Fog & Fireflies

Hundreds of seasons ago, a wizard's war scarred the earth and left behind a malevolent fog that covers the land. Settlements drift within it like ships adrift at sea. The phantoms the fog creates are deadly to adults, so children are the ones who guard the walls and look after one another.

Ogma keeps watch over the fog from the walls of her windmill town. What felt like a game when she was small turns into a creeping dread with every season she grows older, because she now knows better. Then the town is attacked by alien caravanners, who roam the fog in inhuman forms and have come to kidnap the children. Ogma is lost in the fog and must find hope, find courage in herself, and find her friends.

Fog & Fireflies uses an imaginative world and a fantastical cast to ask why people grow more afraid as they age, and to explore the difference between growing older and growing up. It carries echoes of golden age fantasy. The book is aimed at readers who enjoy the rich worldbuilding of Hayao Miyazaki, a cast of creatures and characters recalling L. Frank Baum and Arthur Rackham, and found-family bonds like those in the work of Maggie Stiefvater and Makoto Shinkai.