If Johnson Farthing thought that life as poor cart pusher in the coastal town of Wead-Wodder was going to be his lot in life, then he was about to get a rude surprise, and not necessarily a good one.
Once it becomes clear that his beautiful younger sister has been kidnapped along with the daughter of the Prelate, his life is turned on its head. Farthing has to rush across a vast ocean and a huge continent carried by an incredible Sea Dragon and accompanied by a strange magician if he has even a chance to save his sister Rustina.
And very strangely, neither the rich Prelate nor his chief of police seem keen to even lift a finger.
Dirt, the first book in a huge, continent spanning saga where dragons are an intelligent, cultured people, magicians cannot destroy mountains with a magic wand, and the heroes have no wish to become tyrannical kings and queens.
But through all the dramatic events, the battles of life and death, Dirt is a place of humour, love and ultimately, the quest to find a home.
“I told Truk you would be slacking off the minute he turned his back,” shouted the old fool, Barkles, who sold greasy vegetable pasties from a dusty stall on the corner. “Young people can’t be trusted, I told him. I was right too.”
“Shut your face, Barkles,” Johnson shouted back as he grabbed his coat from his hand cart and put it around his shoulders to ward off a faint chill in the sea breeze. “I have been down that hole every day non-stop for nine days, and you know it too, since you have been feeding me your disgusting pies for most of them.”
“Pastries, slacker. Not Pies; Pastries.”
“I thought pastries were just posh pies?”
“Can be.”
“Well, yours ain’t posh. So they are definitely just pies.”
“Ain’t seen you complaining!”