A Riddle in Ruby: The Changer's Key

by Kent Davis

Overview

The Riddle in Ruby trilogy takes readers on a rip-roaring adventure through an alternate version of colonial America, where magic and science meet, and where one young thief carries a secret everyone wants. In this second volume, Ruby Teach has become the enemy’s prisoner. She bargained with her freedom to protect her friends—but her friends aren’t about to abandon her, either. That’s not what friends do.

Ruby’s blood holds a secret, one that could turn the tides of the looming war for whomever unlocks it first. Ruby’s father, former pirate Captain Teach, and her friends—a motley crew made up of a young aristocrat, a servant, and an apprentice alchemist—must race against time to locate the hidden fortress where she’s being held. But the one person who could help them is Ruby’s mysterious and powerful mother, and no one has seen her since Ruby’s birth.

Kent Davis sweeps our heroes through cities and the deepest wilderness with imagination, humor, and magic that fans of Jonathan Stroud and Terry Pratchett will devour.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062368393
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Series:	Riddle in Ruby , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	453
Lexile:	660L (what's this?)
File size:	714 KB
Age Range:	1 - 12 Years

About the Author

Kent Davis is the author of A Riddle in Ruby. He is also an actor, a game designer, and a teacher. He lives in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife and a wily dog ninja named Bobo. www.kentishdavis.com

Editorial Reviews

A Riddle In Ruby has everything you could possibly want from a story: clever heroes, fiendish villains, startling plot twists, pirates, thieves, swashbuckling, adventure, action, mayhem - and plenty of humor. This is an exceptionally enjoyable, incredibly original series.”-

Stuart Gibbs

Davis stays true to form in this incendiary sequel. Adventure is on every page, from ship fires to spy training...Readers who loved the first book will dig into this one, and new converts will reach for both, eager for the coming third.

Booklist

★ 2016-06-22
It's what inside that counts—particularly when it's a ciphered secret hidden in your blood.In this sequel to A Riddle in Ruby (2015), Ruby Teach has been taken prisoner by her nemesis, Wisdom Rool. Prison, as it turns out, is a fortressed training camp for reeves, the crown's warriors and spies and the thorns in Ruby's side. When a creepy doctor there pledges to interpret the secret in Ruby's blood, Stockholm syndrome surfaces, and she decides siding with Rool has a certain appeal. As her father and friends battle wilderness and bounty hunters to rescue her, Ruby struggles to comprehend what secrets stream through her veins, what the moral repercussions for serving Rool may be, and what the actual threat to Colonial America is. Where Book 1 stumbled in finding its meter, here there is no faltering, just momentum. Wilderness, fortresses, predatory cats, and a yeti for good measure transmute a game of find-the-Ruby into a combustive delight. Fans of Snicket-ian gloom will revel in the thrill that the oft-grim landscapes proffer. Dastardly, heroic, and powerful roles are played by both sexes, but this tale is well-populated by members of the not-so-weaker sex who are ready to throw a punch. In this alternative Colonial America the demographic tends toward white. However, good vs. evil vs. undecided serves the conflict more than race or socio-economic cataloging. Piracy, pyrotechnics, prison—prodigious.(Fantasy. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews