Philip Reeve’s A Darkling Plain is a big, gripping adventure for 11 year olds set in a world where whole cities roll across the land on wheels.<\/p>\n
This one isn’t a starting point. It carries straight on from earlier adventures and leans on them. Brighton, Cloud 9 and the day London died all come up as things everybody already knows about.<\/p>\n
Six months on, Theo is home in the African mountain city of Zagwa. He’s nearly seventeen and still ashamed of what he’s been (a bomber pilot, a prisoner and a slave). Then, gliding on a kite high above the city, he spots two enemy airships heading for the peace talks where his whole family is watching. So he lands on one.<\/p>\n
Far away, Wren is sitting in a caf\u00e9 trying to write to him. It’s about her twentieth attempt and every one ends up in the bin. She’s very pleased with her new lopsided haircut, though.<\/p>\n
Her dad, Tom, has just been told by a heart doctor that he has a few years left. He gives Wren a much cheerier version. Then he spots a woman at an auction house who looks exactly like Clytie Potts, a Historian he knew as a boy in London. She should have died with the city nearly twenty years ago. She says she’s never heard of him and flies off two days early.<\/p>\n
Who wouldn’t want to follow her? Wren certainly does, and she’s a lot craftier about it than her dad.<\/p>\n
Several stories run side by side and you swap between them. Theo’s opening is fast and frightening. Wren’s chapters are funny and full of the kind of worrying about a boy that anyone who’s had a crush will recognise. Tom’s are the quiet, sad ones.<\/p>\n
Worth knowing before you hand it over. This sits right at the top of the shelf. Theo is stabbed twice in the first chapter and there’s a lot of blood. An airship explodes and its pilot is flung out through a hole torn in the gondola. There’s kissing and teenage romance talk too, and a dad quietly facing his own death. A younger or more sensitive reader might find all that a lot at once.<\/p>\n
For a reader who already loves big adventure stories and doesn’t mind them turning dark, it’s a proper page-turner.<\/p>\n
If they’d like to see where this world began, Fever Crumb is set in London long before, when a girl brought up by the city’s Engineers spends her mornings making paper boys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philip Reeve’s A Darkling Plain is a big, gripping adventure for 11 year olds set in a world where whole cities roll across the land on wheels. This one isn’t a starting point. It carries straight on from earlier adventures and leans on them. Brighton, Cloud 9 and the day London died all come up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13149,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":7410,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Fever Crumb","lr_seo_hook":"Airship attacks, a woman who should be dead and a dad keeping a secret."},"book_tag":[27],"age_group":[28],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[798],"class_list":["post-6649","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-fantasy-books","age_group-books-for-11-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-philip-reeve"],"yoast_title":"A Darkling Plain by Philip Reeve | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"Airship attacks, a woman who should be dead and a dad keeping a secret. For ages 11+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n