When four children (Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy) are relocated from their home and sent to a large country estate during wartime in Britain, they find a large wardrobe in an empty room that, upon entering, takes them into the magical land of Narnia. It is a beautiful, snowy land inhabited by talking animals and mythical…
Category: Young Adult
Galaxy 9
by Darryl Brent Galaxy9 is Darryl Brent’s first published novel. The book is about three engineering students who come across a spaceship and then explore space. That’s it. His command of the English language is good, and he can write a well-paced story with well described settings and locations, but he lacks the skill at…
Kumari: Goddess of Gotham
by Amanda Lees. Amanda Lees parents met in the Borneo jungle where her Glaswegian-born mother had set up a hospital and her father was an Oxford-educated Gurkha officer. Goddess of Gotham was written as a tribute to her late mother, and to reflect Lee’s own exotic upbringing, exploring her love of the world and it’s different cultures. The first in…
After the Plague by Jean Ure
The second entry to her Plague Trilogy, After the Plague (originally title Come Lucky April) follows a young boy, Daniel, as he explores the wastelands in search of the diary of his great grandmother. This is his first time outside the safety of his village. April, a young girl who finds an injured Daniel in…
POD by Stephen Wallenfels
When the Cataclysm arrives, Megs, a 12-year-old streetwise girl, is trapped in a hotel parking garage in Los Angeles; and 16-year-old Josh is stuck in a house in Prosser, Washington, with his increasingly obsessive-compulsive father. Food and water and time are running out. Will Megs survive long enough to find her mother? Will Josh and…
Deepwater Landing by Ken Catran
The biggest flaw with this book is that it tastes and smells and feels like a nineties young adults book. The biggest flaw with the nineties was the decadent sense of style – this book reads like that pair of neon-striped shorts that I used to always wear to school with the tie-dye shirt my…
Starbright and the Dream Eater by Joy Cowley
The town of Claircomb is afflicted an illness which makes people suffer terrible nightmares before becoming unconscious. Starbright, an adventurous young girl, discovers it is not an illness, but a malignant psychic alien entity that feeds on people’s dreams. She also discovers that she has been named in a prophecy to be the one whom can…
An Interview with Beth Webb.
After reading Foxdown Wood by Beth Webb I decided to contact her and talk to her about her book. She is a fascinating woman who is an artist, writes books for both adults and young adults and works with an organisation called Books Beyond Words, helping teens and adults with learning difficulties. On your website you mention…
Foxdown Wood by Beth Webb
Beth Webb is an accomplished author of children’s and young adult’s stories. Foxdown Wood (1997) is one of her earlier books, aimed at a younger audience. It has narrative similarities to works such as the Narnia chronicles or The Bridge to Teribithia, but rather then being derivative is actually a refreshingly original take on the ‘other…
The Alchemaster’s Apprentice by Walter Moers
Walter Moers is a German writer and artist. In 1999 the first of the Zamonia series was published in Germany, The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, and was translated into English in 2000 for the UK and 2005 for America. It was an international bestseller (though it has retained some obscurity in the US.) The Alchemaster’s…
Adrian McCauley 