Fourteen-year-old Brandon Ballard is a self-imposed prisoner in his own bedroom, consumed by anxiety, favourite target for the school bully, and a child gripped in a vice of fear. As punishment for getting suspended from school… again… Brandon is sent to stay on his grandparent’s rundown farm, to assist while ‘Dar’ recovers from a near fatal car accident. Brandon quickly discovers that the world outside his bedroom, he'd fought so hard to avoid, holds the secret to finally becoming unshackled from his pain. And with it, becoming the hero of an adventure he never dared to dream. 

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Brandon is transported into a Narnia’esque world where troll’s shelter under the fauna of Pitchbury Wood - the ancient forest bordering the farm - hiding from persecution and the destructive greed of the modern world. But when Councilor Basil Lackhshaft: a despicable, bullying authoritarian, and the latest shadowy official tasked with unearthing the trolls, invades the farm, Brandon is plunged into a life or death battle. A fight to not only help his grandparents protect their land, but an inner battle to rise above his fears and a fight to protect the innocence of the troll clan that shelters under the ancient forest. 

Trollrider subverts what we know about trolls by reimagining the lore with a moral story about the human condition. Readers will hopefully share a similar empathy with Brandon as Conor O’Malley in Patrick Ness’s, A Monster Calls; and the troll clan, with E.T’s fish-out-of-water plight.