The Edge Chronicles

The Edge Chronicles is a fantasy novel series written by Paul Stewart and illustrated by Chris Riddell. Originally published in the United Kingdom, the series has since been published in the United States as well.

The series is set on the Edge, which appears to be either a huge cliff jutting out of the clouds, or an island floating in the sky.

The Edge is made up of many different environments, the first of which is the Edgelands, the very northern and southern edges of the cliff. It is a barren rocky place forever clouded in mist. There, people may stumble into the Twilight Woods, fall over the edge of the Edge itself, or find the gloamglozer, the most feared of the demons in the Edge. It borders the Mire to the east, the Twilight Woods to the north and south, and the Deepwoods to the west.

The second is the Deepwoods, the forest which many woodland creatures, both peaceful and deadly, call home - including the hero of the first three books of the Chronicles. It is the largest area of the Edge; a seemingly endless panorama of teeming life in so many diverse forms.

 Third comes the Twilight Woods, a place of decay and immortality which gives off a strange force that makes anyone who enters forget themselves and be lost forever in daydreams and nightmares. It is a place that robs intruders of their senses and faculties, but never grants the peace of death. Great Storms are attracted to the place to release great bolts of lightning that hit the earth in solid form, as the revered substance "stormphrax", and despite the risks many venture there in search of the powerful crystals. Because perpertual twilight exists there, the Stormphrax is slowly ground down into a powder, called phraxdust. This powder can purify any liquid, making it safe for drinking.

 Next is the Mire, a bubbling brownish-white land coated by ooze that resulted from the dumping into it of waste and sludge by nearby Undertown. It is a place of hidden blow holes and sinking quick-mud, and seems perfectly uninhabitable - except for the creeping monsters that hide in the waste.

 Undertown is to the east of the Mire. It is the capital of the Edge. Holding a diverse population, the city is still less than prosperous in many areas, and shanties are pressed tight to its outskirts. Undertown is built on the banks of the large Edgewater River, which splits the city in two. This is the centre of commerce on the Edge, a place of merchants and pirates - each trying to undercut the other.

 When pieces of New Sanctaphrax fell between the Twig and Rook trilogies, the most uptown district of Undertown was destroyed, creating Screetown. It is as uninhabitable as the Mire; only rubble ghouls, which suck the moisture out of everything they encounter, leaving it completely dry, can dwell here, as well as the mysterious Ghosts of Screetown.

 An enormous buoyant rock is the site of the scholarly city of Sanctaphrax, which teaches students a variety of subjects - mainly concerning the weather and how to predict it. There are Colleges of Raintasters, Cloudwatchers, Mistsifters, and so on.

 The final part of the Edge is the Stone Gardens, at the very eastern area of the Edge. The Gardens are where buoyant rocks slowly "grow" from the surface, and eventually float away into the sky. The Garden is guarded by the white ravens, which keep an eye on the cultivation of the strange stones. These stones are used to build great flying boats known as sky-ships; without the stones, transport on the Edge would be a very limited affair.

 After the Stone Gardens the Edge cliff finally ends and the Edgewater River endlessly tumbles over into the yawning void of Open Sky below.