The Wizards of Once

The Wizards of Once by Cressida Cowell is a wildwood fantasy for 9 year olds, and the narrator starts by telling you off for thinking you know what a dark forest looks like.

What happens

Here's the setup. A very long time ago the whole of Britain was forest. The Wizards who lived in it had magic. Then the Warriors turned up with iron, which is the one thing magic can't work on, and started cutting the trees down to build forts and fields.

Xar is the son of the King of the Wizards. The trouble is his magic hasn't arrived yet, and his big brother Looter has buckets of it and is insufferable about it.

So Xar has a plan. Catch a Witch, take its magic. Never mind that Witches are supposed to have been wiped out centuries ago, or that he has to go into Warrior country to do it, where he'd be killed on the spot.

Off he goes, trailing five wolves, three snowcats, a bear, a giant, a talking raven and a crowd of other Wizard children who are all terrified and pretending very hard not to be.

It's the voice that carries this one. The storyteller keeps leaning in and talking to your reader, warning them, teasing them, telling them what's about to go wrong. It reads aloud beautifully.

And it's properly funny. Ninety seconds into the supposedly perfectly safe clearing, a small sprite called Squeezjoos gets swallowed by a carnivorous flower. Rescued, he pipes up that he's FINE, he just can't feel his left leg. Xar takes this as proof of his own brilliant leadership.

The raven, Caliburn, has the job of keeping Xar out of trouble, and the worry of it is making his feathers fall out. You'll feel for him.

Then Xar catches something in his trap, and it is not a Witch. It's Wish, a girl from the Warrior side, and the pair of them have been raised to hate each other.

Underneath the jokes there's a proper war going on. One people has already wiped out another. Trespassing children get their heads cut off. Nothing is dwelt on, but it's all there from the prologue onwards.

If you've got a child who wants a big forest, a big cast and a narrator who never shuts up, this will keep them going for ages.

What to read next

And it does keep going. Twice Magic opens with Xar dangling on a homemade rope outside the darkest tower of a prison he really should not be escaping from, because of something that got let out of a stone at the end of this one.