Roamers

a story about wandering forever

What Roamers is about

A girl who never thought her life mattered finds out it will never end.

At twenty-one, Esmé Fawster has fought her way out of years of depression and is tentatively settling into an ordinary life in a decaying world. But when she is inexplicably stabbed in broad daylight and her family vanishes, her fragile peace unravels entirely. As she discovers she is immortal, the fantastical world she once escaped into through stories turns out to be real, and far more violent and grief-stricken than she ever imagined. Now Esmé must choose: embrace this impossible existence and fight to find her family, or reject it, the way she once rejected life itself. Yet the immortals who never learned to accept their condition are the very ones hunting her down.

A fantastical backpacking trip set to a rock score, Roamers is first and foremost an adventure and a road-trip fantasy, steeped in wanderlust, history, nature and the folk magic of ancient civilisations. Expect wild camping (among cryptids), witchcraft and alchemy, romance, winged wanderers struggling with immortality, and a secret network of millennia-old youth hostels scattered across the globe, where found families are made.

Esmé will take you all over a world wider than you think, where the road never really ends and the land itself keeps whispering that there is always more to discover. With her friends, she sets out to unravel her own origins, and those of the myths, folklore and legends that shaped humanity, just as its twilight approaches. At its heart, Roamers is about the fear of loss, and what immortality means for someone who never expected much of life in the first place.

YA crossover · upmarket fantasy

  • If you like these other books, you might also enjoy Roamers...

    Who is it for

    If you’ve enjoyed books such as The Mirror Visitor Quartet by Christelle Dabos, The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab, How to Stop Time by Matt Haig or The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, or if you grew up reading sagas like Percy Jackson, I think you’ll love Roamers. I wrote it as a gripping summer read: an adventure between the sea and the mountains, and a journey full of discoveries that will make you marvel at our world. It’s the kind of book you can take anywhere on your travels, to the beach or on the train. Above all, it’s an escape for any twenty-something struggling to find magic in the ordinary life their teenage self once dreaded.

  • Make sure you grab these to start reading Roamers in the best conditions

    Roamers starter pack

    The Roamers starter pack

  • "Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep"

    Why angels?

    Let me say this first: I am not promoting any religion through Roamers. I have simply always been fascinated by angels as folkloric creatures, perhaps because some form of winged human appears in the myths of almost every culture in the world. As a child, playing with other children, you would inevitably be asked: what would your dream superpower be? For as long as I can remember, my answer was flying. Not very original, I know. But to soar through the air… To grow wings would be to free oneself from the human condition. And I was certain of one thing: to fly, I would need wings. I didn’t want to fly like Peter Pan, held up by nothing but happy thoughts. I wanted wide, powerful, feathered wings that could carry me and hold me up in the sky. That was my one wish.

    My angels are called Messengers, after their original purpose. They are travellers, crossing borders, time and space to deliver messages they themselves struggle to understand. They gather in secret youth hostels, the kind with battered sofas and old guitars. Les Alcines is one of these beat-up paradises. How I wish I could show you what it’s like… In the meantime, listen to Les Alcines’ summer playlist on this page to hear what the Messengers there are playing right now. At least you’ll get a sense of the vibe!