The Grimmelings

The title here is taken from an ancient Scots word describing the first and last gleams of the day. Many other colloquialisms, unfamiliar to a non-native audience but too good to miss, are listed at the start of each chapter of this intensely imagined novel. The author lives in New Zealand where her story is set but admits to an abiding obsession with Scottish folklore.  And not least legends about the Kelpie, a huge potentially murderous phantom black horse that never forgets or forgives any slight. This avenging spirit is brought to scary life once again in these pages.

Up against him are Ella and her younger sister Fiona, backed up by an apparently widowed mother and a granny with benign but unmistakeably witch-like powers. They are all trying to make a living from their horse-trekking business, with each animal very much its own personality. But with father mysteriously disappearing and then a local boy too, the family is unwelcome within the rest of their small rural community. So when Gus, a new, cheerful fifteen-year-old boy arrives on the scene and seems anxious to make friends with Ella, things look likely to improve. But is he all he seems?

Rachael King writes good, effective and sometime poetic prose. While her plot strains credulity towards the end it is still sufficiently tethered to everyday reality to just about remain convincing. Readers will learn a lot about horses too, not in terms of winning rosettes at gymkhanas but as working animals with their own needs and habits.  Rather than follow well-trodden adventure-story paths, there is a freshness of imagination in this story combined with prose that delights in exploring language while also telling an arresting tale.