Shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2017! Step Aboard - the Universe is Waiting. The Great Network is a place of drones and androids, Hive Monks and Station Angels. The place of the thousand gates, where sentient trains criss-cross the galaxy in a heartbeat. It is also a place of great dangers - especially for someone who rides the rails and rides his luck the way Zen Starling does. Once Zen was just a petty thief, stealing to support his family and living by his wits. Now everything has changed. Zen is still a thief - but it could be that the key to the whole universe rests on finding out what else he is . . .

 

 

This book is the winner of numerous awards

This book is part of a book series called Railhead .

There are 320 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press .

Philip Reeve is a hugely talented author. He won the Carnegie Medal for Here Lies Arthur and is also the author of the Mortal Engines series, and Goblins which was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize.