The Curse of the Gloamglozer

Paul Stewart's The Curse of the Gloamglozer is a dark sky-pirate adventure for 11 year olds about a boy left behind in a floating city full of secrets.

What happens

Quint is fourteen and the son of a sky pirate captain, Wind Jackal. The two of them have sailed everywhere together ever since a terrible night that Quint can hardly bear to talk about.

Then Wind Jackal answers an urgent call from an old friend. Linius Pallitax is the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax, a city built on a floating rock and held down by one enormous chain. He has a favour to ask. He wants Quint as his apprentice.

So Quint stays behind in the Palace of Shadows, a vast gloomy place hemmed in by taller towers. There's Tweezel, an ancient glassy spindlebug who hears every whisper in the building (and lies about the time so everyone turns up punctually). There's Welma, a no-nonsense woodtroll nanny. And there's Maris, the professor's daughter, who is bossy and lonely and not at all pleased to see him.

Their squabbling is great fun. Quint wins over her nanny and her pet lemkin in about five minutes flat, and Maris is furious about it. He thinks she's stuck-up. They do agree on one thing, which is that pickled tripweed is disgusting.

Before long Linius is sending Quint on secret errands, like climbing a tree of knowledge in an abandoned library to fetch one particular scroll. The professor is jumpy, exhausted and plainly hiding something. What exactly is his Great Work? It's a world that rewards a patient reader, with invented detail everywhere, from hammelhorn curds to hyleberry jam.

There's a lot of sadness in the opening chapters, so be aware of that. Maris's mother died when she was born. Quint's mother, brothers and nanny died in a house fire started on purpose by his father's quartermaster. When Maris asks him to light a lamp, it all comes flooding back and he grabs a burning log with his bare hand rather than let the fire win. This is backstory, told early, but it's vivid.

For a reader who's ready for that, there's so much here. It's gloomy, strange and full of whispered plotting in shadowy corridors.

What to read next

If they'd like more of this world, go to Beyond the Deepwoods, where a boy called Twig grows up among woodtrolls knowing he doesn't quite belong. He can't stand pickled tripweed either!