A boy with no memory. A world searching for a hero.

Casander Darkbloom has no memory, lives outside a curiosity shop, and experiences random surges of uncontrollable energy in his limbs. When he inexplicably brings a stuffed raven to life, he unravels a strange and thrilling magical world. A world waiting for Cas to save it.

Cas is the Foretold, the one prophesied to defeat the malevolent Master of All. Under the protection of Wayward School, Cas must learn to master his magical abilities. But, as he soon discovers, all may not be quite as it seems – and Cas will need to take control of his own destiny if he is to find the strength to fight the powers of evil.

Spectacular and imaginative, this thrilling fantasy novel celebrates difference and how what makes us unique is also our greatest strength.

Casander Darkbloom and the Threads of Power is the first book in a new middle-grade fantasy series from author P.A. Staff. The book begins with an incident in Paris, France in which a Dr Claudius Bane is blackmailed into giving someone The Book of Skulls and Skin.

We then move forward in time by seventeen years and are now in London, UK where we meet a young boy called Casander (Cas) who is sleeping rough outside an olde curiosity shop. Cas is a boy with no memory and a ‘funny’ leg. When strange folk in purple-and-white cloaks come to the shop looking for him, shop worker Warrior comes to his aid. Turns out that Cas is a needed and unknowing hero.

Casander Darkbloom and the Threads of Power takes its young readers on a magical adventure and drops them straight into the action where they will be emersed in the tremendous world-building of The Balanced Lands – a land that mirrors the normie (normal) world and the Wayward School for Prestigious Others.

The book has a fast pace and has a host of amazing characters. The author makes a point of showing the reader that people are all different and that their differences and disabilities are to be celebrated and embraced not hidden away.

With tension running high throughout the story and an immersive and inviting plot I raced through the book in just two sittings. I now can’t wait for the next book in the series to be released.

P.A. Staff is a science communicator and vet by day, writer by night. Born and living in Norfolk, she spent her childhood growing up with an unknown and unexplainable movement condition, known as Paroxysmal Kinesigenic Choreoathestosis. She created Casander Darkbloom to tackle the universal central themes of embracing your differences, conquering people’s perceptions of them, and quite frankly giving children who are different a possible answer to the age-old question, “Why me?”

Casander Darkbloom is the book that her 12-year-old self would have cherished for seeing a hero like herself on the pages, who had the same disorder but was ultimately neither held back nor defined by it.