Shadow Apprentice

<p><strong>Finalist the Wishing Shelf Book Awards 2024</strong></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Thirteen-year-old Ermin is a gifted mechanic and the worst student at St. Anselm's Training School for Orphans. She's just failed her exams for the third time</span>-<span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>something nobody's ever done. Worse Ermin's been running her own repair business for money</span>-<span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>something that's expressly forbidden. If the headmistress finds out Ermin will go to prison. Her future will be over before it's even begun.</span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>But that's not her only secret.</span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Her best friends Colin and Georgie are wizards in a world where magic is strictly controlled. Ermin worries that her friends will be captured drained of their power then banished. When Georgie's caught aiding the Wizard's Resistance Ermin repairs a broken flying carpet so all three of them can escape.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Hesitant to join the Resistance because of her lack of magical power Ermin steals an experimental device from a wizard hunter that could destroy every wizard in the Creek. She's faced with a choice: either smash the device or convert it into a different kind of weapon-one that not only helps wizards but just might get her an apprenticeship at the prestigious Guild Academy.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1); background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0)>Ermin's got one chance to get it right. If she fails she risks losing her two best friends... and her dreams. </span></p><p></p>