Spirit Animals 6 – Rise and Fall

Eliot Schrefer's Spirit Animals Rise and Fall is a fantasy adventure for 9 year olds that opens with two friends chained together in the dark hold of an enemy ship.

What happens

This one sits later in the Spirit Animals series, and it drops you straight into the action. In the world of Erdas, a few children call up an animal partner who fights beside them. Abeke's is a leopard called Uraza. Conor has a wolf and Rollan has a falcon.

Their team has been split in two. Abeke and Meilin are prisoners of the Conquerors, and something terrible at the end of their last adventure has left Meilin blaming herself. Meanwhile Conor, Rollan and their teacher Tarik are creeping across Nilo at night. They're hunting for Cabaro, a giant lion who hates all humans, and they need to reach his golden talisman before the enemy does.

The story swaps between the two groups, so you always know what's happening to both. Rollan is the funny one. Freezing, sandy and cross, he's still cracking jokes ("there's sand in my underpants"). Conor is the kind one who's learning to stand up for himself. Abeke is the steady one, quietly working out how to use a kind guard on the ship.

One of the saddest moments is when the boys visit Abeke's home village. Her father is now chief and won't even hear her name. Conor tells him off to his face (which, for gentle Conor, is quite something).

There are some big creature moments too. An elephant smashes through the village wall. A starving lion blunders into the chief's hut. A whole river of baboons swarms over the travellers in the dark.

It's a series with real danger in it, and this book doesn't soften that. The girls are kicked overboard still chained together and nearly drown. A brave friend of the team has already been killed before the book begins. Readers who get upset by family rejection might find the scene with Abeke's father hard. If your reader likes adventure where the friendships matter as much as the fights, they'll be desperate to see the team back together.

What to read next

If your reader is new to Erdas, Wild Born goes back to where it all began, with Conor as a servant boy waiting to drink the Nectar and see whether an animal will answer.