The Tapestry 5 – The Red Winter

Henry H. Neff's The Red Winter is a huge, dark Tapestry fantasy for 10 year olds where a demon king sends two very creepy assassins after Max McDaniels.

What happens

It's the fifth book in The Tapestry and it starts somewhere very cold. A sorcerer climbs the tallest mountain in the world, where witches guard temples full of ancient bones. He walks out with two stolen jars and wipes the old witch's memory on his way past.

Then we're in the palace of Prusias, the demon King of Blys. He's ordering new sea monsters to sink Rowan's fleet before it lands. And he's paying a pair of twin assassins with a weapon that can kill something immortal.

Prusias is horribly good company. He's vain, bored and very funny about clothes (he refuses to turn up to his own party looking like "someone's great-aunt"). Then he mentions the tailor he had executed. That mix of jokes and real menace is the flavour of these chapters.

Meanwhile Max is walking through what used to be England. He has important business elsewhere, but first he's taken a detour so Bob the ogre can find Mum. She's the old hag who used to cook with him in Rowan's kitchens.

This bit is a LOT of fun. Bob talks about himself as "Bob". Toby, a shape-changer stuck being a pack mule, moans the whole way and bags first bath. The hags' inn even has a roadside sign saying humans are welcome, cash only. Would you check in?

When Max asks Mum to sniff Scathach, his spear-carrying companion, so she's safely marked as not for eating, Mum decides she'd make a lovely terrine.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This one reads well above its shelf. Max is in his late teens and the vocabulary is rich.

It's very dark in places too. In the demon king's hall prisoners are being tortured in the background, and a traitor's cut mouth has been stitched. Prusias shrugs off the thought of his slaves starving. Baby hags get eaten by their own mother (played for grim laughs). There's some drinking and the odd "bloody" as well.

For a younger or more sensitive reader that's a lot. For a confident fantasy fan who loves a villain with style, it's a proper feast. It leans hard on what came before though, so it's really one for readers who've followed Max from The Hound of Rowan onwards.

What to read next

If they're after another hero with monsters on his trail, try The Lightning Thief. Percy Jackson is twelve and he warns you in the very first line that being a half-blood is dangerous.