Showing results by author "Alison Croggon" in All Categories

Maerad is a slave in a desperate and unforgiving settlement, taken there as a child when her family is destroyed in war. She is unaware that she possesses a powerful gift, a gift that marks her as a member of the School of Pellinor. It is only when she is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great Bards of Lirigon, that her true heritage and extraordinary destiny unfolds.

Maerad is a girl with a tragic and bitter past, but her powers grow stronger by the day. Now she and her mentor, Cadvan, pursued by both the Light and the Dark, are seeking the Riddle of the Treesong - the key to restoring peace in the ravaged kingdom. But is Maerad herself the greatest riddle of them all? Maerad's epic quest continues as she travels from terrifying seas to vast stretches of glacial wilderness, drawn ever closer to her enemy the Winterking.

In an increasingly battle-ravaged land, Maerad, Cadvan, and Hem desperately search for one another as they make their separate journeys. The Black Army is advancing north, and even as Maerad faces a mighty confrontation with the Landrost to save Innail, all of the Seven Kingdoms are threatened with bitter and devastating defeat. Yet in Maerad and Hem lives the secret to the mysterious Singing, and legend holds that if they release the music of Elidhu together, they have the power to defeat the Nameless One.

As this enthralling epic nears its climax, the young heroine’s brother discovers his own hidden gift – and the role he must play in battling the Dark. Hem is a weary orphan whose struggle for survival ends when he is reunited with his lost sister, Maerad. But Maerad has a destiny to fulfill, and Hem issent to the golden city of Turbansk, where he learns the ways of the Bards and befriends a mysterious white crow.

From award-winning writer and critic Alison Croggon, Monsters is a hybrid of memoir and essay that takes as its point of departure the painful breakdown of a relationship between two sisters. It explores how our attitudes are shaped by the persisting myths that underpin colonialism and patriarchy, how the structures we are raised within splinter and distort the possibilities of our lives and the lives of others. Monsters asks how we maintain the fictions that we create about ourselves, what we will sacrifice to maintain these fictions.