Synopses & Reviews
The first novel in an astonishingly imaginative fantasy trilogy about how magic was lost to the world, and how a fifteen-year-old English boy discovers that its return is his inheritance.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 that containes 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.
Advent begins in a world recognizably our own and ends an extraordinarily long way from where it started—somewhere much bigger, stranger, and richer.
Review
“A stunning debut.” —Deborah Harkness, New York Times bestselling author of A Discover of Witches
Review
“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.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
“Ripe with literary language and classical references, Treadwell’s novel shape-shifts between bewitchingly perplexing and supernaturally entertaining.” —Kirkus
Review
“Its classic story of good versus evil as well as its haunting characters ad rich, inspired imagery will remain with readers long after they turn the final page.” —Library Journal
Synopsis
Magic abounds in this “bewitchingly perplexing and supernaturally entertaining” (
Kirkus Reviews) debut, and “readers of Susan Cooper and Alan Garner will rejoice to find…[a] trilogy worthy of sharing their shelf” (
Publishers Weekly, starred review). Don’t miss the whole series—
Anarchy and the forthcoming
Arcadia!
When Gavin Stokes visits an estranged family member at Pendurra, a distant estate in Cornwall, the last thing he expects is to enter a world where the consequences of an ancient betrayal are being played out. If he accepts the challenge that this new world presents, he must confront an ancient evil and the crimes of the past that have taken the form of ghosts, like Miss Grey, who has haunted him from earliest childhood, and Marina, a little girl who also lives at Pendurra, and Swanny, Marina’s mother, a mermaid. What Gavin soon discovers is that magic is real…and menacingly dangerous.
About the Author
James Treadwell is the author of Advent and Anarchy. He was born, brought up, and educated within a mile of the Thames and has spent much of his life further reducing the distance between him and the river. He studied and taught for more than a decade near the crossing at Folly Bridge, Oxford, and now lives within sight of the Tideway in West London. He holds passports from the UK, US, and Canada.