The nightmare garden

Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. Her brother isn't at Ravenhouse. Her best friend isn't who she thought he was. And there's no such thing as the Necrovirus. Her mother didn't go mad from a dormant strain, she's simply allergic to iron. As is Aoife. Because Aoife is no ordinary girl. Like her brother, Conrad, she is half human and half Fae, from the land of Thorn. And now she's a fugitive, and beginning to realize that the destruction of the Lovecraft Engine was only the start of a cataclysm. Her world is falling apart when the dreams begin. Dreams of a mysterious figure telling her to go north, to the frozen wastelands of the Arctic Circle; and find the Brotherhood of Iron. The Brotherhood holds the secret that can put the world right again: a device known as the Nightmare Clock, which can be reached only in dreams. But can it actually fix what Aoife has destroyed? Or is someone using her to remake the world according to their own sinister visions? The only way for Aoife to find out is to embark on a journey that would surely be the end of any average girl - and to complete it before the land she calls home poisons her mind just as it did her mother's.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Fantasy, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.