Meet the Spellchasers team!
You’re on a quest to lift your curse. You’ve just been surrounded by the grey men of Ben Macdui. You need someone to help you escape. Who would you choose for your Spellchasers team?
Would it be Molly, Innes, Beth, Atacama, or the mysterious toad?
Each member of the Spellchasers team has unique skills and strengths, as well as being a different species! Who do you think would be best in helping you combat cursed-hatched crows and vanquish villains?
Take a look at our Spellchasers team profiles to help you choose.
The Spellchasers team
Species: Human, part-time hare
Strengths: speed (when a hare), fast learner, leadership skills
Weaknesses: limited shapeshifting control, lack of magical knowledge
How to recognise: short brown hair, long ears
Age of curse (at start of workshop): 2 days
Quote: “Being a hare for a wee while is fine, so long as I don’t meet a fox or a greyhound. But thinking it would never end was horrible.”
Species: Kelpie (water-horse)
Strengths: Shapeshifting, speed, strength, bravery, loyalty (but to whom?)
Weaknesses: recklessness, short temper
How to recognise: blond hair, white mane, green tentacles
Age of curse (at start of workshop): one year
Quote: “You are my prisoner, defeated by my hooves, in my circle, under my power. You will answer my questions.”
Species: Dryad (tree-spirit)
Strengths: Controlling wood, communicating with trees, strong principles
Weaknesses: rigid and conservative attitude to magic
How to recognise: Purple hair, green eyes, black clothes, silver jewellery
Age of curse (at start of workshop): more than 300 years
Quote: “When I enter the trees’ world, I see what they see. And they see dark-magic users growing rotten inside…”
Species: Sphinx
Strengths: wisdom, calmness, claws
Weaknesses: conflicting loyalties
How to recognise: cat’s body, human face, long tail, small wings – all black
Age of curse (at start of workshop): 1 week
Quote: “I don’t want you to hurt them. But I can’t let you through unless you answer my riddle.”
Species: Toad/Unknown
Strengths: mysteriously fast outhouse building
Weaknesses: can’t speak, or write, or solve riddles
How to recognise: Warty skin, sand-coloured, big eyes, crawls rather than hops
Age of curse (at start of workshop): unknown
Quote: “Croak”
Let us know who you’d choose for your Spellchasers team and why. Vote using our teams hashtags on Twitter and Facebook.
Find out more
The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away, the second book in Lari Don’s Spellchasers trilogy is available now. Look out for The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat, the dramatic final book in the trilogy, coming Autumn 2017.
Have you missed Molly and the team’s adventures so far? Catch up in The Beginner’s Guide to Curses.
Spellchasers: The Magical New Trilogy by Lari Don
5 Things You Need to Know About Spellchasers
We spoke to Lari Don, author of the Fabled Beast Chronicles, Rocking Horse War and now The Beginner’s Guide to Curses, to find out what you need to know about her new Spellchasers trilogy.
How long have you been working on this new trilogy?
I scribbled down an interesting question about magic when I was editing Storm Singing, about five years ago, then that question suddenly became a whole living idea four years ago. I started turning that idea into the book – The Beginner’s Guide To Curses – three years ago. And I realised I was writing a trilogy two years ago! (Writing is a long process…)
Are these books related to the Fabled Beast Chronicles?
The idea for the magical problem in the Spellchasers trilogy rose directly out of one line in a Fabled Beast Chronicles book, but there aren’t any FBC characters in the trilogy. There are lots of other fabled beasts though! And I’ve deliberately set this adventure in a part of Scotland that Helen, Yann and their friends didn’t visit in their travels. (Speyside, where I grew up.)
Tell us about some of the characters!
The first character you’ll meet is a girl called Molly, who’s just been cursed to turn into a hare at inconvenient times (like when she’s being chased by a greyhound…) Molly enrolls on a curse-lifting workshop, where she meets a boy called Innes, who’s not always a boy; a girl called Beth, who’s quite rude and has purple hair; a large black cat with wings, who’s called Atacama; and a toad. (No-one knows what the toad is called. Not even me.) There are also witches, crows and wyrms… And that’s just the first book. There will be new characters and new dangers in each of the other two books as well!
Will there be a happy ending?
You’ll have to read it to find out!
Somehow we knew that would be your answer…
The Spellchasers Trilogy
The Beginner’s Guide to Curses is just the start of the story. Look out for The Shapeshifter’s Guide to Running Away and The Witch’s Guide to Magical Combat next year!