Dark Arena: Defenders

LoveReading View on Dark Arena: Defenders

In a nutshell: exciting, contemporary story linking past and present injustices

Seth isn’t like other boys: he can see ghosts. In the second of this new series he is in London staying with his friend Nadiya and her family while his mother undergoes treatment for cancer. Exploring near the hospital, Seth and Nadiya run into a huge crowd of angry ghosts, the spirits of slaves forced by the Romans to build an amphitheatre. As the children work out what’s stirred the ghosts up, disturbing similarities between past and present come to the fore. It’s a typically exciting and involving story from Tom Palmer and, in publisher Barrington Stoke’s Conkers series, is accessible to all readers, no matter their fluency.  ~ Andrea Reece

The Defenders is a spooky new series that combines the thrills of football, history and supernatural sleuthing and marks Tom’s continuing exploration of his passions. He says: “For years I’ve written about my obsessions with football and rugby. Now I am obsessed with history. One thing I always say to children who ask me for advice on becoming an author, is to write about what they are passionate about. That’s what I’m doing now.”