'This idiosyncratic thriller, set in a sixth ice age in 2059, is the story of 15-year-old 'Willo, who one day finds that everybody has gone from his remote homestead. His family were 'stragglers', hand-to-mouth inhabitants of the countryside, whereas most people slave and starve in the cities. Believing his family has been betrayed, Willo sets out to find them and take revenge. On the way, he encounters 13-year-old Mary, abandoned in a hut with her dying brother, and together they reach the grim metropolis, with its tyrannical regime. This is a dark chronicle of a bleak, violent world in which children die and women are broken in the torture chamber. It is also a world in which it is hard to know who to trust and where Willo has to witness someone being shot in the head. Yet there is also a thread about love, hope and courage and an ending for Willo and Mary that is not quite what we expect.' --The Sunday Times, Children's Book of the Week