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Kieran Larwood's The Beasts of Grimheart is a big rabbit fantasy for 9 year olds where a storyteller has to talk his way out of a death sentence.
It starts with a funeral. A travelling bard and his little apprentice Rue watch from a hilltop as the High Bard's pyre is lit. Then three hooded figures with swords close in on them along the path.
They're bonedancers, a whole order of assassins. Someone has paid them to kill the bard for telling the wrong story at a chieftain's wedding. So they make him an offer. Tell that story again, to a hall full of them, and they'll decide whether he lives (no pressure, then).
The story he tells is the main adventure. Podkin, still only eight summers old, is hiding out in Grimheart forest with his sister Paz, baby brother Pook and a ragged band of survivors. The Gorm are back, and this time they've brought huge iron machines that tear up the trees and crunch them into splinters. The only hope is a long march to Uncle Hennic's warren at Sparrowfast, where there may be a magic bow they badly need.
Rue is brilliant company. He fires off questions in long breathless strings and gets far too excited about meeting real assassins. Podkin, meanwhile, is stuck in council meetings that go round in circles while his mum fusses over him. Who hasn't sat through a meeting like that? (Paz, of course, is annoyingly good at them.)
This is the third Five Realms book and it carries straight on from the first two. If your reader hasn't met Podkin yet, start with The Legend of Podkin One-Ear, because a lot is taken as read here.
This one has a properly dark edge. The bonedancers' temple is full of skulls and pictures of killing, and one of their legends ends in a single very gory line. Worse, the Gorm's machines are driven by captured rabbits, and Podkin sees a rabbit arm reaching out of one of them.
A child who's upset by cruelty might want to share those chapters with you. If they already love the danger in a good quest, they'll be gripped (and rooting VERY hard for the bard).
If it's swords, oaths and rabbits fighting for their homes they're after, try The Green Ember. Heather and Picket's quiet meadow life goes up in flames when wolves in uniform arrive, and there's a true story told by the fire in that one too.
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