SuitabookInherited power and responsibility
Alfredo is told he is the next Master of the Mountain and learns about his family’s power.
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Book details
Peter Dickinson - Author
This is a dark fantasy about family inheritance, hidden power and uncertainty. Its central appeal is the tension between a vulnerable child’s new protection and the growing possibility that his guardian is dangerous.
Alfredo, a choir boy in 18th-century Italy, loses his family in a fire, and his mysterious Uncle Giorgio spirits him away to their ancestral home below a volcano. There he learns that Uncle Giorgio is the Master of the Mountain; he can control the volcano. He is also an alchemist, able to make gold from the tears of the fiery salamander he captured from the heart of the mountain. Alfredo is his heir, the next Master; and as Alfredo learns the history of his family and its power, he begins to suspect that his uncle is actually a fearsome sorcerer.From the Trade Paperback edition.
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Sign in for personalised guidanceThis is a dark fantasy about family inheritance, hidden power and uncertainty. Its central appeal is the tension between a vulnerable child’s new protection and the growing possibility that his guardian is dangerous.
Alfredo is told he is the next Master of the Mountain and learns about his family’s power.
Uncle Giorgio spirits Alfredo away to an ancestral home beneath a volcano, controls the mountain and appears increasingly frightening to him.
Be ready for emotionally weighty material: Alfredo loses his family in a fire, then enters an ominous setting involving a volcano, alchemy, a captured fiery creature and a possibly fearsome sorcerer.
This is a grounded book brief while Suitabook strengthens the analysis: the current material supports only a cautious reading; another book-specific source is still needed.
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