49 pages • 1 hour read
Rick RiordanThe Maze of Bones
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
The siblings enter the Catacombs with Nellie and find a tunnel network lined with stacked human bones and skulls. Amy looks for older skulls from Franklin’s time in Paris. Nellie leads them down a dark corridor using her keychain flashlight. Dan finds a strange array of skulls with numbers on them. Amy realizes it is a “magic box,” a kind of number game Benjamin Franklin invented that resembles sudoku, but this magic box is missing three numbers. Amy realizes that the missing numbers must be coordinates leading to the location of the next clue.
Suddenly Ian and Natalie ambush them. Amy threatens to destroy the skulls before the Kabras can copy down the numbers. Alistair Oh appears and tackles Natalie before she can shoot Amy with her dart gun.
Dan, Amy, and Nellie flee through the tunnels. They end up in a train tunnel with a train barreling toward them. Dan’s backpack gets stuck in the tracks, and he is unable to pull it loose. Amy pulls him out in the nick of time as the train sweeps away his backpack with the photo of his parents inside. Dan cries and Amy comforts him. After Dan pulls himself together, they return to the library to investigate the clues. Amy looks at Franklin’s papers and realizes iron solute has shown up on several shopping lists. Nellie remembers that iron solute can be used in metalworking and printing. Dan considers this unimportant. Amy finds a surveyor’s map made by scientists who implemented Franklin’s lightning rods. Amy uses the grid to find the location: St.-Pierre de Montmartre church. Amy suspects that there is another entrance to the Catacombs there.
Chapter 17 Summary
Dan feels devastated about losing the picture of his parents and worries that he has disappointed them. It begins to rain, with thunder and lightning. The siblings head to Saint-Pierre de Montmartre. Dan discovers a grave with no name or date—just a Lucian crest. They borrow tools from the church’s toolshed and begin digging up the grave, revealing stairs down into the Catacombs. They go down and arrive in a small, square chamber with two tunnel exits. The walls are painted with faded murals. In the center, they find a pedestal bearing a small vase decorated with images of Franklin.
Amy examines the mural and realizes it depicts four Cahill siblings. L. Cahill holds a dagger in his sleeve. K. Cahill holds a bronze mechanism like a clock or navigation tool. T. Cahill holds a sword and looks strong. J. Cahill wears a gold dress and holds a harp. Amy and Dan deduce that these four siblings must be the founders of the four branches of the family: Lucian, Ekaterina, Tomas, and Janus. In the background of the mural, a house burns, just like Grace’s house and Dan and Amy’s parents’ house. Dan discovers sheet music inscribed on the base of the vase. The vase contains a vial wrapped In paper. Amy unwraps it, keeps the paper, and shows Dan a word scramble printed on the vial. Dan unscrambles the letter and discovers instructions about charging the contents of the vial. Jonah Wizard arrives to steal the clue.
Chapter 18 Summary
As Jonah approaches, Amy channels the memory of Grace and finds her voice. She threatens to destroy the vial and authoritatively tells Jonah to back off. Jonah does, and Dan, Amy, and Nellie escape back up the stairs to the churchyard. The Holts arrive in an ice cream truck, forcing the siblings to flee toward the church. Inside, they find Alistair, now sporting two black eyes, and Irina: The two have made an alliance. Alistair demands Amy and Dan hand over the vial, and Irina brandishes her poison needle nails. A crate of ice cream hurtles at them, smashing into Alistair and Irina. Amy commands Nellie to call the police.
Amy and Dan flee into the church and find a staircase up to the bell tower. Amy has realized that charging the vial requires attaching it to one of Franklin’s lightning rods, which they could find on the roof. Amy hands Dan the paper she salvaged from the vial and then climbs up the ladder to the lightning rod, where she hangs the vial on a metal loop. Lightning strikes the vial and Amy nearly falls. Instead, she grabs the vial, which has started to glow green, and climbs back into the bell tower.
Ian Kabra swoops in on a kite and ties Dan up, claiming to have given him a deadly poison. When Amy arrives, Ian claims he will give Dan the antidote if Amy hands over the vial. Amy hands it over to save her brother, and the Kabras depart. Dan reveals that Ian was bluffing. Nellie arrives with the police, causing the fighting family members to disperse. Dan feels upset about losing the clue, but Amy reveals that real clue is in the paper, not the vial.
Chapter 19 Summary
Dan is pleased to have saved the clue. He and Amy eat pain au chocolat with Nellie and debate what happens next. Amy shares her research, revealing that the sheet music on the paper comes from an adagio for the armonica, an instrument Ben Franklin invented. Dan recognizes the song, and Amy remembers that their father used to play it. Amy pores over the original clue and finally pieces together how this works: The big clues lead to an actual object. Dan realizes that the word “Resolution” from the original clue is an anagram for “Iron Solute,” which they saw referenced in Franklin’s papers. The rest of the clue, when decoded, explains how to interpret the clue.
McIntyre appears at their table and offers condolences about their loss of the clue to the Kabras. Amy does not reveal everything she knows about the music and the iron solute. He offers to help them pawn the jade necklace for money, but Amy refuses. He returns Saladin to the siblings, which causes Dan to feel better about losing his parents’ photo. After McIntyre leaves, Nellie agrees to continue on the trip; she’ll be working for free, but they will reimburse her after they find the treasure. Amy points out initials on the sheet music and realizes that the composer must have been Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Amy realizes that they’re next stop is Vienna, Mozart’s home.
Chapter 20 Summary
McIntyre meets with the man in the dark suit on the Eiffel tower observation deck. McIntyre admits that the siblings no longer trust him. McIntyre reveals that the siblings are headed to Vienna and says he will take more drastic steps to watch and control them.
Chapters 16-20 Analysis
The final chapters of The Maze of Bones bring the story to a climax, complete Amy and Dan’s character arcs, and reveal the mystery of the first clue while setting up the narrative questions that will launch the sequel.
When the Kabras ambush the siblings in the Catacombs, Amy reaches a turning point in her character arc. After struggling to speak up and freezing up during moments of conflict, Amy finally finds her strength and lashes out, threatening to smash the skulls if the Kabras continue to threaten her family. She grows even more confident during the face-off with Jonah Wizard, threatening again to destroy the clue and successfully getting him to back off with her authoritative tone. Amy’s growing disgust with the violent nature of her relatives’ greed and her desire to protect Dan and Nellie give her the courage to speak up when it matters. This newfound confidence inspires her to make a risky and ultimately rewarding move during the climactic battle, climbing on the roof in a rainstorm to charge the vial.
Dan also makes an emotional breakthrough in his journey of Reckoning with Past Trauma. When the train destroys the picture of his parents, Dan finally cries hard. All the feelings he had been repressing throughout the journey to protect himself and his team come spilling out for the first time in the novel. Dan had been metaphorically hanging on to the idea of his parents by keeping the picture, impossibly imagining that they would somehow know he has undertaken the quest and be proud of him. In this moment, Dan must metaphorically let go of that dream, accept that his parents are really gone, and let himself feel real grief about it.
Amy understands how devastated Dan feels and comforts him, underscoring that despite the high stakes of the clue quest, nothing can jeopardize the intimacy and warmth between the siblings. Likewise, when the Kabras tie up Dan and claim to have poisoned him, Amy demonstrates her willingness to give up everything for her true family by handing over the vial. Amy and Dan’s relationship and its resistance to The Damaging Power of Greed continue to strongly juxtapose the inner workings of every other family in the clue quest, from the competitive Kabras to the conformity-focused Holts.
This section features the climax of the story, intensifying the drama, pace, and danger. After following disparate threads of the story and a large ensemble of teams pursing a single goal, the novel brings all the remaining teams together for a climactic battle. In earlier moments of conflict, Amy and Dan face off against a single relative or team of relatives, allowing the reader to compare their different approaches to family and the different ways greed has corrupted the siblings’ competitors. In the final battle, the antagonists all display their flaws in one chaotic battle—Alistair makes new, dubious alliances, Irina brandishes her poison nails, the Holts barge in with ineffectual brute strength, and the Kabras swoop in using their tremendous resources. Amy and Dan must fight off attacks on multiple fronts while racing through the church.
The plot concludes with a partial victory for the siblings. Amy and Dan find the next clue but lose the charged vial of iron solute to the Kabra siblings. The mystery element is resolved, as both the characters and reader now know the meaning of the clue and can answer the central question propelling the plot. However, the purpose and ramifications of the charged vial remain unknown, as do the consequences of surrendering it to the Kabras. On a character level, Amy and Dan both win a victory by achieving their emotional needs. This partial-plot-victory, full-emotional-victory structure allows the reader to experience enough resolution to feel satisfied while introducing new questions to set up the next book.
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By Rick Riordan
