‘The Boy Who Flew,’ by Fleur Hitchcock, cover by Ben Mantle.

A flying machine, a murder and terrible danger…. Listen to me chat to author, Fleur Hitchcock about all this and more on the latest blog tour episode of my Library Girl And Book Boy podcast (available on all good listening platforms!)

Athan Wilde has a dream – he dreams of soaring through the air in the flying machine that he’s helping his mysterious friend, Mr Chen, to build. But other people  have the same dream and they will stop at nothing to get their hands on the plans and prototype. Even murder.

Following the death of his mentor, Athan has a very difficult choice to make: stay, fight and protect his family, or run away before the murderers teach him down too. But maybe it’s already too late…

This story is set on the gritty, grimy streets  and rickety snow-covered rooftops of the big city where life is cheap and danger lurks around every corner.

There are some seriously mean baddies, with the wicked Colonel Blade reminding me more than a little of the infamous Dickens villain, Bill Sykes.  He is truly chilling with seemingly no conscience.

Hitchcock has cleverly woven a central plot line about the race to get humans airborne with a spine-chilling thriller which wouldn’t be out of place in a penny dreadful. Her story also explores historical attitudes to disability and mental illness which may surprise some readers.

A visceral and thrilling adventure which I would recommend for readers aged 9+ due to a couple of quite grisly murder scenes.

Make sure you take some time to go back and visit all the previous stops on Fleur’s blog tour!

Library Girl.

*Many thanks to Nosy Crow for sending me this title to review*