Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn - Saif Shakir

 Summary

This story starts off with Tintin walking around at a marketplace in Britain, but he immediately stops when he sees an old model ship which catches his eye. Tintin approaches the shopkeeper and purchases the item, but when he is about to leave, he is approached by two men who want to buy the ship off of Tintin. They offer him absurdly high prices, but Tintin declines, and goes back to his apartment so he can do research on it. When Tintin reaches his apartment, he places the ship on his counter,  but Snowy accidentally knocks it down and a scroll is released from the mast of the model ship. Tintin reads the poem on the scroll, and soon learns that this ship was made by Sir Francis Haddock, a wealthy pirate from the 17th Century. Sooner than later, when Tintin is learning about the history of this ship, he bumps into the last descendants of Sir Francis Haddock, and eventually Archibald, the descendant, tells him the story of how Sir Francis lost his treasure in the sea. Also, he tells him that there are two other models of the ship, and when you align all three of these scrolls, you will be able to see the coordinates to his sunken ship in which there were tons of precious metals. However, the catch to it is that only a descendant of Sir Francis Haddock will be able to find the treasure, so throughout the story people are trying to kidnap Archibald.

Sooner than later, Tintin finds out that another man by the name of Sakharine is trying to steal the treasure from Archibald, and is also planning to kill off Archibald. The reason why Sakharine is trying to steal the treasure is because Sakharine’s ancestors were enemies to Sir Francis, so Sakharine’s main goal was to get revenge for his ancestors. Throughout the rest of the story, Tintin is being sabotaged by Sakharine, and they are both racing to find the hidden treasure. At the end, Tintin gets all three scrolls, and lines them up to find the coordinates of the hidden treasure, and the story ends there. 

Review

Overall, I feel like this book does a great job at keeping the plot at a pace that is constantly full of action, and extremely engaging. Each time I continue reading through this series, I start to pick up on the author's plot making style which makes each comic more enjoyable than the previous one. I feel like the best part in this story was the ending because it came to some sort of a conclusion, but it left me on a cliffhanger which I always like. One thing that I noticed about this comic is that the art style did not change much from the previous book. Another thing that I liked about this book was the lingo that the captain’s descendant would use as it really did give me a mental image of what a sailor would sound like, and it was also slightly hysterical. It’s not that I didn’t like that there was no change, but I feel like it would be interesting to see Tintin start aging as the series goes on rather than having him stay the same age throughout the whole series. Even though this piece was originally written in the early 1900’s, I felt like there was not much of a difference through the writing or even plot. The only subtle difference that I found was some of the lingo and phrases used, but they really didn’t show up that often.

Rating

In conclusion, I would rate this book a 8.89 out of 10 due to its intricate plot, intriguing lingo, and I would definitely recommend people  to pick this comic particularly in the series.