A Whisper of Horses

Zillah Bethell's A Whisper of Horses is a story for 11 year olds about a girl in a ruined future London who has never seen a real horse and can't stop dreaming about them.

What happens

It opens with a death. Serendipity's mama dies of a terrible cough in a candlelit hospital, and her last word sounds like "outside". Serendipity has no idea what she meant. She walks for hours, lost, until she finds a bronze statue of a prince on a horse and stops crying for the first time that day.

This is Lahn Dan. The Tems is a river of dangerous mud, the sky is violet and the Gases killed off the horses long ago. People are sorted like metals. Workers like Serendipity are Pbs (lead), who live on dinner pills and dig the "lotments". The Aus (gold) live up in crystal towers where the fake grass gets washed twice a week to keep it green.

Half the fun is spotting what's left of our London. West Minister Bridge. The squashed skeleton of Big Ben. Stubbs's huge painting of the horse Whistlejacket, still hanging in the Gallery Market behind a rag stall. Readers who know London will love working out where Hide Park and Falgar's Square are.

And Serendipity's voice is such a treat. She talks about "tiredy backs", "knittering needles" and things being "amazering". The words are ever so slightly wrong in a way that makes you smile, even in the sad bits.

A storyteller called Professor Nimbus takes her on as his apprentice. Then she finds a jewelled telebracelet in the street and takes it back to its owner, a gold-class woman called Caritas, who feeds her strawberries and honey and dresses her in silk. Why is Caritas so interested in her? And why did Mama keep a grubby necklace hidden under her mattress?

The grief is written very honestly. Mama's death is on the first page and missing her runs all the way through. For a child who's lost someone recently, that could be hard going. For a reader who loves a strange world to lose themselves in, there's real warmth here too, from the Professor and from her friends Gry and Bracken.

What to read next

If they want more of Zillah Bethell's future worlds, The Extraordinary Colours of Auden Dare is told by an eleven-year-old boy who has never seen colour, in a Britain where it hardly ever rains.