I really enjoyed this story. It was a real page-turner for me. I finished it much sooner than I had initially expected to.
Part of the reason is that I like stories of jolly old England - in most cases, the older, the better. In this case, the time is 1377 near or just after the time the Plague struck the English countryside.
Crispin, or Asta's son, as he's known for the first several chapters, is the main character, but it's his friend, Bear, who's pretty much the hero. It's Bear, a very large man, who kills the bad guy in the end. (Sorry, no spoiler alerts here.)
Crispin is a 13-year-old boy who knows virtually nothing but subsistence living. It sometimes feels like he's only 7 or 8 as the story progresses. It's not that he's stupid. He just has zero experience with almost anything.
Fortunately for himself and Bear, he does learn quickly.
One other feature of this book that I especially liked - and one that would make it good for children - is that Avi uses archaic words from time to time and often explains them. At least, in the beginning he explains them. When he uses new old terms later on, he doesn't, but it makes you want to look them up to see what they mean, if you can't figure them out from the context - which sometimes you simply can't.
