THE IMMORTALS

Stewart and Riddell cap their Edge Chronicles with a large-scale grand tour and cast reunion. Several generations after the events in Freeglader (2004), young orphan Nate Quarter is forced to flee for his life from a murderous mine supervisor—which becomes more or less a theme as, acquiring such doughty companions as the mine owner’s intrepid daughter Eudoxia and Librarian Knight Zelphyius Dax along the way, he comes and goes from Great Glade and several other cities or settlements that have grown up in the vast Deep Woods that border the overhanging Edge of the world. The long journey takes him through multiple battles, chases, rescues and political upheavals to mystical encounters with figures from the past in the ever-dark Night Woods and then on to a climax in the restored airborne city of Sanctaphrax. A huge cast teeming with multiple races of uneasily coexistent goblins, trolls and more, plus Dementor-ish gloamglozers and other deadly predators are all depicted in lovingly minute (and occasionally gruesome) detail in Riddell’s many pen-and-ink portraits and add plenty of color to this vigorous sendoff. (Fantasy. 11-13)