“Only the most gifted in all Domhain are invited to our islands, where generations of Channellers have walked before you. Each of you is here because you have a precious gift ... You are the elite. You’re the future of Domhain, its salvation and its glory. Here on Lambay you’ll receive the training and the knowledge to unlock the power within you.” As a young man listens earnestly to this grand speech, the woman responsible for his presence there watches him closely.
Éadha has protected Ionáin since they were children, and plans to continue doing so even in this strange new setting, where he is believed to be a gifted Channeller in training. She, in a subordinate role, secretly transfers her own power to him, but it’s only a matter of time before their relationship becomes fraught. Soon “what she’d thought was the simplest thing – to stand beside her oldest friend in all the world – had become something almost impossible”; soon she is someone he “can only talk to behind locked doors or hidden in the trees”.
Alongside this there is what Éadha has discovered about the true source of the Channellers’ power – how it involves harnessing the life force of a lesser class, known as Fodder – and a burgeoning attraction to Gry, a fellow apprentice who seems to have secret gifts of his own.
This debut novel from Louth-based author Clíodhna O’Sullivan, Her Hidden Fire (Penguin, £9.99), demonstrates how to do romantasy effectively. Drawing on Irish geography, myth and history, along with the troublesome exploitative systems of modern life, O’Sullivan paints a compelling portrait of a deeply unequal society and offers just enough hope – in the form of magic, dragons and trembling sexual tension – to make it bearable. The oft-maligned trope of the love triangle – which at its best is just not about who to kiss but what kind of person the protagonist chooses to be – is deployed beautifully here, and the distance between Domhain and our own reality allows for a thoughtful look at what it means to sacrifice oneself for others.
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Magic of a more nebulous sort propels Kristin Dwyer’s In Time with You (Rock the Boat, £8.99), in which Nieve’s attempts to unravel the past to save her boyfriend Carter from drowning result in numerous changes to the timeline. As she relives her freshman year of college, she’s determined to keep Carter alive, even if it means never being with him, but the choices she makes prove too drastic, too large. “Now,” her grandmother explains, “every time you try to do something different, time gives you a different version of herself”.
Realities shift in ways Nieve can’t figure out, and she’s unsure how to save Carter now – or, indeed, what version of Carter exists here. “What else don’t I know when it comes to Carter?” she wonders, witnessing his romantic entanglement with her cousin. “Did I always not know? Was it always like this and I just don’t remember?”
Meanwhile, she struggles with her art project – an echo of her own uncertain identity – and her fascination with Carter’s best friend, Max, whose apparent dislike for her conceals how much they have in common. This is not quite a love triangle – we’re rooting firmly for Max from early on – but the narrative suspense is maintained by time pushing back on any progress made, and the mystery of what – or who – exactly this force is trying to protect. This timeslip romance is both swoony and smart; definitely good for the soul.
Time travel is also at play in Emiko Jean’s Love Me Tomorrow (Simon & Schuster, £9.99), in which Emma’s final year of high school coincides with the arrival of love letters from the future. Occasional cheesy language aside (“Yet here I am. Against the odds. Against time. I’ve come back for you, Emma.”), this is an engrossing account of “a classic risk-averse kind of girl” learning to take chances after the heartbreak of her parents’ divorce.
With three potential options for the letter-writer – the familiar comfort of the boy next door; the surprising connection with the rich boy whose house she cleans; and the artistic understanding of her violin mentor – Emma tries to figure out where her destiny lies. It is, of course, more nuanced than picking the correct cute guy, and there’s a satisfying depth to Emma’s familial relationships and friendships that makes this coming-of-age romance feel authentic and moving.
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There is a less convincing romance in Billy Ray’s Burn the Water (Scholastic, £8.99), a debut novel from the award-wining screenwriter (responsible for, among other things, two of the Hunger Games adaptations). Rafe and Jule are a 25th-century Romeo and Juliet, on opposite sides of a centuries-long war between Rogues and Crowns in a mostly-drowned London. These star-crossed lovers are admirable but distant; one wonders if they would work more effectively on screen than on the page.
What is, however, rendered brilliantly on paper is the world – a London that is “a wet and bloody chaos, much of it under six feet of polar water”, in which eels swim through the lobbies of once-impressive buildings and “foliage wrapped around all those columns of glass and steel, entombing them in an embrace of vines and leaves and branches, so thick that no sunlight reflected off the windows any more”. Birds nest in these “phantom towers” and Big Ben has been frozen at 6.43am for hundreds of years.
A combination of environmental disaster (“the Great Soak”) and chemical warfare has left the handful of survivors scrambling for what resources remain and constantly battling one another for scraps. There are action sequences throughout, including a memorable depiction of the submerged underground system, that reflect the writer’s cinematic eye; the fast pace compensates for some of the wobblier character moments.
Finally, Luke Palmer is on familiar ground with his exploration of teenage masculinity in Big Words (Barrington Stoke, £7.99), though this is a shorter work than usual. The Barrington Stoke imprint specialises in accessible texts for young readers while ensuring that the interest level remains age-appropriate; their YA novellas use language carefully but never patronise the intended readership (a wide range of teenagers, including those with learning difficulties, those new to English, and those who are so-called “good” readers but may crave something shorter than a set text from their leisure reading).
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Palmer introduces us to Sam and his mates, a friend group that fractures after an accident at their favourite hangout leaves two of them injured. The “rules” that led to this disaster – “No complaining. No backing down” – have been shaped by Sam’s desire to seem “big” after his father’s departure. “If you’re the biggest, the most powerful, the most important, there’s no way anyone’s going to overlook you. Or leave you.”
But now he’s “big” in “the way that a bomb is big. It’s like I’m radioactive”. As Sam copes with the fallout, he uncovers the truths his friends haven’t felt safe sharing with him – or maybe the things he never wanted to see – and faces up to what bravery really looks like. Palmer understands the vulnerabilities and insecurities of young men without ever getting preachy or sentimental about it; this is another excellent addition to his body of work.
