The next step of her revenge is to enact a terrible sacrifice, unleashing an ancient, slumbering force that will annihilate the entire Wood. Now she is working on getting her power back, starting by conquering the Wildwood with her canine minions. Meanwhile, the coyotes bring Curtis to their mistress, the deposed Dowager Governess, who was kicked out of the South Wood after she went mad and started working black magic. While the secret police starts rounding up Avians and anyone else who worries them, Prue escapes on the back of an eagle, searching for someone to help her rescue her brother. The arrival of an outsider, together with the news she brings about crow kidnappers, threatens the stability of the regime. What Prue finds in the civilized South Wood is a police-state ruled by an increasingly paranoid Governor-Regent. Prue falls into her own adventure, hitching a ride with the postmaster as he makes his rounds through a country where humans, birds, and animals live together as equals.

Almost immediately they are separated, when Curtis is captured by a pack of coyotes who walk on their hind legs, wear military uniforms, and speak English. A nerdy neighbor named Curtis tags along. Catching Mac up in their talons, they carry him away across the river, past the Industrial Waste, and into the Impassible Wilderness where Prue’s parents have always warned her never to go. One fine day, Prue McKeel is pedaling around town with her baby brother Mac in tow, when the sky is darkened by a murder of crows. Johns, Portland, Oregon, who find a strange, magical, perilous world hidden within a short bicycle ride of their city. But it’s also a thrilling fantasy adventure featuring a couple of kids from St.

If you’re familiar with his music, you may not be surprised to learn that hints of a political message and of a New Agey, earth-magic type of spirituality perfume the pages of his book. Only later, after I had brought the book home, did I connect it with the alternative rock band the Decemberists, of which Colin Meloy is the lead singer and songwriter. As for the author, I thought his name sounded familiar. This, including loads of quirky but beautiful illustrations, is the work of Carson Ellis, who has also decorated books by Lemony Snicket and Trenton Lee Stewart. When I saw this book at the public library, I thought it had a striking design.

Wildwood novel