Be it the introductory paragraph that reminds one of the story of Persephone and Hades (the one with the pomegranate) or the poems (including ‘ The Battle of the Trees’) that appear before every chapter once in a while, ‘ Darkhenge’ contains quite the mystical side to it. The novel is full of legends, myths and stories that encircle the real one. As time went by and my vocabulary and patience to read something grew, I gave it a second chance and was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d struck gold! I was drawn into a magical world of rivalry, irritation and boatloads of imagination. For the beginning and the chapters that followed were almost as obscure as French to me, given that I was having extreme difficulty studying the language in high school. Ages 12-up.“Darkhenge is the finest young adult novel I have read for quite a while: thrilling and subtle, intensely lyrical and psychologically profound.”įor quite a many weeks after buying ‘ Darkhenge‘ by Catherine Fisher, it offered me no respite in its slow reading. Fisher's story is just dark enough to stand out from the fantasy pack, and positive and exciting enough that it may well send readers scrambling for other texts on Celtic legends.

Darkhenge.' Rob's skills as an artist land him a job working on the group's archaeological dig, which in time uncovers a mysterious tree that is growing upside-down, into the earth, planted 4,000 years ago as 'an axis, a pole linking this place and the Unworld.' Vetch turns out to be much more powerful than Rob first imagined a journey to the Unworld below leads to a confrontation with the King that holds Chloe's psyche captive and not, it seems, entirely against her will.

Vetch speaks in ominous tones: 'The word is the reason I've come. Rob gets caught up in the rite, and ends up pulling a man named Vetch from a dark ditch in the ground. Her older brother, Rob, the principal protagonist, is goofing off with a friend in a field when he stumbles upon a pagan ritual in progress.

The story opens in Avebury near Stonehenge, where young Chloe has been in a coma for three months, the victim of a horseback riding accident.

Fisher (The Oracle Betrayed) infuses her haunting tale with the Celtic legend of Taliesin and Ceridwin.

Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher