Lots of Australian names are emerging lately in the fantasy fiction world.
Garth Nix draws on his early bookselling experiences in Canberra in The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (Allen and Unwin, $24.99), set in London in 1983. Eighteen-year-old art student Susan Arkham's quest to find her father in London sees her enter the world of magical booksellers, who are "authorised to kill ... and sell books", traits used to fend off the deadly incursions of the mythical "Old World".
Susan bonds with gender-shifting Merlin St. Jacques, a young magical bookseller, who, in turn, is seeking the truth of his mother's mysterious death. Their journey, while it will unearth unexpected familial truths, will prove extremely dangerous, with Susan needing to uncover her latent magical ability. Nix has delivered another imaginative and well-rounded fantasy.
Award-winning author and illustrator Shaun Tan's Dog (Allen and Unwin, $19.99 ) imagines, in verse and evocative paintings, "the bond between humans and dogs as ongoing cycle of death and rebirth through different places and times, from prehistory to the present and future". Tan's tiny figures on each page may seem overwhelmed by their universes, but ultimately dogs and humans come together, "walking side by side as if it had always been this way".
American-born Jack Dann, a long-time resident in Australia, has won numerous literary awards. The handsomely packaged Shadows in the Stone: A Book of Transformations (IFWG Publishing, $46.99), which has its origins in Dann's 2016 doctoral thesis at the University of Queensland, is set in an alternative Renaissance Italy.
Spinning off the concept of Gnosticism, Dann says his novel "is about upending all of our traditional ideas about traditional religion". Dann's protagonists, Louisa Morgan and Lucian Ben-Hananiah, embark on an epic journey leading to a final cosmic battle between good and evil. Shadows in the Stone is a rich complex theological fantasy novel that works on several levels.
The Other Side of the Sky (Allen and Unwin, $19.99), first of a duology by Melbourne-based Amie Kaufman and American writer Meagan Spooner, successfully targets a YA audience. The authors juxtapose the two main characters, Prince North who lives in a sky city, but has fallen to earth, where the goddess Nimh is seeing her divinity challenged. Both need to confront dissident factions of their communities, while seeking to resolve their differences both personally and culturally, in order to survive.
Award-winning author Michel Faber, who grew up in Australia, says of, D. A Tale of Two Worlds (Doubleday $32.99), that "I finished it just in time for the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens's death". Faber's heroine, Dhikilo, an adopted African refugee, has grown up in a small English seaside town, whose inhabitants suddenly find that the letter D has disappeared from the alphabet. Dhikilo goes in search of the missing D's, via a portal leading to the Land of Liminus, where Dickensian references abound. Magwitches are real witches and the tyrannical dictator, the Gamp, has echoes of Donald Trump. D, with intriguing literary and linguistic undertones, has echoes of the Wizard of Oz.
British author Alex Pheby's Mordew (Galley Begger Press), the first in a dark atmospheric trilogy, has drawn comparison with the novels of Mervyn Peake and Philip Pullman. The novel follows Nathan Treeves, a young boy living in the slums of Mordew, a sprawling, dark, patriarchal city, built over the dead body of the Weftling God. Nathan is able to tap into its powers to combat the Master of Mordew. With extensive glossaries, Mordew is a book to savour, as Pheby examines issues of social inequality and corruption of power within his elaborately imagined world.
Bestselling American author Naomi Novik begins her 'Scholomance' series with A Deadly Education (Del Rey, $32.99), publicised as "a twisted, super-dark, super-modern, female-led Harry Potter" novel. In a racially diverse magic school, without teachers, death is ever present from demonic forces, the "mals". Students either graduate or die. Novik's truculent main character, El Higgins, is an outsider with a literally deadly ability. "Just give me a chance and I'll kill . . . untold millions, and make myself the dark Queen of the world". Novik takes a while to build narrative pace, partly due to info dumps, but builds to a strong conclusion.
British author, Nydia Hetherington's impressive debut novel, A Girl Made of Air (Quercus, $32.99), a mix of magic fantasy and realism, follows the life of 'Mouse', "the greatest funambulist who ever lived". Mouse, neglected by her circus family, is taken up by the charismatic and mysterious Serendipity Wilson, whose Manx folklore stories, published as separate chapters, provide sustenance for Mouse as she grows up. Mouse succeeds, first as a tightrope artist, and then as a celebrity in New York, but is always haunted by the need to find Serendipity's missing daughter. A Girl Made of Air is a redemptive story of love and loss.
