AK

12-year-old Paul is a Warrior, one of the boys who scout for the rebels in the civil war. He has no parents, he calls the war his mother and his gun, an AK 47, is the mark of his early entry into the adult world. At the war's end he buries his weapon and returns to school. But it's a fragile peace and soon he's re-using his Warrior skills and unearthing his gun. Peter Dickinson gives a sense of the shifts of power and the subtleties of the manipulation of raw force in this powerfully realistic novel. It manages to be hopeful and positive in its depiction of human beings overcoming and resisting force and holding on to their faith in each other.