What do you do when you meet a tohunga makutu? You run. When reality dissolves and myths and legends come alive? You run faster. And when the dead come to life and blood debts have to be paid, will you have the courage to do what must be done? Matiu Douglas has a bone tiki he stole from a tangi. His father's important new client wants it. Badly. And he has some very nasty friends. When Mat is forced to flee for his life, an unexpected meeting with a girl called Pania sets his world spinning. Suddenly he's running through the bush with a girl-clown, a dog who is way too human, and a long-dead warrior. Fearful creatures from legend are rising up around him, and Mat faces a terrifying ordeal.

When Matiu Douglas and his friends defeated Puarata, the tohunga makutu, they thought they’d won the war. Instead they started one. Now his warlocks are fighting for supremacy in a violent struggle spreading across the magical land of Aotearoa and into our world. The outcome will be determined by the taniwha Mat has promised to save. But Mat is about to discover no-one can be trusted when your enemies have already mastered powers he has barely begun to learn. Can loyalty and friendship prevail over centuries-old evil?

Everyone thinks Ngatoro-i-rangi is long dead, but Matiu Douglas knows he’s alive: because he hears the legendary tohunga’s voice inside his head! With exams approaching, all Mat really wants to do on his break in Taupo is a bit of study, and catch up with his magical mentor, Aethlyn Jones. But the secret struggle of the warlocks to dominate the hidden land of Aotearoa is spilling into modern New Zealand, and nowhere is safe. The warlocks are seeking Te Iho - The Heart - Puarata’s secret powerbase. Find it and they will hold sway in both worlds. When Jones is attacked and a fellow protégé kidnapped, Mat finds himself caught up in a deadly no-holds-barred struggle, on a path to Te Iho that is littered with death.

Justice is not enough. Aotearoa demands utu. Matiu Douglas is used to his father Tama’s job as a defence lawyer creating stress, but when Tama takes on a case in magical Aotearoa - the defence of Mat’s old enemy Donna Kyle - family tensions run high. But that is only the beginning of Mat’s worries. A jail-break becomes a man-hunt, and strange new alliances must be forged if justice is to be served. From the streets of early Auckland to wild and lawless Kororareka, the 'Hell-hole of the Pacific', and on to the trackless ocean, the lines between hunter and hunted will blur and dissolve. Old friendships and new loves will be tempered and tested. In the end, a price must be paid: good for good, and ill for ill.

It hasn't been an easy time for Matiu Douglas, magical Adept. One of his friends is now a ghost, his enemies have stolen the Treaty of Waitangi, he can't date the girl he really likes, and he keeps getting unwanted marriage proposals from a dangerous, centuries-old tohunga's daughter. But when his best friend, Riki, is snatched into the Ghost World of Aotearoa during a school trip, Mat has to put all his other worries aside and act fast. For Riki vanished at Parihaka, scene of one of the darkest acts from New Zealand's colonial past, and in Aotearoa such places are deadly dangerous.

For Matiu Douglas, apprentice tohunga, the ultimate test of his skill, courage and magical prowess awaits. Hine-nui-te-po, Goddess of Death, is calling and from all across Aotearoa, those who dream of power and immortality are gathering for the struggle. Mat and his friends must face old enemies and new as they seek to prevent the destruction of a city and the inexorable rise of evil. To succeed will bring immortality, power and the love of the goddess. To fail is to die, and doom the land. Return to Aotearoa, where past, present, myth and magic dwell together in one timeless, unforgettable place.