Ghost Dance

 “I tell (says the cat) of the Northlands, where, in the long, dark winter, the white snow falls out of the black, black sky. Soft, silent, it falls through the branches of the pines and birch, and mounts, thin flake on thin flake, until the snow lies ten cold feet deep, and the silence is frozen to the darkness.

This (says the cat) is the land where that white, sharp-backed horse, North Wind, carries Granddad Frost swiftly through the trees. The old man breathes to the left and right, and what his breath touches is blasted and withered, and his rasping voice whispers, 'Are you cold, children? Are you cold?'”

Ghost Dance is the third book in Susan Price’s acclaimed Ghost World sequence’. It tells of the young witch, Shingebiss who, in an effort to save the Northlands from destruction, tries to bring the Czar under the control of her spells.

But the Czar, sleepless and paranoid, is one whose mind ‘is like a broken mirror, reflecting everything crookedly’ – and he is already under the spell of the English wizard, Master Jenkins, who has promised him eternal life.