Raiders' Ransom by Emily Diamand (Chicken House/Scholastic, $17.99, 9780545142977/0545142970, 352 pp., ages 8-12, December 2009)
In this debut novel, winner of the inaugural London Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition, Emily Diamand creates two credible and sympathetic protagonists who tangle in a pageturning adventure. Lilly Melkun, 13, lives with her Granny in a small seaside village where nearly everyone makes his or her living from the sea. Granny does not want Lilly to sail on a large fishing ship because Gramps and Lilly's parents all were lost at sea. Even so, the town's gray seacat "chose" Lilly as its master, and the animal is a valuable asset in a fish-mongering town. Early on in the story, Lilly and Cat go out to do some fishing in her small sailboat, and when they return, the town and its ships have been destroyed by raiders--and they've killed Granny. Moreover, they've kidnapped the Prime Minister's young daughter, Alexandra (aka "Lexy"), who'd been living in the town with the Prime Minister's sister. Lilly, intent on getting Alexandra back and freeing her fellow villagers, who were conscripted by the Prime Minister in payment for Alexandra's kidnapping, disguises herself as a boy and sets out in her little boat with the town's one valuable to try and set things right. That valuable, however, turns out to be of far greater worth than Lilly ever imagined. It is a remnant from the computer age before the "Collapse," during which all computers were destroyed and global warming wreaked havoc on civilization.
Lilly's journey places her in the path of the heir to the strongest of the raider families, and leads them to places and situations neither ever imagined. To Diamand's credit, Zephaniah of the Angel Isling Family is as independent-minded and compelling as Lilly. The author, rather than focusing on moral lessons on how civilization reached this point, instead deals with young people who are left with a legacy of the ravages of the generations before them. Will Lilly, Zeph and Lexy carry the same grudges that brought society to this point? Or will they work together to try and create a better world? Diamand plants enough subplots to fuel future books, but brings this first episode to a satisfying close. (In one of the novel's clever twists, the author places an antique relics-dealer at 10 Downing Street.) Filled with irony and buoyed by the hopes of its young protagonists, this swashbuckling tale will please a wide range of readers and lure them back for more.--Jennifer M. Brown