The Map to Everywhere 2 – City of Thirst

City of Thirst, by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis, is a magic-river adventure for 9 year olds about a girl who gets a message she was never supposed to be able to receive.

What happens

Marrill is back home in Arizona, being shown treasure by three small boys from down the road. Usually it's half a tyre and a shiny rock. Today it's a cloud-catching net.

Which is a problem. Cloud-catching nets belong on the Pirate Stream, the river of pure magic that runs between every world there is, and the wizard who sent her home was very clear about this. If the Stream ever comes close enough for her to stumble across it, something has gone badly wrong.

Then a voice in the dark under the road tells her the Iron Tide is coming and she has to stop it.

All of which would be easier if her mum weren't in a hospital bed in Boston, on a video call, explaining that tomorrow's surgery is going to be bigger than anyone expected.

That's the bit that gives this book its ache. Marrill has spent six months being good. Extra chores, no complaining, no asking to come along, because everybody is trying to keep her mum's stress down. Now something enormous is asking for her and she can't tell a single person why she has to go.

Meanwhile Fin is worlds away and nobody remembers him. Not the guards chasing him, not the shopkeeper he just robbed, not his friends. He's still hunting for his mother and every place the ship stops is another dead end.

In between the sad bits this is enormous fun. New worlds arrive at roughly one a chapter, complete with mushroom towers, slime-mould jails and a bedside table that gets up and hides in the corner. The invented words do a lot of the work and your reader will be using them by chapter four.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Marrill's mum is seriously ill for the whole of this, and the call before the operation is written to land. If you've got a child with a poorly parent at the moment, read that chapter yourself first and decide.

It's also a follow-up. It picks up about six months after the last one finished and it does assume you know who everybody is.

What to read next

So if your reader wants to meet Marrill and Fin properly, start them on the first Map to Everywhere book. Fin is picking the lock on a display case in a shop belonging to a monster called Sharktooth on page one, which is a fair introduction.