Vox (The Edge Chronicles)

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Vox is the sixth book in the Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. The main character is Rook Barkwater, but it also features Vox Verlix rather largely.

The book starts by saying that the edge has had some strange goings-on. The edge has suddenly become a sweltering place, and many people are plotting.

Orbix Xaxis is in his tower, dropping two young librarian knights out of a cage into a pit full of monsters. When he hears flesh being ripped apart in the pit, he calls it a "Sweet Song". Meanwhile, Rook Barkwater is on patrol in a skycraft. Suddenly he is hit by a fireball and his craft crashes into the rocks below. Rook Barkwater is very upset because it was his skycraft, and if he does not have a skycraft he can't be a librarian. But soon he meets his old friend Felix, who comforts him and says that he can make a new craft. Rook is astonished to see his friend and Felix explains that with the librarians he never felt very important, because he was never picked to go to the freeglades and never really wanted to. Felix states that he has made a new organization called the ghosts of screetown. When Felix invites rook to dinner at the sunken palace, Rook sees that there is is a picture of a large family that used to live there. Readers feel sure that this is the family of Quintinius Vergenix, though the authors never tell us this. Rook returns to Undertown and is trapped by slavers, while trying to get back to the librarian knights. The slavers take him to Vox Verlix's crumbling palace of statues, where he spends a few days doing work for Vox Verlix.