Starchild and Witchfire

There never seems any shortage of fantasy, but David Henshall has a lovely style, mixing the plain and the incredible, and also allows humour to undercut the pomposity from which this genre suffers. he's not afraid of his imagination, creating localised snow in mid-summer in his opening pages yet also letting us feel the poverty and daily grind of the family's life. When it takes flight the story is grand and dramatic, but there's always a sense of the absurd and a knowledge of the way power corrupts. This is a writer to watch for.