The Witch’s Warning

Joseph Delaney's The Witch's Warning is a properly scary fantasy for 11 year olds about a boy whose job is to step through a gate into a freezing mist full of monsters.

What happens

Crafty is thirteen. He's a gate grub at Lancaster Castle, which is the lowest job there is. A black mist called the Shole has been spreading for about seventy years and has now reached the edge of the city. Most things caught in it die. A few change into monsters (the castle calls them aberrations).

Gate grubs are Fey, which means they can go into the Shole and come out again. Usually. Crafty's two brothers didn't. Neither did his friend Donna. And his dad has only just been rescued from a mission that went horribly wrong.

This one follows on from earlier adventures, and the book fills you in as it goes.

It opens with a nightmare. Crafty dreams of Old Nell, a hanged witch, clawing her way out of her grave. That same morning there's a report that she's been seen in her old village. Is it just a dream?

Meanwhile a beautiful White Lady has come out of the Shole near a village called Goosnargh. She's healing sick people and talking to the children every afternoon. The last time she did that, years ago, the children followed her into the Shole and were never seen again. With no armed couriers free, Crafty has to go.

Delaney is brilliant at slow, creeping dread. You're right there with Crafty, mouth dry, listening for shrieks in the gloom. The little details are great too. The Chief Mancer is nicknamed Ginger Bob because he shares ginger biscuits. Crafty's friend Lick keeps a lock of his hair so her gate can follow him.

Be warned, this one is genuinely frightening, even for the top of the shelf. There's blood, rotting flesh and monsters with three rows of teeth. A guillotine hangs over every gate, and it has already killed a child. The book is honest that gate grubs often don't make it. For a reader who loves horror (and sleeps fine afterwards), it's a real treat. For a nervous one, it's probably one to save.

What to read next

If they like a hard-working boy up against horrors in a dark city, try Curse of the Night Wolf. Barnaby is a tick-tock lad, a speedy messenger who knows every alley in his city, and it opens on a full-moon night he says he'll never forget.