YOUNG ADULT FICTION:An outward-looking approach to children's fiction is revealing a hint of a new Ireland
THE PAST TWO decades have seen a mini-revolution in Irish children's literature. There are several manifestations of this, one of the most remarkable being the extent to which many of our writers no longer feel limited by the country's history or geography in choosing their theme or setting. Publishers' lists should always find room for books that reflect - or, even better, illuminate - in realistic or contemporary terms the various Irelands familiar to our children and adolescents.
But there is a world, real and imaginary, elsewhere and it is good to find that many children's writers are increasingly drawn to it as a change from being attracted to fictions which dwell on the immediately and exclusively local.
While there are some Irish echoes in Celine Kiernan's striking debut novel, The Poison Throne(O'Brien Press, 468pp, €12.99) the setting, both in place and time, is unnamed: the former hints at a kingdom somewhere in southern Europe, the latter would seem to be the 14th century. Here is a territory ruled over by King Jonathon, presiding over a court and country undergoing radical social and political change. At the book's hub is the relationship between the king and his two sons; one of these, Razi, born out of wedlock, enjoys his father's favour, while the legitimate heir, Alberon, is in exile.
When 15-year-old Wynter Moorehawke and her lord protector father return to their country after some time away, they soon find themselves entangled in the decidedly murky and violent world of royal intrigue, complicated by the presence of Razi's enigmatic young friend Christopher. Add some talking cats and some appearing and disappearing ghosts and we have the material for a fascinating historical fantasy, characterised by vivid, colourful writing, some wonderfully reconstructed 14th-century speech and a fondness for the expressive simile: " . . . his voice as subtle as snow falling on snow". Warmly recommended, for readers of 14 and well beyond.
The historical approach to fantasy favoured by Kiernan gives way, in Oisín McGann's Strangled Silence(Corgi, 436pp, £12.99) to the futuristic. It is, however, a not-too-distant future, set in a London where the citizens are under permanent governmental surveillance. When Amina Mir, a determined young trainee journalist, goes along to interview lottery winner Ivor McMorris, the conversation is to take a dramatically different turn from what she had been expecting. Ivor, a veteran of the ongoing war in Sinnostan, feels he may be a victim of false-memory syndrome.
Amina is immediately interested and her pursuit of his story will be her introduction to a sinister, shadowy world of conspiracy theorists, political double-dealing and media distortion. McGann, in his most accomplished young-adult novel to date, handles all of these (and more) with an excellent sense of pace and occasional flashes of ironic humour. The result is an impressive and highly intelligent political thriller.
Humour, ironic and otherwise, has been a key element in the success of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowladventures, now having their sixth (and, for the time being at least, their final) outing in Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox(Puffin, 369pp, £12.99). When an Irish writer endows his well-established hero with new twin brothers and calls them Beckett and Myles, there are hints of the sort of Ireland we are in here; these are later confirmed in references to Alice's Adventures in Wonderlandand in the general air of inventive absurdity. It turns out the central battle Artemis has to fight here is with a younger version of himself, whom he will meet by travelling backwards in time as he embarks on a mission to find the antidote to cure the illness afflicting his mother. The plot is fiendishly clever and complex but the book's most compelling aspect is the psychological dimension of the switching inter-relationships between the two Artemises.
Whereas much of Colfer's Ireland is, literally, under the ground, Derek Landy's, in his Skulduggerystories, is, in a more metaphorical sense, "underground". We now visit it for a second time in Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire(HarperCollins, 351pp, £12.99).
Here, young Stephanie Edgley - transformed to Valkyrie Cain - once again joins forces with skeletal detective Skulduggery. Their mission is to protect their native Dublin from an array of some very grotesque creatures indeed.
Landy's fiction draws on and exploits what HP Lovecraft once diagnosed as "that current of weirdness in Irish literature", cleverly juxtaposing the macabre and the ghoulish with slick, laconic one-liners, the latter particularly evident in the banter between Stephanie and her mentor.
It all amounts to a fun-centred frolic, though arachnophobic readers should approach certain pages with caution.
Robert Dunbar is a commentator on children's books and reading