karen e. james

Volatile but undeniably talented, London teenager, Aaron, distrusts most people apart from his incarcerated cousin. When he attacks a fellow pupil to defend his birth mother’s honour, his head teacher gives him a fixed-term exclusion, and his foster parents send him to a residential camp for mild delinquents close to mystical Stonehenge. But soon, Aaron starts to hear whispers in his head, and he realises his stay at the camp is not going to be any more trouble-free than his usual urban life. Supernatural forces work to entice Aaron into another world, Eleyfa, where he develops into a freedom fighter serving the peoples oppressed by the Eleyfan segregationist system. Aaron discovers he is able to fulfil, and even surpass, his true potential in this new environment and embarks upon a quest to recover the powerful, healing stone known as the Tourmaline. Accompanied by a range of entertaining, endearing characters, he not only struggles to help the downtrodden Eleyfan rebels overturn the rule of tyranny but also learns to respect their conservationist, pacific ideals along the way.

The Tourmaline is a daring fantasy novel for young adults which, with humorous touches, juxtaposes urban life with a fantastical world where paranormal powers are used to both combat and perpetuate social inequality.