Uki and the Ghostburrow

Kieran Larwood's Uki and the Ghostburrow is a dark, dramatic rabbit fantasy for 9 year olds about a young hero heading for the scariest enemy of his whole quest.

What happens

It's the sixth book of The Five Realms and it picks up Uki's story partway through, so it's one to read in order.

The whole thing is told by a travelling bard. His little apprentice Rue has been hit by a poisoned arrow, and the medicine he needs is up in the mountains with the Arukhs. They're a tribe who really don't like strangers (they collect their ears!).

So the bard makes a deal. He'll prove he knows their great hero by telling a story about him, right there by the campfire.

That hero is Uki, a rabbit with white fur on one side and black on the other. He has one spirit left to catch. Mortix, the queen of death. Who'd want to go looking for someone with a name like that?

First, Uki and his friends Jori, Kree and Coal escape a town crawling with soldiers. Then they hide out with a troupe of travelling performers.

Uki loves wearing a mask to collect the coins after each show, because nobody knows who he is. It's like a holiday from being himself.

But holidays don't last. They reach a little warren that's almost empty, and whole families are trudging away from the city of Eisenfell. Something has gone very wrong there.

Reading it is a bit like getting two stories at once. You're round the fire with the bard (who pulls his hood up in case the Arukhs fancy his ears), then off on the road with Uki. Kree's bouncy cheer ("invince-a-bubble!") is a lot of fun.

Uki also has a nagging "dark voice" that whispers every worry. If you've got a child who frets about what's coming, they'll probably recognise that feeling. Jori's answer to it is lovely.

This one has a properly dark side, though. Rue is close to death from poison as the book opens. One clan sticks its enemies on spikes, and Uki spots rabbit-sized shapes on the poles. Uki also uses a new power to drop a whole alley of soldiers in agony, and the families leaving Eisenfell say hundreds of rabbits have vanished.

A child who's easily upset by poison or cruelty might want to share it with you. If they already love the danger in this series, they'll be gripped.

What to read next

If they haven't met the bard yet, go back to the very beginning with The Legend of Podkin One-Ear. It's the first Five Realms book, and it starts with a storyteller knocking on a snowy warren's doors on the night of a midwinter feast.