Boy Who Stole Time

"Yer know that there's a thing, a real thing that is time? Myrthali! The Sands of Time! The dust the ages leave in their wake! A powder yer take. Boil a little up on a teaspoon with milk and liquorice and yer'll be livin' for another four years! And some's got a lot more than a teaspoonful, I can tell yer..." When 12-year-old Krish finds out his mum is dying, he is desperate to give her more time to live. This leads to a deal with a devil-like creature to travel to another realm, Ilir, and collect the essence of time itself. Ilir is a tiny desert world where the days are a handful of hours long and there is magic and treachery on every corner. Here Krish is set three impossible challenges by the brutal King Obsendei to win from him the Myrthali, 'the sands of time'. Krish is aided by the razor-tongued, young girl-wizard Balthrir, who hopes to free her parents from the Black Palace; a living, breathing structure built entirely out of those subjects who have incurred the wrath of...