Thirteen-year-old Twig, having always looked and felt different from his woodtroll family, learns that he is adopted and travels out of his Deepwoods home to find the place where he belongs. Young Twig lives in the Deepwoods, among the Woodtrolls, but he isn't one of them. In a brave attempt to find out where he belongs, Twig wanders into the mysterious, dangerous world beyond the deepwoods. He meets a collection of odd companions, such as his wise...

Apprenticed to the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax, a floating city of scholars, gossip, and treachery, fourteen-year-old Quint runs increasingly dangerous errands, which eventually bring him to a place of gruesome monsters that threaten his life and those of his friends.

Rook Barkwater, the young librarian knight, attempts to stop Vox Verlix, the Most High Academe, in his plot to take over Edgeworld once again.

Fleeing from the ruins of New Undertown, Rook Barkwater and the librarian knights and Felix Lodd and his banderbear friends must lead the escaping population to a new life in the Free Glades.

Quint leaves his studies at the Knights Academy in Sanctaphrax to assist his father Wind Jackall in his obsessive and dangerous quest to track down and bring to justice the evil Turbot Smeal.