Advent
A Novel
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3.7 • 15 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
A drowning, a magician’s curse, and a centuries-old secret.
1537. A man hurries through city streets in a gathering snowstorm, clutching a box in one hand. He is Johann Faust, the greatest magician of his age. The box he carries contains a mirror safeguarding a portion of his soul and a small ring containing all the magic in the world. Together, they comprise something unimaginably dangerous.
London, the present day. Fifteen-year-old Gavin Stokes is boarding a train to the countryside to live with his aunt. His school and his parents can’t cope with him and the things he sees, things they tell him don’t really exist. At Pendurra, Gavin finds people who are like him, who see things too. They all make the same strange claim: magic exists, it’s leaking back into our world, and it’s bringing something terrible with it.
First in an astonishingly imaginative fantasy trilogy, Advent describes how magic was lost to humanity, and how a fifteen-year-old boy discovers that its return is his inheritance. It begins in a world recognizably our own, and ends an extraordinarily long way from where it started—somewhere much bigger, stranger, and richer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Debut novelist Treadwell ties together the fear and wonder of magic and adolescence in this revealing tale of age-old ambition clashing with newfound identity. Gavin, a troubled 15-year-old suspended from school after admitting he sees ghosts, takes holiday with his aunt Gwen, housekeeper for an ancient Cornish estate, Pendurra. Infused with the enchantment of forgotten places, Pendurra attracts other people who bear witness, involuntarily and at a cost, to otherworldly presences. When powerful artifacts crafted by Johannes Faust, the last magus, appear at Pendurra, the stage is set for Gavin and friends to uncover the secrets of their own heritage while attempting to deal with the return of magic and to thwart the resurrected Faust. Treadwell makes marvels from the simplest materials a blooming rose, a rowan walking stick, a traditional carol and brings his landscape to frightening and fascinating life. Readers of Susan Cooper and Alan Garner will rejoice to find the first of a new trilogy worthy of sharing their shelf.
