SECRET SKY

A boy discovering new abilities braves strange new worlds and enemies in Horne’s middle-grade SF/fantasy novel, the first in a series.

Skylar lives a quiet life on “one of the first-ever Earths” long before the dinosaurs. Though he’s merely 10, he’s old enough to undergo a ritual in which he’ll prove himself as a worthy villager. This entails staying overnight in a cavern and experiencing a hyper-realistic dream of floating among the stars. Amazingly, this sortie saves his life when, during his absence, a raid wipes out his village, including, as far as he knows, his family. He is captured by a group of traveling knights headed back to their kingdom. These are the same knights behind the raid (under the king’s orders), and they have an unspecified plan for keeping the boy alive. Skylar, meanwhile, continues dreaming; he converses with the stars, who tell him he’s a starship and train him in flight and the use of weapons, dropping countless technical words he’s never heard before. Quite unexpectedly, he bonds with the knights, who come up with a way to disguise Skylar’s true identity as the survivor of the king-ordered massacre. Once in Almagest, the grand world capital that’s filled with immeasurable riches, Skylar simply has to play a part for the benefit of Sage, the same-aged boyking—but it won’t be easy with the Master of Keys in Sage’s ear. This enigmatic figure, who hides behind a wooden mask, proves alarmingly unpredictable, both in terms of his actions and the motives that seem to drive him.

Horne’s story, notwithstanding a handful of somber turns, is largely tongue-in-cheek. Much of this tone is courtesy of the relentlessly snarky, mysterious, and somehow still-charming narrator. This voice winkingly delivers a moral (“Because this story has kids in it”) and berates the reader for not stopping the proceedings and demanding clarification of how seasons work on this Earth. The narrator likewise goes to great lengths to avoid the “m-word” (magic), which is not so easy when Skylar shocks even himself with a magical feat or two. This sympathetic young hero is perpetually confused—by his apparent newfound skills, his strange dreams, the knights’ plan for him, and the local culture (he inadvertently offends the chancellor’s 10-year-old librarian daughter). Readers don’t know much more than Skylar does as the story stirs up a host of questions with very few revelations regarding the recurring dream sequences, the medieval setting, or even the narrator. The cast, however, is a genuine delight, from the personable knights to the village witch, with the Master of Keys serving as an especially haunting villain. Throughout, Bernardin’s bold, superb black-and-white artwork leaves lasting impressions, including images of the unnerving Master of Keys and Skylar’s more explosive outer-space dreams. The author holds back answers (presumably waiting for the sequel), and the startling denouement will surely entice readers into keeping eyes out for the next book.

A zany, wholly absorbing start to an otherworldly, whimsical adventure worthy of multiple volumes.