Aventerra 01. Laura und das Geheimnis von Aventerra

Laura und das Geheimnis von Aventerra opens Peter Freund's Laura series. Laura is a boarding-school student who is bad at maths but rides and fences well, and strange things have started happening around her: a flock of crows attacks her out riding, she hears voices, and she catches movement in photographs and portraits.

On the night before her thirteenth birthday she dreams that her long-vanished father has returned with something to tell her. He is being held prisoner on Aventerra, a planet bound up with the fate of the Earth and now threatened by dark powers. Laura learns she has been chosen as the Guardian of the Light: she must save Elysion, the Keeper of the Light, from certain death, or the black prince Borboron will seize Aventerra and destroy the Earth.

She has help — Rauenhauch, the Whispering Mist, and Portak, the Stone Giant — but Borboron has dangerous allies of his own. A middle-grade fantasy with a fully built secondary world and a sizeable sequence of sequels.