Feral Hearts

Book excerpt: There is a story about Maiden’s Point, an old story, a story about a jilted lover who, in her grief, threw herself into the sea. It is the warm summer of 1993, and across Gloriana, Super Soakers are all the rage, children wear Ray-Ban sunglasses and Airwalk skate shoes, and there is not a boy alive who is worried about the mention of a new planet glimpsed just within the shadow of Pluto. No boy save for Dorin, on the cusp of adolescence. Having recently moved from the city to a large communal home in the country, Dorin has to adjust to his new life in the country within a house his father constantly assures him is haunted. He tries to balance his budding friendship with Ailbe, a boy from one of the other families at the house, with the growing shadow of the tenth planet Nimue as, all around him, it feels as if the adults he has trusted for so long seem to be making increasingly irrational decisions.