Book jacket from Close Kin
By Clare B. Dunkle. New York: Henry Holt, 2004. 216 p.

Sable crouched on the ground by the fallen Thorn’s side. She heard Irina shrieking frantically, and then those shrieks suddenly cut off, but she forced herself not to look up. It was the end of everything, the end of her life. She didn't want to see it.

A shadow fell across Thorn’s quiet face and across the snow around them.

Look at the trees, she told herself. Look at the sky. Don’t give them the pleasure of making you scream.

“Goblins are just a tale to frighten children.”

Emily might have believed this once, but she knows better now. For years she has been living happily in the underground goblin kingdom. Now Emily is old enough to marry, but when her childhood friend Seylin proposes, she doesn’t take him seriously.

Devastated, Seylin leaves the kingdom, intent on finding his own people: the elves. Too late, Emily realizes what Seylin means to her and sets out in search of him. But her quest, like Seylin’s own journey, is really a plot devised by the cunning goblin King, who has his own reason to hunt for elves. As Emily and Seylin come closer to their goals, they bring two worlds onto a collision course, awakening hatreds and prejudices that have slumbered for hundreds of years.

In this sequel to The Hollow Kingdom, Clare Dunkle draws readers deeper into the magical world that Lloyd Alexander, winner of the Newbery Medal, calls “as persuasive as it is remarkable.”