The Harvest Tide Project (The Archisan Tales)

So much children’s fantasy sinks under the weight of its own portentousness that it is refreshing to encounter a book which places its emphasis on the comic, rather than the po-faced, mode. McGann’s novel, first in a projected trilogy, has serious points to make, principally about ‘men’s stupid love of war’ and about how Lorkrin, one of its two teenage protagonists, comes to understand that ‘people could die for stupid reasons’. But such points are made within a narrative so entertaining – if, perhaps, a little hectic – that they are never gratuitously didactic. Variously described as ‘a mischievous pair of rascals’ and ‘two errant children’, Lorkrin and his sister Taya are shape-changers, an attribute fully (and sometimes hilariously) exploited in their mission to protect their tribe, the Myunians, from their power-obsessed neighbours, the Noranians. The novel comprises an action-packed series of entrapments and escapes, successes and setbacks, and is populated by an apparently endless cast of divertingly weird creatures – human and otherwise. Young readers, at least those happy to stay the distance of 320 pages, will respond warmly to this extremely inventive and good-humoured novel.