Moril is a young boy who plays a stringed instrument called the cwidder in a family of travelling musicians, but when he is caught in a web of politics and murder he must discover the secret of his family’s ancient cwidder passed down the generations and his own magic.
This is a fairly slow book to get going and the action happens mostly in the last quarter but it’s also enjoyable, sketching a world in more detail than you would expect from this slim children’s volume. The characters, including Moril, his sister Brid and Kialan, the young man the family picks up to take north with them, are all interesting characters and the whole story has more depth than I’d really expect in what appears, at first glance, to be a simple children’s book. An enjoyable read but it doesn’t immediately make me jump up and down to find the sequels.
