Review
Mal lives on a magical archipelago, a group of islands where unicorns, centaurs and griffins are not the stuff of legend, but real life animals. But they’re dying out. Mal’s baby griffin, Gelifen, is the very last one. And other species are in trouble.
Christopher lives in London and is staying with his grandfather in Scotland. He’s always attracted animals, and he’s just found out why: he comes from a line of guardians, that take care of the places where you can slip between the normal world and the Archipelago.
Pursued by a murderer – she doesn’t know why – Mal slips through to the normal world to rescue an escaping Gelifen and to ask for Christopher’s help. Magical creatures are dying, and they need to find out why. Together they embark on a fantastical and desperate voyage to save both their worlds.
*
Well, this is an instant classic. Total Narnia vibes, especially The Voyage of the Dawntreader, with lovely rich language and a real sense of serious moral purpose, good versus evil. Unlike C. S. Lewis’s books, which were rooted in Christianity, this book is about the climate crisis; although, like the Narnia books, you can just read it as a rollicking high stakes adventure tale with no further allegory needed.
Rundell is good at capturing a reader, with hooky openings, very short chapters and lots of cliffhangers.
First sentence:
It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him.
Although the action is, in general, fairly serious, she does sprinkle in some little quips (p. 75):
‘Sorry?’ The larger man breathed hard and angry on them, and his breath had whisky on it. ‘Sorry is for farting near the fruit bowl, girl.’
She also does a fine line in feasts (p. 82):
There was Ratwin’s fresh-caught finch-fish, and toast with slabs of melting butter. There was yellow cake, cut into cubes and mixed with jam and eaten with a spoon; it was superbly good.
And this Lewis-y sort of serious observation (p. 57):
And then she spoke the most powerful and exhausting, the bravest, most exasperating and galvanic sentence in the human language.
Some sentences have the power to change everything. There are the usual suspects: I love you, I hate you, I’m pregnant, I’m dying, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these:
‘I need your help.’
And lovely, sketched description, not overdone (p. 208):
For half a day, the voyage flew. The boat moved fast and sharp across the waves, skimming like a skipped stone.
Narrative perspective is third person omniscient, mostly focused through Christopher, sometimes through Mal, but with regular (excellent) narratorial intrusions.
If you’re 10 & up, and a reasonable reader, read this wonderful adventure. Just bear in mind that there is considerable peril and stakes are high – see info below – but also love, loyalty, courage and friendship.
326 pp. Print was not large.
> Click here for content info – spoilers, enter at own risk!
Non-graphic PG depictions of deaths, murders & generalised evil. Among others, two major characters, one human & one animal, die. Characters are almost always in considerable peril.
*
Rundell, K. (2023). Impossible creatures. Bloomsbury Children’s Group.
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I read this novel via my school library — support your local library!
