del Ryder and the Crystal Seed

Darkness is spreading across mystic Azdia. Soon, all of life will stop glowing with light. Soon, the trees will no longer spring to life. Even the mighty feldroes will cease to roam the forests. Already, many lumens, the shape-shifting caretakers of Azdia, have lost faith in their provider and protector, the mysterious Mr. Thicket. The only hope for the creatures of Azdia are the awaited chosen ones sent from another world called Earth.

Del Ryder, an ordinary eleven year old girl with something to prove and looking for a place to belong, leads her three best friends through the magic portal into Azdia. There they meet Crimson, a lumen full of hope, who believes Del and her friends are the ones they have been waiting for. Unwilling to accept their destiny, the children still manage to enlist Crimson’s help in what becomes a fight for their own survival. Held hostage by living trees, battered by storms, and caught in a stampede of feldroes, the darkness of Azdia blocks them at every stage of their adventure. But Del and her friends persevere, following the clues of a cryptic riddle, in the hope that it leads them home.

Read the book that has been called "a well crafted fantasy reminiscent of Madeleine L'Engle and C.S. Lewis"

On a road trip across western Canada, a boy and his two older sisters listened as their mother read them The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Although he knew he loved the story, and as a teenager went on to fall even more in love with The Lord of the Rings, it wasn't until the year he was turning 40 that Matthew David Brough felt the full force of these books. That was when he sat down to write a story and out came Del Ryder and the Crystal Seed, the first book in a fast-paced fantasy adventure series for ages eight and up. 

Matthew is also the devoted husband of Cheryl, loving father of Juliet, and the pastor of a small Presbyterian Church in Winnipeg, Canada. In both his reading and writing, he avoids books that moralize or "preach," but loves stories of hope.