The Obsidian Mirror
Chronoptika (Obsidian Mirror) Series
Author: Catherine Fisher
Book 1 in the Chronoptika (Obsidian Mirror) series
Pages: 385
Published: 2012
Age: 11+
I dream of the scarred man. He comes and stands at the foot of my bed, and he is half- angel, half- demon. He says “Don't try to use the mirror. The mirror will possess you. The mirror will devour your soul.”
He is too late. I have already discovered that. My house is a fortress, locked and bolted and barred. But ghosts and phantoms flicker here, in polished surfaces, in glass and crystal.And someone is watching every move I make.
Jake Wilde's father has disappeared, while working with his friend, the reclusive and mysterious Oberon Venn, on a strange black mirror that Venn believes to be a time machine. Jake gets himself expelled from school and sent to Wintercombe Abbey, deep in the heart of Devon, to find out just what's going on.
Meanwhile a girl appears out of thin air pursued by a wolf of Ice and a Replicant from the future... Sarah too ends up at Wintercombe, where Venn is desperate for the Mirror to restore his lost wife, Leah. Only she knows the terrible dangers the mirror will bring to the world's future. And in the Wood all around the house live the Shee, and their beautiful, deadly queen, Summer. Who has other plans for Venn...
Carnegie Medal Nominee (2014)
About the Chronoptika (Obsidian Mirror) Series
Books in series order
- 1.The Obsidian Mirror(2012)
- 2.The Box of Red Brocade (The Slanted Worlds)(2013)
- 3.The Door in the Moon(2015)
- 4.The Speed of Darkness(2016)
Reading age: 11+ years
This series should be read in order.
Time travel and the faery world collide in this intriguing fantasy series.
The mysterious and powerful obsidian mirror is a black mirror which forms a portal to both the past and the future. Strangers from the past and the future - a product of the mirror's power to twist time - begin collecting at Wintercombe Abbey estate. And all the while, a tribe of elemental beings surround the isolated estate; fey, cold, untrustworthy, and filled with hate for humans.
Time-travel provides the opportunity for adventure and the lure of the past and future, with all the irresistible paradoxes and problems such a story creates. Throw in elemental creatures such as faeries, and you have an edgy and fast-paced series that will keep the reader guessing.
Each book in the series explores themes of fate and time and whether we should change the past if we could—and what that might cost us.
And the Mirror? Well the Mirror is Time itself. The answer to every problem…and the real enemy.

