After more than a decade, Michelle Paver has gone back to the Stone Age world of her massive children’s series, Wolf Brother. Tina Jackson finds out why

MICHELLE PAVER © Anthony Upton

Over a decade ago, Michelle Paver completed the last volume in her wildly popular Wolf Brother series. Set in the Stone Age, featuring the adventures of Torak and his companions Renn and Wolf and their quest to destroy the Soul Eaters, the books had sold 3 million copies globally – a million of those in the UK. Michelle won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for the last book in the series, 2009’s Ghost Hunter. Planned as a six-book series, the story was complete.

And now, just as it’s announced that the TV and film rights to Wolf Brother have been bought by Kindle Entertainment, the much-loved characters from the original Chronicles of Ancient Darkness are back in book form. Viper’s Daughter is the first in a new three-book Wolf Brother continuation series that takes Torak, Renn and Wolf away from the forest to face the perils of the frozen far north in a thrilling new adventure.

‘Having sworn blind for years and meant it – I always knew it was a six-book series and I gave them a good send-off – but for years after the characters did sort of hover around,’ says Michelle. There is a lupine element to the lean, elegant writer – a dignified wildness that sets her apart from the well-fed corporate clients whose backsides fill the comfy chairs in the exclusive London private members’ club where we meet.

‘Normally when I’ve written a book, and it’s been published, the characters have gone off into the world and I don’t think about them,’ she continues. ‘But that didn’t happen with Torak and Renn. So it was bubbling away. And I kept getting letters from readers, saying please write about them. And I said, not unless I have a very good idea.’

But Michelle says she was missing snow. ‘So I went up to North Norway. I was on my own. And I did have an idea. I realised, reading the books, there’s a lot of new psychological seams to mine – what Torak had been through, Renn’s background. And so that started putting flesh on the bones of the idea. So it’s not one book, it’s three, and taking it into a different place.’

Bringing to life an imaginary Stone Age world of demons and animistic beliefs, Viper’s Daughter is as dazzling and immersive an adventure as any of its Wolf Brother predecessors. It takes the familiar characters into a world of hunter-gatherers that is very different from the forest-dwellers of their home. ‘Every huntergatherer culture is very different from the others,’ says Michelle. ‘So I had by no means exhausted that for future characters and beliefs.’ For anyone new to the series, Viper’s Daughter works brilliantly as a story on its own.