of torture, murders and lots of other not nice things. I did think that these were quite well done and added a bit more substance to the story. I did also like the ammount of codes and the details that the author went in to explain how the codes were solved. The illustations were also a hepful aspect to help understand the codes fully.
I really loved the character of Jane and was so gutted with what happened to her in the book. I would have liked her and Thomas to have ended up together but that was not the case.
The only couple of things that i didnt like about the book was that it was quite predicable what was going to happen and the twists and turns could be seen a mile off. Thats not to say that i didnt enjoy the book, i really did but this was the only thing that put me off a little, This book is the first in a trilogy and i think that im going to keep a little eye out for the next.
I enjoyed reading this book although its set in a time period that im not too familar with it was an enjoyable experience to read.
Rating – 4/5
The Reading and Life of a Bookworm 
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