Read Freeglader free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart's Freeglader is an epic fantasy for 11 year olds about a whole city's worth of survivors on the run across a deadly swamp.
Undertown has been wiped out by a monstrous storm. Everyone who got out, from goblin families to librarians hauling carts of precious scrolls, now has to cross the Mire to start again in the Free Glades.
Rook Barkwater is a young librarian knight. His skycraft was wrecked, so he's stuck marching on foot, and his job is to help keep the Great Library safe. With him are his friend Xanth, who once spied for the enemy and can't escape the looks he gets, and a group of enormous, yodelling banderbears.
Leading the way are the sky pirates of the Armada of the Dead. Their ships can't fly any more and sit rotting in the white mud. Their captain, Deadbolt Vulpoon, is loud and gruff, and he owes Rook his life.
This is the last of the Rook Barkwater books, and it jumps straight in. There's a lot of shared history between these characters. A reader meeting them for the first time will catch up, but they'll get more out of it if they know the world already.
The Mire march is brilliant and grim. Everyone is roped together in groups of twelve, with mud-shoes on their feet and scarves over their eyes against the glare. There are sinking-sands and exploding blow-holes. And there are the Twilight Woods, glowing so invitingly on the horizon that people cut their ropes and run towards them, even though nobody ever comes back.
It's tense and quite violent in places. Muglumps, huge six-legged mud creatures, tear the pack animals apart and the mud runs red. An old banderbear Rook loves wanders off into the Twilight Woods and there's nothing anyone can do. For a sensitive reader that's a lot. For one who loves a big, dark adventure with real stakes, it's gripping.
What really stays with you is the sheer size of it. Nine hundred skycraft rising at once. A whole city sleeping under upturned carts while the storm rages overhead. It's a world with its own creatures, weather and rules, and it feels solid (sticky mire mud and all).
Want to go further back in the same world? The Curse of the Gloamglozer is set in the days when sky pirate ships still flew, and a sky pirate's son is left behind in the floating city of Sanctaphrax.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
