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The Cockatrice Boys is one of the more peculiar Joan Aiken novels and one of my favorites. Set in a near-future Britain that has been overrun by monsters from beneath the earth, the book follows a teenage girl named Sauna and her younger brother, who have lost most of their family to the invasion and who join an army convoy called the Cockatrice Belle that is supposed to take the fight back to the source.
Aiken is doing several things at once. The novel is part Wolves of Willoughby Chase, part Russell Hoban, part outright children's adventure. The monsters are unsettling and weirdly funny. The convoy life is rendered with the kind of observed detail Aiken has always done well. The ending lands in a place that mixes melancholy and hope without choosing.
Four stars. Not for every reader. For the right reader, this is one of those YA novels that feels like a small private treasure.
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