Hot Key Books have launched a carefully thought out range of books that have come to our attention during the last 12 months. Branching both Australia and UK they are successfully encouraging an exciting array of talented authors.

Sally Gardner’s Maggot Moon is one such novel.

Aimed at teenagers, Maggot Moon belongs to a wonderful breed of novels that also manages to capture the imagination of adults.

This is fiction writing at it’s best.

Original and captivating, Gardner sets the character of teenager Standish Treadwell at the heart of her novel. 

Treadwell, like Gardner, is dyslexic. Rather than focus on the physical manifestation of dyslexia – spelling – Gardner highlights ‘how he sees the world slightly off key.’

‘There are train-track thinkers, then there’s you, Standish, with an imagination that breezes through the park,’

Struggling to cope in a world gone mad, where democracy and freedom don’t exist, Treadwell and his grandfather live in Zone 7. It really is as grim as it sounds. Treadwell’s mum and dad went missing. They are not the only ones never to be heard from again. Informers can be anywhere, you have to tow the line in the Motherland.

Through a sharp narrative of 100 punchy chapters, all told from Treadwell’s voice, Gardner tackles tough themes with an incredibly original twisting plot. 

It’s not enough to say this is a novel about friendship, about not underestimating someone’s true qualities. It also contemplates a cruel world in a dystopian world.

Compelling reading. 

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