A rich and magical tale that is utterly compelling. The main protagonist - Fin - is cleverly drawn with huge appeal to teens. He draws you into the story of two parallel universes - two very different Londons in which from one, a person vital to the existence of both worlds has been kidnapped. Unless Fin can find the Storyholder, the keeper of the Five Eternal Stories which weave the two worlds together their worlds will cease to exist. His journey is a long and very dark one that's full of foreboding but brilliantly told. This is a book that will remain etched in your memory long after you've finished it while waiting for the second in the sequence.
'Sixteen's an interesting age: not quite a fully grown man, but not a
kid anymore neither. Anything is possible when you're sixteen.' Finmere
Tingewick Smith was abandoned on the steps of the Old Bailey. Under the
guardianship of the austere Judge Harlequin Brown and the elderly
gentlemen of Orrery House, Fin has grown up under a very strange set of
rules. He spends alternate years at two very different schools and now
he's tired of the constant lies to even his best friends, to hide the
insanity of his double life. Neither would believe the truth! But on
his sixteenth birthday, everything changes. The Judge is killed,
stabbed in the chest with a double-edged sword that's disturbingly
familiar, and from that moment on, Fin is catapulted into an
extraordinary adventure. Through the Doorway in Fin's London, a hole in
the boundaries of Existence, lies another London -- and now both are in
grave danger. For the Knights of Nowhere have kidnapped the
Storyholder, the keeper of the Five Eternal Stories which weave the
worlds together. Because of the Knights' actions, a black storm is
coming, bringing madness with it. Fin may be just 16, but he has a
long, dark journey ahead of him if he is to rescue the Storyholder and
save Existence!
Sarah Silverwood lives and writes in Buckinghamshire, England. She has
had a lot of jobs - some of which were mind-numbingly dull and some of
which definitely weren't - but has decided that writing books is by far
the best of them. She has a cat instead of a husband and children,
because apparently the latter get slightly irritable if you take off for
a few days' adventure without warning, as she has a habit of doing. A
cat is likely to sleep through it. Most of the time she can be found
somewhere in her own imagination. She likes it in there. Good stuff
happens.
