Spirit Animals 3 – Blood Ties

Garth Nix and Sean Williams's Blood Ties is a Spirit Animals adventure for 9 year olds that splits the team in two, with one of them lost in a giant bamboo maze.

What happens

Meilin has gone off alone to find her father. It seemed like such a good plan. Take the secret way into Zhong through the Great Bamboo Maze, fifty-foot stalks on every side. Always turn left the first ten times...

Three days later she's out of water, out of rice cakes and hopelessly lost. The bamboo has started to flower, which means the whole maze is about to die. And her panda Jhi just keeps patting the ground for her to sit down!

Meanwhile the others are at sea, and nobody is happy. Before this book begins, Conor handed a precious talisman to the enemy to save his family. Rollan won't let it go. Conor can't forgive himself either, so he hides at the front of the ship getting soaked by the spray.

Then a little seabird turns up with new orders. Find the Great Elephant. That means sneaking into a city the enemy holds, and their disguise is... a troupe of shadow puppeteers. (Conor's first idea for the show was all about different breeds of sheep.)

What follows is great fun. They wade ashore at dawn through warm fog and fish traps. Rollan sees through his falcon's eyes for the very first time, right in the middle of the mission, and is so amazed he catches a fly in his open mouth. Then there's an inn packed with enemy soldiers who are VERY keen on a puppet show that doesn't exist.

It's a real page turner. The chapters swap between the friends, so you feel Meilin's panic in the maze, then Conor's shame on the boat, and you're always desperate to get back to whoever you just left. (Brilliant for bedtime cliffhangers. Possibly less brilliant for actual bedtime.)

It's also a book about falling out. Rollan and Conor keep nearly smiling at each other and then remembering they're cross.

There's plenty of peril. Meilin, weak and alone, starts to believe she'll die in the maze, and rats creep in at night. That's the part to watch if your reader is a worrier.

This sits later in the series, so it makes most sense to a child who has met the four friends already.

What to read next

If they enjoy these two authors' way with a quest, try Have Sword, Will Travel. It's lighter and funnier, starting with a miller's son and his best friend hunting eels in a shrinking river and finding a sword that talks.