Zenith [Paperback]

'I was transfixed by the poetic vision of Julie Bertagna's Zenith.
A breathtaking sequel.'

'so vivid is Bertagna's writing, so urgent her narrative... Exodus
and Zenith are like two chapters in some magnificent epic.'

'awesome: a collection of characters we learn to love, a vivid sense of
time and place, a page-turning adventure.

'For all those who enjoyed Philip Pullman's Dark Materials
trilogy...terrific storytelling power, an ambitious and intellectually
stimulating novel.'

A novel of extraordinary imaginative vision and emotional power – ZENITH is the eagerly anticipated sequel to the critically acclaimed, bestselling EXODUS.

The world is gradually drowning, as mighty Arctic ice floes melt, the seas rise, and land disappears forever beneath storm-tossed waves . . . Sixteen-year-old Mara and her ship of refugees are tracking the North Star, desperate to find a homeland in the melted ice mountains of Greenland. The vast, floating city of Pomperoy is just one of the shocks that are not in their navigation plans. Unwittingly, the refugees bring catastrophe in their wake for Tuck, a gypsea pirate-boy, and also for Ilira – a land whose inhabitants exist in a state of terror at the top of the world. Back in the drowned ruins at the feet of the towering sky city, Fox is beginning his battle with the cruel, corrupt forces that rule the New World. But separated from Mara, his resolve begins to waver . . .

Zenith is a novel of extraordinary imaginative vision and
emotional power.
(From publisher's website)

The stories that spark my imagination are about individuals
on the edge, on the cusp of change. I always begin with a stong sense of
landscape, or place. Exodus and Zenith are stories of an imagined future
but they are rooted in the here and now. In 1999, before global warming hit
the headlines, I read a heartbreaking snippet in a newspaper about drowning
islands in the South Pacific. To this day, the world has ignored that cry
for help from islanders at the mercy of rising seas, but their plight
haunted my imagination and inspired me to write the story of a lost people
searching for a new life in a devastated world.

The old world drowned as the waters rose...
Zenith is the incredible story of three teenagers with the will to make
their own new beginnings in the harshest of worlds. It continues the
stunning journey begun in Exodus.

In a drowned world, the search for a future is a terrifying
fight for survival...

After an early career as a teacher and freelance feature writer for major Scottish newspapers, Julie Bertagna has quickly established a reputation as an author of powerful and original fiction for young people. EXODUS, the launch title for Young Picador and her first novel for Macmillan, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year Award and won the Lancashire Children's Book of the Year Award and the Angus Award. THE OPPOSITE OF CHOCOLATE was shortlisted for the Book Trust Teenage Prize 2004. Julie lives in Glasgow with her husband and daughter.

Out on the world's ocean, night is a black war-horse. The white
ship bucks upon it like a ghost rider with no reins. A lone figure at the
bow keeps watch, her eyes as dark as the night. She has lost the star. All
through the night she tracked it, even when it vanished behind cloud.

The North Star is her only anchor. A flickering point of hope in a drowned
world....if she can track the North Star it might just lead her shipful of
refugees, a floating village of desperate people, to land at the top of the
world.

The world's wind rises, boiling up a black brew of sea and sky. The
refugees huddle closer as the wind wraps the ship in warrior arms and rides
it across galloping waves. Mara clings to the ship's rail as her lodestar
vanishes in the wild ocean night.