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Zusatztext Part Gulliver's Travels! part Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy! part Pilgrim's Progress! this is thoroughly original and full of ideas ... thought-provoking! involving! and exciting! and a true romance. Informationen zum Autor Alex Shearer was born in Wick, in the far North of Scotland. He has written several TV series, stage plays, radio plays and comedy scripts. Moving into writing for children, his novels BOOTLEG and THE GREATEST STORE IN THE WORLD were adapted for television by the BBC, and his 2003 novel THE SPEED OF THE DARK was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. He has previously published THE CLOUD HUNTERS, SKY RUN and THE MINISTRY OF GHOSTS with Hot Key Books. Alex lives in Somerset and is married with two grown-up children. Klappentext In a world of conformity, the Cloud Hunters are outsiders, outcasts - best kept at arms length. For fourteen-year-old Christien, they represent adventure, independence and romance - everything he has been waiting for. In Christien's world, there are no oceans, no continents, there are only hundreds of islands, suspended in an atmosphere heavy enough to buoy them up... and just dense enough to swim in. Water is a rare luxury. Only the Cloud Hunters are brave enough to sail through the skies full of danger to find it... Christien longs to escape his safe and suffocating home and travel, so when Jenine, the exotic and alluring Cloud Hunter girl, arrives at school one day, he sees a chance to make his dream come true. At last he will see the sky's magical, deadly creatures for himself. At last he will be one step closer to being a man. But will Christien find all the he hopes when he sets sail through the skies with Jenine and her family? Will he find his heart's desire? Or has Jenine drawn him along on a perilous adventure of her own? A thrilling and thought provoking adventure fantasy set in a world without water -- Julia Eccleshare Lovereading4kids A creative and fascinating idea, well-written with interesting characters and scenery. The Guardian Online With its well-drawn characters and vividly-realised world, The Cloud Hunters will appeal to fans of science fiction and fantasy. Yet though at base an adventure story, the book is often pleasingly slow and meditative, dwelling on the texture of the world and exploring the issues of coming-of-age, belonging, memory and loss with an unexpected complexity and sensitivity. Booktrust Part Gulliver's Travels, part Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, part Pilgrim's Progress, this is thoroughly original and full of ideas ... thought-provoking, involving, and exciting, and a true romance. Books for Keeps Leseprobe For it takes some nerve and courage to journey on into the empty blue, your own water supplies getting lower, and with not a wisp of a cloud in sight. But on you go, sailing on the solar wind. Maybe a breeze blows up, too; so you open the wind sails to catch the uplift and speed on into the void. You pass islands, some above you, some beneath. Some are close enough for you to be in their shadow; others are far below, in regions to which you never venture. There are different, hotter lands down there, with different kinds of people in them. If you went on descending, you would eventually come to islands so blisteringly hot that nothing human lives there, just plants and reptiles and the sky-fish of the deep, with skin like cooked leather. Or so people say. Only, if nothing human can live down there, how would anything human know? Perhaps, as you sail on, a shoal of sky-fish passes. If you throw a line over the side, baited with a juicy insect or two, you can catch a meal; if you throw a net over, you'll catch a feast. Or maybe a sky-jelly will come into view, drifting on the air, almost transparent, a great bulbous mass of pulsating veins. Its tendrils trail underneath it, stretching down for hund...
