The Radiant Road
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A gorgeously woven tale of magic, friendship, and self-discovery set in a dream-like landscape filled with fairies.
After years of living in America, Clare Macleod and her father are returning to Ireland, where they’ll inhabit the house Clare was born in—a house built into a green hillside with a tree for a wall. For Clare, the house is not only full of memories of her mother, but also of a mysterious boy with raven-dark hair and dreamlike nights filled with stars and magic. Clare soon discovers that the boy is as real as the fairy-making magic, and that they’re both in great danger from an ancient foe.
Fast-paced adventure and spellbinding prose combine to weave a tale of love and loyalty in this young adult fantasy.
★ "A stunningly atmospheric, gorgeously complicated dream of a book." —Publishers Weekly, starred review
★ "An unforgettable tale . . . that contains all the darkness and light of A Midsummer Night's Dream." —School Library Journal, starred review
"Gorgeous, haunting, and wonderfully strange, The Radiant Road establishes Katherine Catmull as a master of the modern fairy tale." —Anne Ursu, author of The Real Boy and Breadcrumbs
"Katherine Catmull deftly weaves Clare's contemporary story with ancient Celtic lore. The Radiant Road is a beguiling novel with a strong, engaging protagonist." —Juliet Marillier, author of Daughter of the Forest and Wildwood Dancing
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Clare Macleod learns that she is the guardian of a gate between worlds in this numinous fantasy from Catmull (Summer and Bird). When Clare was small, before her mother died, her family lived in an ancient stone house in modern Ireland with a living yew tree in it. After years of aimless grief, Clare and her father return to the house, and Clare finds that the tree has a door. On the other side of the door is a boy named Finn, who isn't exactly human, and both Finn and the doors are threatened by a vicious enemy. Catmull's take on fairies uses conventional elements in original ways, building a stunningly atmospheric, gorgeously complicated dream of a book. Genuinely frightening and eerie moments are drawn as masterfully as the joyous, glowing, peculiar images that populate Catmull's version of a world inexorably linked to, yet separate from, our own. The gentle romance between Clare and Finn is understatedly believable, the quiet emotional core of a story that deserves the word epic. Ages 12 up.
