Megan Hopkins, Starminster, HarperCollins Children’s Books, April 2024, 288 pp., RRP $12.99 (pbk), ISBN 9780008626907
11-year-old Astrid Crossley has spent all her life locked in a rhubarb shed (sounds like child abuse to me.) Her single mother loves her but won’t let her out, insisting the world outside is dangerous. She is kept warm, fed and clothed, with online home schooling, games and videos but has never mixed with other people, either child or adult. It is surprising she is as ‘normal’ as she is!
One night she tries to dig her way out so that she can see the Perseids in the night sky. She discovers that there is a concrete slab underneath the shed and her attempt is useless. However, a lady called Mrs Wairi breaks into the shed, frees Astrid and takes her away. She explains to Astrid that she is actually a Librae, a human born under the Libra Zodiac sign, who will grow wings and needs to learn how to fly.
Astrid arrives at London Overhead, a city above London Underfoot but invisible to it. The school there is called Starminster, based in St Paul’s Cathedral, and it teaches both fledged and unfledged Librae how to fly and the rules governing flight. For the first time in her life, Astrid makes friends but also can see things which are wrong. This includes not only rotten and rusting bridges which are a danger to unfledged pupils like herself but also illegal, immoral and unethical experiments being conducted by the school principal.
How she exposes the headmaster, accepts her new identity, reconciles with her mother (who is not allowed to live in London Overhead because she is not a Librae) and starts to fledge makes for a gripping adventure even if the basic premise is Harry Potterish. As every Librae’s wings match different bird species, a list of these birds and their flight characteristics is at the end of the book. I’m waiting for the next episode to find out what sort of wings Astrid has.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
