Rachel Chivers Khoo's writing makes me feel instantly nostalgic, making me think back to those magical, timeless stories I read as a child. There's something so traditional integrated into her tales: forests, wishes, wizards, treasure and magical creatures.
Silverthorn Forest is a delightful story with strong eco themes and great characters. There's cosiness and yet a huge sense of impending peril. There's also humour, adventure and a big dose of inquisitiveness. It's perfect for developing readers who are beginning to explore longer stories and who love magical tales. The storytelling feels timeless and yet still manages to be very relevant to today's world (the destruction of the forest).
Charm personified.

Tuft and Max are both looking for things in the forest. Tuft is a fox-like, squirrelly Finder, part of a whole civilisation of Finders, who keep whatever human discards they come across, while Max is a child tasked with trying to rediscover a time capsule his gran buried. There's a deadline on that, too, as the developers are moving in (as the map tells us way before the text actually does). Mind, Tuft's lot thinks there is a deadline, too, as they have word of Doomsday – the nature of which we can guess at here. But with everything about to change, will either of them succeed – and how can the two species, normally kept firmly apart, get along together?

What this all boils down to is a saga that is really quite guessable – and yet is written with such pace and pleasure that all that is too familiar and too obvious is easily forgiven. I at least could tell what this was, and what the case was with that, and I am sure the smarter child would too – but it still instils warmth, not the coldness such a blatant non-twist normally delivers. Heck, even the fact this has a subtitle and therefore starts a series is evidence of a happy ending that runs counter to much of the plot.

Said plot is taut and gripping, mind, with nothing like a dull moment. I see the audio version is only three hours long – although I'd not recommend that, as the artwork here is top notch too. You'd just have to double-dip and experience both. What there is here is an instant immediacy to things, and no lumpen world-building – this has come fully fleshed out, and you're instantly with Max on his mission, as unusual as it at first sounds. Tuft, too, is a fine character – the Finders close to a lot we've already read of yet distinctive enough – and more books with them together can only be something to really look forward to. Four and a half stars, I'd say.