Among Ghosts

Gr 6 Up–Revisit the renowned world of Seraphina in the town of St. Muckle’s, where anyone can earn freedom from their circumstances by living inside the town’s walls for a year and a day. The safe haven is considered too poor for greedy nobles and too damp for dragons, so Charl, 13, and his mother have lived for years hiding from his father. They’ve thrived more or less peacefully until a duel leads Charl to the Old Abbey where he stumbles upon a ghost and a fatal accident in traumatic succession. When the night watchman turns up dead and a plague breaks out, everything the people of St. Muckle’s have worked for is thrown into jeopardy—and that’s before the dragon enters the scene. Charl escapes back to the Old Abbey and its ghosts, tangling him in history and destiny as he decides who he wants to be. Exquisite prose carves a place in readers’ hearts for the nuanced characters of St. Muckle’s as they navigate themes of power, misinformation, and the duty people have to one another and to the greater community. This slow-moving character exploration asks readers to define the edges of their world and what’s important in it, making for a deeply grounded plot despite its fantastical setting. Hartman’s humorous parentheticals and authentic narrative voice lighten the expository load as new readers are welcomed into the well-established world of Goredd, a place where humans and shape-shifting dragons live side-by-side.