The Crown of Fire

The Copernicus Legacy #4

by Tony Abbott

This concluding book in bestselling author Tony Abbott’s critically acclaimed middle grade adventure series is a mile-a-minute thrill ride. Perfect for fans of Rick Riordan and Ridley Pearson.

“Upon my life, I will.” Across the centuries, every Guardian who has protected one of the twelve relics of the Copernicus legacy has taken this vow. But never have the consequences of the promise been more profound. The secret network of the great astronomer’s spies is the target of an assassination plot, led by the despicable Galina Krause. And now the Kaplans are more alone than ever before as they race from France to Antarctica against a deadly ticking clock.

There is not much time left for Wade, Darrell, Lily, and Becca to find the remaining relics and defeat their enemies. But are they willing to risk the life of one of their own in order to save the world?

Genres: Middle Grade, Fantasy, Adventure, Fiction, Science Fiction, Childrens, Historical Fiction

428 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2016

About the author

Tony Abbott (born 1952) is an American author of children's books. His most popular work is the book series The Secrets of Droon, which includes over 40 books. He has sold over 12 million copies of his books and they have been translated into several other languages, including Italian, Spanish, Korean, French, Japanese, Polish, Turkish, and Russian. He has also written the bestseller Firegirl.

Abbott was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1952. His father was a university professor and had an extensive library of books which became one of Abbott's first sources of literature. When he was eight years old, his family moved to Connecticut where he went through elementary school and high school.

Abbott attended the University of Connecticut, and after studying both music and psychology, decided to study English and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a bachelor's degree in English literature. He attended the workshops of Patricia Reilly Giff to further develop his writing after college.

Abbott currently lives in Trumbull, Connecticut, with his wife, two daughters, and two dogs. Tony had one brother and two sisters.

Reviews

[Skip · Rating 3 out of 5]

The race between the evil Galina Krause and her henchman and Wade, Darrell, Lily, and Becca to find the 12 relics in order to make the time machine designed by Copernicus operative finally concludes. I think Tony Abbott had to end the series since almost all of the Guardians have been killed. Again, my problem with this series is the huge leaps of faith necessary to finding a relic after getting a clue. Much of the tension in this one is that Becca is getting sicker and sicker and needs to get to the time machine before Galina, and her friends are desperate to save her.

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes you reread books from your childhood and you wish you hadn't because you discover they're bad. this is NOT one of those books. this whole series is phenomenal but the desperation lacing this one. the raised stakes. the ticking clock. wade's guilt and lily's fear and EVERYTHING with becca and the END and i genuinely fucking love this book, this series, these characters. i'm never coming back from this one. i've written the only fic on the internet for this series and if that's not proof it haunts me idk what is. GOD.

[Daon Lourdes Rensho · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did thoroughly enjoy the book.It tells a lot about stars,constellations and history in a fictional manner.After reading I was left wanting to discover more about Copernicus and find out how much of what tony abbot wrote is real.I agree that it is action-packed,thrilling and features a little humor but its a little confusing too..The characters are unique and each of them are good at one or other thing.There is a bit violence with guardians being killed from time to time.And one thing that intrigued me was the brilliance and competence of the main antagonist Galina Krause its like who'd want want their heroes fighting puny and mindless villians.Lastly I thoroughly enjoyed tagging along with Wade and the rest of the gang on this globe-trotting adventure!

[AE · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel bad giving this 1 star because it didn't really upset me, but it was so difficult to finish because I just didn't enjoy it. Maybe somewhere around 1.5? I didn't really like it but I also didn't hate it.

Disclaimer: I didn't particularly like the earlier parts of this series and probably should have quit on it. I read this book as a sort of series completionism, since it was the last, so I did go in with a bit of a bias.


There are a few things I thought worked - a few of the characters are very enjoyable (Silva, Julian, Quinita, Helmut) and some of the puzzles are interesting choices (the musical puzzle, for example).

Unfortunately, there are a lot of issues I have with the book (and the series as a whole) that made it very unenjoyable to read. For one, the whole series suffers from some problems in terms of writing style (intended for a very young audience) not matching up to the type of books these were trying to be (something akin to YA or pre-YA). The characterization wasn't the best, and it also suffers from the children's book dilemma where the setting is supposedly realistic but the protagonists are minors.

I also get the sense this book series was cancelled by the publisher. The Legacy series originally focused on 1-2 relics per book, and had a companion series, the Copernicus Archives, which each featured one specific main character. However, the Archives series ended after two books (therefore not even featuring the other two main characters) and the Legacy series ended after four books, with this one being the last where all of the remaining relics (which are a lot) are accounted for. Basically what I'm saying is this last book was particularly rushed and pacing was all over the place, and too many things happened at once.


Here are my issues with the book in a bit more detail.

Style

- The writing style is very juvenile, using short choppy sentences and basic vocabulary. It felt like the author was still writing for an early reader series like Droon, but simultaneously was including elements like people getting shot at, people dying, romance, etc. It sometimes felt like I was reading James Bond crossed with Dora the Explorer, and it just didn't work.

- There are a lot of consistency problems, some of which I'll talk about in later sections. In more general terms, there were weird moments where the kids would use cheesy childish humor that both felt unrealistic for their ages, and also inappropriate based on the supposed tension of their situations.

- There were some weird undercurrents where I think the author wanted to include some Important Issues discussions, but it didn't really work. The main examples I can think of were a) guns are bad, and b) climate change. For the gun thing, I think a lot of children's books want to include this moral that killing a killer makes you just as bad as them! Mysterious Benedict Society 2 did this as well. Unfortunately, it just gets annoying after a while when they are actively in real danger, and the characters refuse to use or even have guns because something something Batman logic. For the climate change thing - why was this here?? I'm no climate change denier, but the mentions of this felt really forced in this book, especially since there was zero setup in any previous books.



Plot

- The way the story was presented didn't feel well-planned. There are some seeds set early on but we never really get any development or changes until the end of the last book, so the twists all seem to come out of nowhere. The twist regarding the machine's origin wasn't set up at all, and didn't seem necessary except maybe to explain why they go to the last location - and also weakens the entire narrative by suddenly claiming that mythology really happened.

- As I mentioned before, I disliked the companion series format and didn't read Archives. However, I think one of the major plot elements ended up being from one of the Archives books, which made things confusing.

- Too many things are happening, and yet the story feels like it plods along. This may be because it was like 4 books mashed into 1 (assuming my theory is correct), but the majority of the book is just the kids going to a place and finding a clue/puzzle/person/macguffin, and then going to the next place and doing the same thing.

- There are also plot points that don't seem to lead anywhere, or are used in ways that feel phoned in. The entire Vatican scene didn't make much sense to me in terms of why it was needed, for example, or the plot point with the one kid's biological dad being a warlord (from a previous book) wasn't really used for anything. Becca talks about her sister quite a bit but we ultimately never actually meet or talk to the sister about anything at all.

- The way that the kids figure things out was really unconvincing. Either Becca just magically knows things/is better at languages than any adult around her, Lily...uses google (more on this later), or someone just stumbles on a thing and notices it. Otherwise, problems are solved via Terence throwing money at it, or random other adults just doing something in the background. Almost none of the puzzles make you feel like you're solving it with the kids, and most of them are discovered and solved within the same few pages.

- By the last few chapters, it feels more and more like the author suddenly ran into the same problem everyone has with time travel, and instead of trying to make it make sense at all, just has the characters talk about how time is so weird. I don't hate all time travel stories and am willing to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, but the ending just doesn't feel well-thought-out to me, and almost seems like a way to avoid having to address what happened to the 8 billion side characters.


Characters

- The 4 main characters always felt underdeveloped to me. I still keep mixing up which of the boys is which, and which boy and which girl are a couple. Even the two girls - the main difference I have is that Becca is the unrealistically smart marysue and Lily is the annoying "techie" who uses modern slang. Book 4 doesn't really improve on this, and I never really felt that attached to them or their feelings.

- The parents are seemingly just there because the author couldn't justify having the kids run around the world by themselves, but they barely do anything. They're very generic in personality, and the book definitely overuses the trope of having one parent off doing something else/in trouble pretty much constantly.

- As I mentioned, I did like some of the characters, but a lot of the really interesting ones never reappear (like Quirita) or get the screentime (pagetime?) for us to really get to know them. The author also pulls in literally every other character we have ever encountered, to the point where the story feels overstuffed with side characters that I can't remember very well and don't do anything that meaningful. Characters like Terence and Marceline are turned into tools that fix problems for the kids, and others like Mistral feel like they didn't need to be there.

- The villains are...okay but not very exciting. I actually preferred the villain chapters mainly because they were generally faster and more to the point (and something different) but none of these villains were particularly outstanding. Most of them were just evil and bad, and Ebner was creepy. Galina was probably the most interesting but her story happens so abruptly at the end that it's hard to really feel the emotional impact that was intended.

- Also, I have always hated the romance arcs with the kids. It's mentioned at the end that they're 13-ish, and I just...who falls in love at 13?? It's awkward, not well-developed, and often feels wildly inappropriate as a priority when everything else is about the world ending.


Research/Accuracy

- We go to a ton of locations in this book (and in the series in general, but it was really piled on in this one) but almost none of them really get the description they deserve. It's very hard to imagine the different cities/areas, which is surprising to me based on how much I enjoyed the crazy fantasy locations in Droon. Not sure if this is to cut down on text, but we usually get the most generic of descriptions, and pretty much no cultural references, before moving on. There's even a scene in Italy where everything supposedly smells like garbage and smoke and whatnot, with sewage puddles everywhere, and I couldn't help but wonder if the author had ever been to Rome? I'm no expert myself, but this felt completely made up.

- The books are marketed as being a global adventure, but it's 99% European/American. This isn't necessarily that bad (although I wish it hadn't been marketed this way), but the problem is the author doesn't seem that familiar with the other locations. There are a few locations in this book from the wider world but they were mostly disappointingly generic. Uruguay in particular is described as having poverty, traffic, and jungle, and being "in the middle of nowhere", and the only people the kids meet there are Europeans. There's also a brief mention of the kids riding a plane via the Liaoning aircraft carrier, where one kid thinks the plane looks more like a fighter jet than a private jet - I can't tell if the author knew, but the Liaoning aircraft carrier is a military vessel, so the planes on board ARE fighter jets. So either...the author didn't do the research, or he chose a really weird way of describing how they flew that makes Wade (I think?) sound dumb. I think the author had good intentions, but the execution wasn't great.

- Any time tech comes up, it either sounds like something out of a 90s kid's cartoon or it's basically the search engine version of how Hollywood portrays hacking. For someone who is supposedly good at google, Lily doesn't seem to know about things like reverse image search or using quotes. The "going offline" thing seems to exclude phones if you only use them for a few minutes (often for Lily to look something up on google, when they could just go to a public library). For some reason the Kronos lab uses a software to basically reverse image search, and that software shows all of the images it's checking on the screen for no real reason. There are also magically "public computers" everywhere that require no personal information to use.

- There's a reference in the Vatican chapter about the church supporting Copernican heliocentrism. I looked this up and the author seemingly based this on a real thesis by a real academic. Unfortunately...I have yet to find any papers on this that aren't by the same one lady, and what with the way the church disagreed with Galileo on heliocentrism, I am reluctant to take this thesis at face value. (Also the book got weirdly pro-religion at this point despite never having any mentions of it before, which felt jarring.)



In conclusion, I think the author's style works a lot better with the format and target audience of Droon. The writing in Copernicus Legacy has always been a bit juvenile for the more YA novel format, and I think a lot of the slow episodic repetitive stuff would have been more palatable in the early reader chapter book format. Droon had a very slow build as well before the major plot developments really started hitting, but it worked out okay because it was formatted like the book equivalent of a cartoon series. Unfortunately, Copernicus Legacy felt like it was trying to be multiple incompatible things, and it never really found its footing.

For me, this series has been disappointing, and this last book was very frustrating to read. The problems, however, were mostly just frustrating rather than offensive. I felt like I spent most of my time reading going "what", and struggling to read more than 3-4 chapters at a time before I just got really bored. The book might not be too bad as casual reading for a younger child, particularly if they don't have a lot of knowledge about the areas the book covers.

[Bernadette · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've loved Tony Abbott's books since I was a child, and having finally finished this stress-inducing series, I love him even more. He seamlessly brought together all of the loose ends of the story in such a satisfying way that I had to sit in silence after I was finished. Even though he was dealing with time travel, a subject very hard to realistically portray without hundreds of plot holes, he managed to write it in a very believable way. The romances he developed over the course of the series was subtle yet more powerful than most I've read recently; I was shipping them from book one and was happy to have a sense of union by the end. The only disappointment I think I had reading this book was in regards to Darryl's biological father, the colonel. The reveal was such a twist and shock at the end of the third book that I figured Darryl's reaction to learning that his father was involved with Galina would be a point of conflict in the story. I don't remember it ever being brought up to Darryl before Galina mentions it to him near the end, in which he simply responds that it isn't his dad anymore. I felt like I had missed something; I felt that Roald would have told Darryl, and that Darryl would have reacted rather passionately, but neither of these was explicit. Either that, or I somehow missed a chapter. Despite this, however, the book was an absolute delight. I recommend the series to anyone who loves historical-fiction, fiction, or just good children's literature.

[Susan B · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to believe that this is a book for youngsters - action packed and sad at the same time . Will Wade Darrel l and Lily be able to save Becca from the radiation poisoning in time? Will they figure out why Galina needs the time machine what is her end game. The riddles and codes are many between Copernicus and daVinci all leading to finding the relics and preventing the end destruction. Keep in mind you will want to read every book in this series - yo won't regrete it.

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit that was some ending to the 6 book series! The last book not only had sci-fi, in the form of mechanics and time travels, it had the primacy of love. Love among the 4 kids, but love among other characters. Love and hope are the two greatest forces in this series and perhaps in real life as well.

I started this series hoping that a decent series to interest kids in science was in the making. It does do that, combined with lots of history too. That is the reason for the 4 stars. We desperately need to start creating interest in science among today’s youth. They will need it more than ever before. Science will be necessary to find a vaccine to combat the Covid-19 but more importantly science will be needed to defeat Climate Change. This series might help to interest youth in the tools needed to defeat Climate Change. Perhaps just as so much that the kids did in the story was impossible till done, maybe today’s youth will find a way, impossible until they find it, to combat and reverse Climate Change.

Let me make it clear that Climate Change is never mentioned in this story. But as scholars pour over classics of literature (to be clear, this series is adequate adventure/sci-fi/fantasy, and definitely not a classic of literature!) they interpret themes in books, often that likely the authors never really put in a book consciously. I’m doing the same sort of interpretation.

This is a decent series, made special by the focus on science and history. Recommended for kids who have even a latent interest in science or history. I’m pleased to have this series off my bucket list!

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one merited more than one star because the pacing was at least better. Instead of dragging out the long hunt for one relic, everyone was scrambling quickly to gather the rest at once. I really wonder if this series was meant to be 12 books long or not. It was wise to shorten it.

The ending was predictable -- really, the only way things could be resolved. But -- even after using the time machine to go back in time and stop Copernicus from ever using the time machine, paradoxes abound. How do you explained the kids' continued existence in the past? Why would future Galina disappear, but not the kids? Why would the parents in the future, who didn't time travel, still remember all their adventures? Are all the people who were murdered alive again?
Nothing indicates they are. Unless I missed it in my skimming. But if Galina never time traveled, then they would have never been killed. And the parents shouldn't remember any of this craziness either.

Anyway, you get the idea. Inconsistencies everywhere. But the same is true of the rest of the plot and the motivations. Like I said, I read it for the puzzles and the historical -- and psuedo-historical -- elements.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Things are going downhill for the young guardians. Darrell and Lilly are on the run again after their ‘safe’ house is attacked by the Order. They’re on the own hoping to find Maurice Maurice for help.

While waiting for Roald Kaplan and Terence to arrive, Becca, Julian, Wade & Lily are attacked at the airport, but it’s a trap they barely escape from. For Roald and Terrance are still being held on the nuclear facility by the Order.

On Galina’s orders, the Order is assassinating guardians all over the world and she now has three relics to the guardians two. The search for the other seven takes them all over the world in a race against time.

This quickly ties it all up in a way that was wonderfully exciting but probably not what the author intended. It’s good thing that several old friends come back to help, but where do the get all the money to do all this? Even Galina seems to have unlimited funds.

Fave scenes: the nice man in the alley helping Darrell & Lilly, making an appointment with Henri Fortier, examining the Sistine Chapel and arriving back at the cave in Guam.

[Neurocomp · Rating 4 out of 5]

In all fairness this book probably should be 5stars, and the series 5stars...DUE to the wopping globetrotting adventure aspect. But i can't neglect the inconsistencies in the time travelling component nor time duration aspects...and to me there are plenty.

I've come to detest time travelling books but since the first book went on a world wide excursion
,i thought i'd give the series a try....and in the first 3 books time travelling was minimal even though its the mainplot point to the story.

The 1-500pages (globetrotting) was worth 5 stars....but the last 60 pages (time travelling) were a downer!!!

...and i'm not sure if the time lapses in the story were accurate...so i'd probably should have given this book 3 or 3.5....but i do like a good scenic adventure book....and thats what the majority of this book and the series is.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

My son and I finally finished this series! Intense. A fantastic read for middle graders who love high-stakes action, adventure, mystery, and some time travel. This series is challenging because the story is long and winding and there are many dates, characters (historical figures), locations, and constellations/relics to remember, but I'd highly recommend it for both boy and girl readers as there are also four protagonists (two boys, two girls) who are each powerful and intelligent and necessary in their own right. Strong themes of friendship, responsibility, and family pervade all six books.

In this novel, the narrative arc of the moral universe IS long, but it does (thankfully) bend toward justice.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel like the author started with a very ambitious plotline and has gotten tired of it (or the publisher did). This book seems to speed up the timeline (the hunt for relics was already at breakneck speed) and go between saying they only need 6 relics for the astrolabe to fly and they need to keep hunting for all 12. There were so many times when I was confused about the need for all the rushing, danger, etc. The puzzles/ciphers were less involved and they seemed to find them pretty easily for being hidden so long. Becca's mysterious ailment, Galina's mysterious disease, left me feeling confused most of the way through. There was even a part on page 344 where within 2 paragraphs, Roald is putting a blanket on a sleeping Sara and then she's inexplicably answering questions. To be fair, I think I missed at least one of the 'Half books' (my son I think read them all and we're reading this one together), so maybe that's why I feel lost. We eventually figured out we had to go back and read the interstitial books if we wanted the plot to make any sense, which I feel is a little unfair. There were a couple of other editing errors that distracted me.

[Rachel E. Meyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this book was hefty, but an amazing end to the series. It's hard to believe it's taken five years to get this far. Beautifully done, Mr. Abbott.

One of my favorite things was the time travel and how realistic he made it. The trickiness surrounding it was well done. There were several big twists I didn't see coming until a few pages away, which I think was his intent. A really lovely book, especially the kids.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

That really re-invested me in the series. I'd kind of gotten annoyed by The Archives being treated as a separate series even though it really wasn't, and then I never realized this book four had actually been released... Anyway, it ended up being very interesting finding out how everything wraps up. Twisty. Well done, Mr. Abbott.

[Asparagus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very slow paced. Way too much detail, especially about Becca being sick and everyone crying about her. After a while you kind of hoped the character would just die or something. The plot was weak and with holes. Ending was disappointing. I gave it a 2 only because my son liked it (though he was also confused over certain aspects if the plot).

[Rick Bavera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good end to the series.

All the loose ends get pretty much tied up. The bad guys have mostly been put in their place. The kids are back home, safe and sound. I don't think I ever doubted they would get there, just wondered how the author would do it.

Some of the story and subject matter felt a bit inappropriate for the age group. But all in all, a good read.

[Sean Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suddenly everything happened at once and it all just ended and there it was the end of the series, which I had anticipated being an epic twelve part series, ended up being four books, It was far from perfect, but this one just seemed to make it weak and was disappointing that there were not more entries, perhaps it didn't sell?

[Michael Greene · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last book was UTTERLY AMAZING!! There were so many surprises that Tony Abbott didn't reveal until the end that it always kept you in suspense. This series was the BEST!

[Gail Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best new book series for young adults [and adults who love to read adventure]

[Matthew_Chan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good ending

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the ending to the race to find relics, to time travel, to save Becca. One of the earlier books involved so much violence that I hesitated to pick this one up. But it is an important story to tell. The determination of the kids and their allies to do right. The way that the villains may have different motives than you realize. As always the ideas surrounding time are fascinating. Does time only move forward?
This is a long book - 548 pages. It is well told. The story is wrapped up but there is still sadness for things that were and for things that weren't.

[Angela Massengale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yowsa. Okay, heavy series. Loved book 1, loved book 2, disliked book 3, loved book 4. Did not read the novelettes, and I really should have. Probably would have filled in some gaps. Great story, great characters, GREAT VILLAINS, unlike anything I've read prior in youth fiction (not YA, fiction for children 8-12 years). If I have a critique, it's that the series is so incredibly dense, and the science fiction genre, particularly this one with the time-travel theme (combined with fast paced action that involves quite a bit of global history), is so very tricky for a lot of young readers, that I think this would have done better split into more books. Four books and two novelettes may have lost a lot of readers over the course of the series. Just sooooo much going on, and it's kind of overwhelming. The finish was worth it though, and I am a little sad that I won't be visiting the Wade, Darrell, Lily, Becca, and Galina anymore. If there were a sequel series to this, I would check it out.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this series and am glad to have finally finished it! I must admit though, when I finished The Golden Vendetta I was a bit shocked that Darrell and Lily got together - they are step-cousins after all, and I did find it a little cliched that there are two boys, two girls, and two obvious pairs. Also at one point in The Crown of Fire they all jump into a car and Roald is driving - then a few sentences later Sara is told to 'step on it'. Weird or what?
Anyway, I love this series, but I just think maybe the last book could have been two or three books instead - my Kindle told me I would take five and a half hours to read it! ;)

[Hannah Belyea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wade and his friends may be separated as Galina Krause and the Teutonic Knights draw closer to finishing their plans for time travel, but nothing is going to stop them from defeating their enemies and saving the world from a grand catastrophe - even with the threat of death looming over them. Abbott brings this exciting adventure to a spectacular close with every chapter jam-packed full of emotion, excitement and humour. Prepare yourselves for a journey like no other that will take readers around the world and through time!

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woah, this book moved fast. The pace of the plot was racing, and although there were a few puzzles to solve and a few twists I didn't expect, this last book in the series seems to have lost some of the luster of the first book. The time travel paradoxes were dizzying, but all-in-all it capped off the series respectably well.

[Salima · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this series!!!

[kendall₊ ⊹ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This final book in the Copernicus Legacy series left me on the edge of my seat the whole way. I thought there would be a different ending to this book but there wasn't and I'm glad it wasn't.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still a great read. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the others, some of their leaps of logic seemed a bit less believable than in the other books, but it was still a fun read. I had guessed that Galina was from the past, I had just guessed the person she was incorrectly. The ending with them being able to fix everything wrong in the past also seemed a tad bit too convenient, though I guess that it helps when you are time traveling. Overall, a fun read, even if the ending wasn't what I expected.

[Terri Hendricks]

Complicated ending to an intriguing series. I enjoyed the entire series.

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recommend series.