Meet the Creators
Paul Stewart
has written everything – from picture books for young readers to football stories, travel writing, fantasy and horror…
Chris Riddell
is an author, illustrator and the political cartoonist for the Observer. He was appointed the UK's Waterstones Children's Laureate in 2015…Maps
The Edge Chronicles started with the map. Chris drew it in one of his sketchbooks and then gave it to Paul. ‘This is The Edge,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happens there.’
From The Deepwoods to Sanctaphrax, from Undertown to the Twilight Woods, from Riverrise to the Farrow Ridges, explore the cartography of The Edge.
The Edge itself is a fictional cliff where The Edge Chronicles, a five-saga series of fantasy novels co-created by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, is set. A massive spur of rock, it juts out into Open Sky like the prow of a ship, and is divided into several distinct areas, including forests, swamps, fertile plains and barren rocklands.
Characters and Creatures
The Edge Chronicles spans more than six hundred years and is a generational series, with all of the five main characters related to one another.
The main characters of the Five Sagas
Timeline
The stories of The Edge Chronicles take place in the fictional world of The Edge, a vast cliff with no apparent bottom. The majority of books are grouped into trilogies, with each trilogy focusing on one character. The series covers a 600 year period, divided into three “Ages of Flight”.
The Quint, Twig and Rook sagas span a period of one hundred years, and take place during the First and Second Ages of Flight. You can view this period by exploring the first timeline below. Then, following the discovery of how to safely harness the power of stormphrax, and the beginning of the Third Age of Flight, the series moves on five hundred years to the Nate and Cade sagas. Explore the second timeline below to see The Nate & The Cade Sagas.
The Three Ages Of Flight
There are three “Ages of Flight” in The Edge Chronicles, spanning a period of six hundred years. The importance of flight is a major theme in the books, with each age defined by the current technology used for air travel.
In the First Age of flight, buoyant flight rocks, harvested in The Stone Gardens, were used to keep leagueships and sky pirate ships aloft. But then stone sickness arrived in The Edge, destroying these flight rocks and causing the skyships to crash to the ground. Buoyant sumpwood, coated with a special varnish, ushered in the Second Age of Flight. However the small hand-made skycraft were one or two seaters, and inadequate for trade. It was only when Edge academics discovered how to safely harness the power of stormphrax, enabling the Third Age of Flight that large vessels once again took to the sky. With their characteristic phrax chambers, mighty galleons and sky taverns travelled to the furthest reaches of The Edge.
