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Railhead

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Book Synopsis

Shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017!

Step Aboard – the Universe is Waiting. The Great Network is a place of drones and androids, Hive Monks and Station Angels. The place of the thousand gates, where sentient trains criss-cross the galaxy in a heartbeat. It is also a place of great dangers – especially for someone who rides the rails and rides his luck the way Zen Starling does. Once Zen was just a petty thief, stealing to support his family and living by his wits. Now everything has changed. Zen is still a thief – but it could be that the key to the whole universe rests on finding out what else he is . . .

Our Review Panel says...

A thrilling and fast-paced fantasy full of twists and turns!

I’m always amazed by the sheer scale of Philip Reeve’s imagination. Having created giant mobile cities in the Mortal Engines books, he turned to interstellar sci-fi for this story set in a multi-planetary universe linked by the Great Network, a web of wormholes travelled by huge, hyper-intelligent trains.

Railhead introduces an exciting sci-fi world and is a good book for Year 8 children looking to engage with fantasy stories and thrillers. The plot is wildly complicated yet super exciting, drawing in everything from god-like computer brains to swarms of sentient insects, and Reeve’s writing is, as always, very sharp and funny.

This book is available on these booklists:

Railhead: Teacher Notes

A resource pack provided by the publisher to accompany the book Railhead.

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