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Twelve-year-old twins, Mika and Ellie, live in a future behind a wall – safe from the plague animals beyond.

Or so they’ve been told.

But when one of them disappears, and the other takes part in a sinister virtual reality game, they begin to discover their concrete world is built on lies.

Determined to find each other again, they go in search of the truth. And as a strange sound in their heads grows to a roar, they find out that children and the planet have never mattered more. An electrifying, aspirational and empowering read for children.

Reviews:

'The Roar is a hugely inventive and entertaining read which grabs the reader by the scruff of the neck from the first sentence. It flies along like a laser beam from a blaster and sustains the breakneck pace until the stunning climax. A fresh and exciting take on sci-fi that will have fans crying out for a sequel. Emma Clayton is a rising star.' EOIN COLFER

It was three o’clock in the morning in London when Mal Gorman was awoken by the news Ellie had escaped.

He was supposed to be on holiday; the first holiday he’d taken for over a year, but instead of having a relaxing time in his expensive hotel, he was pacing up and down with his slippers on the wrong feet and his temples throbbing. He felt too old to be chasing a twelve-year-old girl across the planet in a stolen Pod Fighter.

‘What time did she get away?’

‘We don’t know, Sir,’ a man replied sheepishly. ‘Nobody seems to know exactly when she left.’

‘Why not?’ Mal Gorman yelled, his pale, grey eyes threatening to pop out of their bony sockets. ‘What was going on up there? Were you all doing the Can Can in the Officers’ Mess? Having a slumber party?’

‘No Sir,’ the man replied. ‘She just… slipped out without anyone noticing.’

‘Slipped out of a locked room on a space ship?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ the man replied, limply. ‘We’ve been trying to figure out how she did it, but we don’t even have any security footage because she destroyed it before she left.  Somehow she managed to break into every Pod Fighter on the strip and plant a virus in their flight systems so we couldn’t even follow her.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Gorman snarled. ‘You bunch of bumbling cretins!  How could an twelve-year-old child escape from several hundred soldiers on an army base in orbit around Earth?’

‘I don’t know, Sir,’ the man replied. ‘But we’ve got the programmers in the Pod Fighters and half are working again. We’re ready if you need us. We can load up the warp freighter and be there in ten minutes. How much does she know?’

‘Everything,’ Gorman snapped. ‘But I don’t think that’s the reason she’s escaped. I told her recently her parents think she’s dead.  I think that might have upset her. Did she take the monkey?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Oh no.’

Gorman felt a pain in his chest as he considered the consequences of Ellie reaching home with a live, Black Tufted, Capuchin Monkey and sat down on the bed and fumbled around under the lamp for his Everlife pills. He was a hundred and twenty-three, he needed them.  

‘What do you want us to do, Sir?’

Mal Gorman thought for a moment, running his papery hand over his last strands of dry, grey hair. He didn’t want to kill Ellie; after all, he’d spent a year training her and the two other boys he’d kidnapped had died. And he liked her, she was sulky and difficult but so bright, what a waste it would be to kill her now. But if they couldn’t control her on an orbiting space station like the Queen of the North, they couldn’t control her anywhere.

Ellie knew The Secret and she was going home with a live animal. She was a dangerous as a nuclear bomb.