Wintercraft [Paperback]

Almost every week another book tries to cash in on Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Vampires, werewolves, fallen angels and the undead are all very well, but only if the stories are original, and stylish. Most are not.
Jenna Burtenshaw's debut comes as a breath of fresh air -- or should that be foul? Like Jospeh Delaney's The Spook's Apprentice, it comes from somebody who is a born writer and who has a genuinely scary premise about what might happen if some people were born able to see through the veil between the living and the dead.
Young Kate Winters is such a person, one of the Skilled, and her powers must be kept secret or she will be taken, like her parents before her, in the "harvest" from which none return. She has lived in the small town of Morvane with her bookseller uncle Artemis since she was 5, and his caution has kept her safe. Then, on the Night of Souls, their shop is attacked by blackbirds, hunting for the Skilled. When Kate heals a dead bird, proving her abilities, she and her friend Edgar must run for their lives pursued by the implacable hunter Silas Dane.
Silas, "neither fully dead nor completely alive, but unimaginably dangerous" with his supernatural powers of perception and his mixture of cruelty and pain, is key to why the novel stands out. He has been bound to a half-life by his cruel mistress, Da'ru, whom he must serve in her search for Wintercraft, the power of seeing the dead. He thirsts for revenge, but a complex relationship develops with Kate. Sooner or later the older woman and the young one will fight, for Kate's powers grow in the "grand graveyard city of Fume", whose unquiet souls make it one of those fantasy capitals you really want to avoid.
(...) Unlike the vampires and so forth, both these novels carry a genuine graveyard chill. Huge fun, and deliciously shivery. --Amanda Craig - The Times, June 12, 2010

Ten years ago Kate Winters’ parents were taken by the High Council’s wardens to help with the country’s war effort.
Now the wardens are back...and prisoners, including Kate's uncle Artemis, are taken south on the terrifying Night Train. Kate and her friend Edgar are hunted by a far more dangerous enemy. Silas Dane – the High Council’s most feared man – recognises Kate as one of the Skilled; a rare group of people able to see through the veil between the living and the dead. His spirit was damaged by the High Council’s experiments into the veil, and he’s convinced that Kate can undo the damage and allow him to find peace.
The knowledge Kate needs lies within Wintercraft – a book thought to be hidden deep beneath the graveyard city of Fume. But the Night of Souls, when the veil between life and death is at its thinnest, is just days away and the High Council have their own sinister plans for Kate and Wintercraft.

Jenna Burtenshaw is twenty eight and has been writing regularly since she was nine years old. Starting with short stories and poems, she wrote for herself and the people around her and fell in love with the process of storytelling.
She began writing Wintercraft - her first novel - in 2006 and now writes full time. In her spare time she enjoys walking her three dogs, playing the flute and getting lost in a good book.