Ghost Dance — Susan Price

'Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?'

The Northlands are dying… The trees are cut down to build ships and cities, the animals and people slaughtered.

The young witch, Shingebiss, pleads with the ancient shaman, her grandmother to save the land. But the shaman refuses because, 'All things must change. All things must die.'

After her Grandmother's death, Shingebiss travels to the Imperial City, to ‘spell the Czar,' and save the Northlands

But the Czar is mad â€" his mind ‘like a broken mirror, reflecting many things and all crookedly.'

The only advice he heeds is that of the English wizard, Master Jenkins. He has promised to make the Czar a potion which will make him immortal. But Jenkins is a fraud.

When Shingebiss arrives at court, with her true magic, the Czar takes her for an angel, sent to him by God. With her dark colouring, she becomes 'The Czar's Black Angel.'

The English wizard is jealous of Shingebiss. He tells the Czar that the most important ingredient for the Elixir of Immortality is the blood of an angel.

The Czar fears death even more than he loves his angel.

Can Shingebiss survive the fear, jealousy and hatred at the Czar's court?

This is the third book in the Ghost World Sequence, which begins with the Carnegie winning 'The Ghost Drum' and continues with 'Ghost Song.'

REVIEWS
In Ghost Dance, Price transports us to the palace of a Czar whose avarice and suspicion are destroying the beautiful Northlands... Here again, the complete seriousness and integrity of the writing makes for a quietly terrifying read. Highly recommended.
Guinevere Vaughan

This third book of the sequence is still rich and deeply powerful. It's full of the physical awfulness of human existence and human fears and the magic of storytelling which veers between the safe and the dangerous, the fascinating and the uncomfortable.
Books For Keeps


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Susan Price is an acclaimed author of over 60 books, which have been translated into many languages, including Japanese, Chinese and Russian. She has written for almost every age-group, and has won several awards, including the Carnegie and the Guardian, and has been short-listed for the Whitbread.

She is a founder member of the Authors Electric Collective (Find them on-line.)
Vist her Amazon Author Page to find out more about her books, and links to her website and blogs.