Chris Riddell

Thirteen-year-old Twig, having always looked and felt different from his woodtroll family, learns that he is adopted and travels out of his Deepwoods home to find the place where he belongs.

Apprenticed to the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax, a floating city of scholars, gossip, and treachery, fourteen-year-old Quint runs increasingly dangerous errands, which eventually bring him to a place of gruesome monsters that threaten his life and those of his friends.