The Giant’s Towers

Nobody has climbed the Giant’s Reach in living memory. Now Queen Ysolde the Old — who has decided that a realm nobody has mapped cannot be governed — is sending you north as her Royal Cartographer, with a lantern, a satchel, and a small horned owl who disapproves of everything. Your warrant: count the towers of the giant Grumwold, since he cannot be trusted to count them himself.

What’s inside

• 100 original tower logic puzzles in ten valleys, from easy 4×4 grids to fiendish 8×8, with the difficulty rising as you climb
• Every puzzle has exactly one solution, checked by computer, and can be solved by reasoning alone — no guessing needed
• Clear rules with diagrams, a step-by-step worked example and the giant’s six solving tricks
• A story told in a cartographer’s journal, with a map of the Reach, pages from the Royal Bestiary, a letter by eagle, a village song, and a twist at the summit, kept safely after the solutions
• Black-and-white ink illustrations for every chapter, and Quill the owl hiding in seven of them
• Large 8.5 × 11 inch pages, with full solutions at the back

How it works

Each valley is a square grid. Every row and every column holds towers of every height, each exactly once. The giant sits at the end of a row or column and counts the towers he can see: a taller tower hides every shorter one behind it. His counts are the numbers around the grid. Make them all come true.

For adults who love logic puzzles, brain teasers and classic fantasy: a thoughtful gift for anyone who would rather spend an evening in a storybook realm of giants, dragons and fairies. Book 1 of the Owlbrook Legends, complete on its own.