Old, weary and wise, Tomar encourages Kirrick to reconvene the long-since scattered Council as a means of fighting off the assault of the magpies, and Kirrick sets out secretly to rouse birds to fight for their survival. For the noble Kirrick has actually eluded Slyekin’s assassins and has made his way to the Great Owl Tomar, a survivor of the once-mighty Council of Owls. Ruthlessly killing all smaller species they encounter, the magpies initially make good headway on their genocidal dreams, even to the point of killing Kirrick, the last robin known in Birddom. Their leader is the cruel and perverted Slyekin, who (with his bloodthirsty lieutenant Traska) strikes terror into even the blackest hearts of his fellow magpies.
Set amid the fens and woodlands of the winged realm of Birddom, it envisions a dystopian world where the loathsome magpies (carrion birds who have overpopulated and grown fat from their rich diet of highway roadkill) have made common cause with the equally parasitical crows to kill off all rival bird-life and set themselves up as the unchallenged dictators of the sky. Already optioned by Disney, this British bestseller by first-time author (and ex-grocer) Woodall describes an avian civil war, with the crows and magpies trying to exterminate every other species.Īlthough the comparisons to Watership Down are inevitable, this is a highly original animal fantasy that, options notwithstanding, sounds much less like a Disney cartoon than one might expect.
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