A young man, traveling back in time with his grandfather, must find the way to Atlantis and the antimatter needed to send his family’s time ship forward in time.
Jon Sinclair is a teenage time-traveler, the son and grandson of time-travelers. Orphaned by a mysterious accident, he has been raised by his grandparents Alistair and Kathryn and his bodyguard Nikos. He has also, on a previous trip, gotten to know the swashbuckling privateer-turned-trader Captain BlackHeart, who has become rather like a second father to him. Now, menaced by mysterious aliens who want Jon’s grandfather to take them into the future, Jon, his grandfather, and Colin Black, a descendent of Captain BlackHeart, must go back to the late seventeenth century in hopes of finding a way to the lost continent of Atlantis, where the technology they need may be. But matters are complicated by Colin’s stowaway sister, possible treachery from an old “friend” of BlackHeart’s, and internal Atlantean politics—as well as by the need to avoid the fate that awaits that doomed continent. Can Jon and his family get out of the past intact with the tools they need to get to the future?
This, the sequel to the author’s earlier Blackheart’s Legacy, is an adventurous story with all the elements of an entertaining young adult fantasy: pirates, time travel, Atlantis, aliens, a mysterious family history, and even a dash of romance. The plot is lively and never stops moving, with new twists around every corner and enough danger to add suspense without keeping the characters in a constant state of panic. Jon is a sympathetic and likeable main character, with enough flaws to make him human but enough virtues to appeal to the reader’s sense of heroism. In the end, he is taking responsibility and growing up in a way that bodes well for future books.
Haley’s character feels a bit shoehorned into the plot—for a character of such resource and abilities, she doesn’t have much to do except wait around until Jon needs a love interest. There are unfortunate historical anachronisms in the book, which at times outweigh reasonable expectations of suspension of disbelief. With mythological fantasy, like Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels, so popular in recent years, much of the books’ target audience has at least some background in the cultures of the ancient world, and may not be expected to overlook blatant missteps.
For example, in seventeenth-century Alexandria, there are numerous public references to King Tut and Queen Nefertiti, including statues in the library and a pub called Tut’s Sour Grapes, but neither name was known in that time period, and could not have been until the rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799 and its translation in the early 1800s. The god Horus is described as an underworld god, when in fact he was the precise opposite—a god of sun, life, and kingship. More seriously, when transported magically back in time to the Atlantean era, dated explicitly as between “twelve hundred to eleven hundred BC,” Jon and Captain BlackHeart and the others find themselves on ships where almost everyone speaks their language, presumably English, except some of the slaves.
Though perhaps explainable by magical powers, why then are only some of the language differences automatically fixed? Cultural differences, too, are papered over, with BlackHeart being able to take control of unfamiliar invasion ships and open diplomatic relationships with Atlantis—a previously totally-unknown culture, even historically—without any difficulty whatsoever. Additionally, one sailor bears the Roman name Marius Sextus, and the ship’s officials hold Roman titles like “tribune” and “consul,” though the city of Rome was not founded for hundreds of years after the supposed fall of Atlantis.
Despite some historical anachronisms, for kids with a lively sense of adventure, KEYS TO ATLANTIS is a vigorous and entertaining story.
~IndieReader.