Doombringer

Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's Doombringer is a rich, strange fantasy adventure for 11 year olds about a boy guarding a lake full of secrets.

What happens

Cade Quarter is hiding out on the shores of Farrow Lake. He's built a cabin, stocked a storeroom and learned to fish from a coracle. His friends out here are a fisher goblin called Thorne, a prowlgrin called Rumblix and Tug.

Tug is one of the "nameless ones" from the Nightwoods, huge and fanged and frightening to look at. He's also the kindest creature in the book. He's slowly learning to talk ("Tug like") and he's developed a real taste for fish heads!

It opens with a fishing trip that goes horribly wrong. A snagtooth rises out of the lake, tips Cade into the water and carries his boat off in its jaws. He's dragged to safety by Phineal, a webfoot goblin whose crest changes colour with his moods.

Phineal has a story to tell. Gangs of mire-pearlers once came to his home lakes on the skytaverns and blasted the clam beds to pieces for their pearls. Then he takes Cade on a dive to the bottom of Farrow Lake (breathing through a mask fed by fizzing mushrooms, of course). Down there is something magnificent, and very, very valuable.

This world is SO detailed. There are purple-burning logs, lakefish and oakapples. Every creature and plant has a name, and the storeroom list alone is a feast. Some readers will love getting lost in it. Others might find the names a lot to keep track of at first.

It isn't the start of Cade's story. The book fills you in as it goes, and some of that catching up is dark. Cade fled his home city after his father was murdered. On board a skytavern he crossed paths with a gangmaster who kept a bowl of severed fingers, and saw him kill two people. It's told briefly rather than lingered over. But if your reader is easily upset by violence, that's something to know about. It sits right at the top of this shelf.

If they're up for it, this is a proper adventure. There's a secret to keep, a friend Cade isn't allowed to tell and a skytavern that passes overhead every four months carrying the people he's hiding from.

What to read next

If the Deepwoods have got a grip on them, Beyond the Deepwoods takes them into the same world with a different boy. Twig has been raised by woodtrolls and has never fitted in.