I have a strange name. I admit it. And there’s worse: I don’t eat meat. At all. And yet, I wrote a book where cannibals were the good guys.

Imagine you’re living in a world where you are surrounded on all sides by swarms of creatures that want nothing more than to bite your head off. You can’t blame the poor things — they’re starving! But what about you? What are *you* going to eat? All the plants in this world are poisonous. The insects too. And there’s not much nourishment to be had from the crumbling buildings of the vast city in which you live. Even the canals are full of starving monsters rather than fish.

No, unfortunately, the only food for you and your friends are creatures who are just as intelligent as you are…

I’m not quite sure what I would do in such a situation, so I wrote The Inferior to try and find out. Would I chase down the sentient monsters in order to eat them? Or would I prefer to starve? I don’t like books where the decisions are all easy and obvious. So, one of the first things I did in the story was to drop an intelligent, civilised young woman — a *vegetarian* woman — right into the midst of the cannibals. I wondered how long it would take for them to eat her and what the hunter who fell in love with her might try to do about it. His name — Stopmouth — is even stranger than mine!

Well, you can see the answers I came up with if you read the book. The results have been described as “heart-stopping”, “scary” and “enthralling”. However, some people were upset that the whole thing ended in what might be described as a cliff-hanger. The good news on that front, is that the tasty creatures working at David Fickling Books, will be publishing a sequel called, The Deserter, that answers most of the remaining questions. Best of all, The Deserter will not leave you dangling after the last page.

I hope you enjoy it!

Peadar O’Guilin

The Deserter comes out in paperback today!