Vashti Hardy's 'Wildspark' is unlike any book I've read over the past couple of years. It's at the same time futuristic and historical, it's a tale of sibling love and a magical adventure. At its heart is the desire that so many of us harbour - to have a little bit more time with our loved ones who have passed away.

Prue, an expert mechanic, lives on a farm with her parents and desperately missed her brother Francis who died the previous year. When Craftsman Primrose comes to the farm, seeking to take her brother on as an apprentice (and unaware of his death), she chases after him and enrolls in his place. She travels to the wonderous city of Medlock, joins the Guild and begins to learn about qwortzite and the mechanics involved in attaching the soul of a dead person to the body of an animal - making them a 'personifate'.

Vashti Hardy gives us a fantastic description of Prue's emotions upon arrival:

She had read about Master Woolstenbury, the greatest technician and inventor that the world had ever known. Hannah Woolstenbury had been ridiculed by other inventors for most of her life for believing in ghosts, let alone her lifetime ambition to connect with them; people had said her methods were unscientific. But she ultimately found a way to bring them back into this world.

(...) Prue's eye was caught by a brightly coloured peacock and a lemur making their way along the pavement. She marvelled how their movements had an edge of human characteristics in their relaxed chatter and gesturing.

The story goes through many unexpected twists and turns, but Prue faces them head on, with her two awesome friends, Agapantha and Edwin (himself a personifate stoat). Together, they learn all about the process of creating personifates, and muse about their work:

The meaning of 'Capax Infiniti' rolled through Prue's mind: 'holding the infinite.'

Edwin raised a paw. "Is it a reminder that the thing that makes us who we are is not the outer body, but something deep inside, and that our bodies, whether flesh or ghost machine, are just a shell. It's a stage in our history and future; which is, you know, infinite?

Prue yearns to use the process to bring her brother back, but she's places in circumstances which mean that this will put the rest of the world at risk. What decision will she make?

I would recommend 'Wildspark' not only to middle grade readers, but also to older children and adults. It wonderfully tackles the themes of grief, longing, friendship and what it means to be alive.