Mitchell’s Letter Essay #3: The Bronze Key

I recently finished reading The Bronze Key, a 256 page book written by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare. Holly lives in Massachusetts with her husband Theo, and son Sebastian, in a house with a secret library. Holly Black is the main author of the book and has wrote 33 books. She also has a movie on The Spiderwick Chronicles. I read this book because it is the sequel to The Copper Gauntlet and The Iron Trial. I decided to read it because it seemed like the first two in the series were really good books and I wanted to read more of them. The book is in a series for five, but only three of them have been released.

In the book, The Bronze Key, Callum Hunt, and his friends Aaron and Tamara go to a magic college to celebrate Call defeating the Enemy of Death (when really Call is the Enemy of Death). While at the party, one of Call’s classmates from a higher level gets killed by a spy who tries to kill Call as well. Call and his friends go back to school at the Magisterium. They try to keep a look out for the spy who waits in the shadows to kill Call. So Call and his friends decide to trick the spy by yelling at the whole lunch room that he will sit in the library at midnight so that the spy can come out to face him alone. When midnight comes, Call waits with his friends just outside the library. When a familiar face appears in the library, something quite funny happens. I wouldn’t spoil it for you, but I will tell you that she is not the spy. So, when Call gets a call from Alma, a old lady who helped Call and his friends escape from the masters in the previous book, says to him that she will help again by speaking with the girl who was killed by the spy using chaos magic (Call and Aaron are the only students with chaos magic) to find the spy, they agree. During the ritual, Alma sees into Call’s grey eyes and thinks Call is the Enemy of Death. So, Call and Aaron (Call’s other friend, Tamara, is taking Call’s dog on a walk at that point) run into their rooms to find that Call’s other friend, Alex, says to them that he saw Tamara being kidnapped by the spy and that they should look for her in the forest next to the Magisterium. I won’t spoil the rest.

I couldn’t understand why Alma didn’t recognize Call as being the Enemy of Death in the previous book. Alma had hidden Call and his friends so that she can go talk with the masters about where Call was. She had successfully done her job in distracting the masters. I didn’t get how she didn’t see that Call is the Enemy of Death.

I was surprised when Call did not die to the spy. Call was in a room with a chandelier, when the chandelier fell on him. Or, almost did. Aaron used his chaos magic to free Call so he could get away from the chandelier. That part put me on edge. The book reminded me of all mystery books. The fact that there is an unknown killer in the shadows that Call has to find, it is pretty much a replica of most mysteries out there.

For my favorite quoted passage, Alma is teaching Call and Aaron something’s about chaos magic as she has been studying chaos magic for a long time now. “The human soul is the opposite of chaos, of nothingness. The soul is everything” (page 276). I like this quoted passage because it seems like the meaning of the words stretch far beyond the world of the Magisterium. It is a teaching that the soul makes up everything in the human body but no one knows what it is exactly. Same with chaos.

Out of all the books i’ve read, this book deserves to be on my shelf of top 10 books I have ever read. I would give this book a 9 out of 10.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Worthington

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

4 thoughts on “Mitchell’s Letter Essay #3: The Bronze Key

  1. I think your letter essay was really good and the bronze key seems like a good book. I think you should work more on not giving too much of the story away

  2. Dear Mitchell,
    I really liked your essay. I liked how you gave background about the author. It was very interesting to note. Also, I liked how you didn’t spoil the ending, which makes me now want to read the story. One thing you might want to add is more of a background of the secondary characters. That will really help the reader better understand the story.
    Max

  3. Dear Mitchell,
    Your essay was great! Something that I liked was how you gave the information about the author, the fact were very interesting. Although one thing that might help is some more background.

    From,
    John

  4. Hey Mitchell I like the way you wrote about your letter essay. I really liked the way how you talked about the author throughout your letter essay, as not a lot of people did that. I more focused on what the author had wrote, but I really enjoyed the approach you took on the way you really described the author. The Bronze Key seems like a very interesting book, and I am looking forward to reading it.

    Sincerely,
    Matt

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *