When thirteen-year-old Gelsem is kidnapped in the night from her peaceful home on Level Gee, the timid girl is shocked to wake up on Level Pee, the 'penitentiary'. Stuck in a foreign realm populated entirely by criminals, Gelsem manages to befriend a group of pre-teen revolutionaries, among them a young Giantess and a boy harboring a great secret. In order to escape, the young teens must enlist the help of the Panjandrum, a professional thief turned accidental monarch and prisoner to the Level's bureaucratic elite. Desperate to find a way home to her family, Gelsem is forced to learn some hard truths about trust and friendship while dodging conniving politicians, mind-controlling spirits and a murderous sculptor determined to turn all of the children on the Level into macabre statuary. Thus begins Gelsem's extraordinary adventure in the first book of the Aerolith Adventure series, Panjandrum.