At Lantern Academy, every child belongs to a kind of Light. Every child except Rowan Finch.Eleven-year-old Rowan has spent his life being overlooked: last picked, barely noticed, and raised by a great-aunt who keeps his parents' photograph turned to the wall. Then the moon vanishes, a black lantern calls his name, and a road that should not exist carries him to Lantern Academy, a wandering school of light hidden beyond the world.
At the Academy, children are Kindled into Hearths: Emberlight, Tidelight, Rootlight, Stormlight, Mirrorlight, Starlight, and more. But when Rowan steps into the Ring of Lanterns, every light goes out. His gift wakes as Shadowlight, the rarest and most feared power of all, the same dark magic once carried by the Hollow King.
Now the school whispers that Rowan is dangerous. When students begin to go grey and empty, everyone knows who to blame. To clear his name, Rowan must trust a sharp-tongued girl who asks impossible questions, a kind boy with a brave green heart, and the darkness inside him that may not be a weapon after all.
Because something ancient is stirring beneath the Academy. Behind the Unlit Door, a grief-hungry darkness is waking. And the boy nobody chose may be the only one who can hold it back.
The Boy with the Shadowlight is the first book in
The Lantern Academy, a richly imagined middle-grade fantasy about found family, hidden magic, and the courage to become the thing the world has taught you to fear.
