A portal-hopping thrill ride featuring mythological creatures, heroic librarians, and Arthur, the duck; Ash Bond’s debut is a riot of the imagination. Action-packed and littered with laugh-out-loud humour, Peregrine Quinn promises an adventure like no other.
As the first book in the brand new series publishes today with Piccadilly Press, we took the opportunity to dive into the cosmic realm and ask Ash a few questions…
What can readers expect from Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm?
Adventure, AquaPods, and a wild ride on the Under Under Ground. Oh, and the unexpected.
How would you sum up our twelve-year old hero Peregrine Quinn herself? She’s not your average mortal!
Peregrine is instinctive, brave and curious; she is quick to ask a question, quick to anger, and – of course – quick to run into danger. Luckily, she has her friend Rowan to talk some sense into her… some of the time.
The book brilliantly weaves old mythology with the modern – propelling characters and beings we think we know into totally new directions. Have you always been fascinated by mythology?
I honestly think I have. I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time in North Wales growing up which is a land steeped in mythology, where there seemed to be a story connected to every cove and a god for every mountain. This is one of the many things that I love about mythology, that it makes you look at the everyday a little sideways.
I love how you’ve combined the normal with the mystical (nymphs on the underground, fauns with middle-management comms jobs..). As an author you must be constantly on the look-out for the magic within the everyday. How important is it to you to pass this curiosity onto your readers?
This is very important to me! I think the best example of this is perhaps when Nim offers Peregrine the Under Under Ground map. It looks just like a London Tube map, until it doesn’t, with the fantastical brimming out from the most utilitarian of objects. And as we all know, the gateways to magical worlds often lurk in the most ordinary of places; behind wardrobes, station platforms, library desks… It makes sense to keep your eyes open, just in case.
For the writers out there, can you tell us how you work? Was writing this as fun as it was to read?
All writing is work, but this book was very fun work. It’s a bit of a luxury, but my favourite way to write is to take my notebook outside and to write long hand. As Peregrine is very action-heavy, I find the movement of pen on paper helpful to the process of keeping her racing forward. It’s quite exhausting actually!
There are some excellent swear word substitutes throughout (“absolute centaur droppings” being a particular classic). Do you have a personal favourite?
Flooharght. It’s guttural, can be used in a wide variety of situations, and is really good fun to shout. There is another great swear word in Book 2, but I don’t want to spoil it.
And on behalf of the bookish community, thanks for creating a badass librarian…
You are welcome. Librarians are superheroes.
Finally, what’s next for Peregrine Quinn?
In the next book in the series Peregrine finds her way back to the Cosmic Realm, but this time it is upon Olympus Inc’s request. Expect some fabulous new characters, more of Daedalus’s dodgy inventions and an adrenaline-filled race to the finish line.
