Impossible Creatures

Katherine Rundell’s middle-grade fantasy Impossible Creatures, which was released in the U.K. in September 2023, arrives stateside a year later burdened with something close to impossible expectations. Ecstatic reviewers have likened the book, which has already captured an impressive bagful of awards, to works by Phillip Pullman, C. S. Lewis, and—gulp—J. R. R. Tolkien. Large boots to fill for Rundell, and something of a dare to prospective readers wondering if they’re truly about to crack open The Next Big Classic. Better, perhaps, to simply meet Impossible Creatures as it stands: a story that doesn’t insist on breaking new ground, delivers pleasant thrills, and remains cleanly within the parameters of its genre. It’s huge, reasonable fun once the hype machine is turned off.

The tale revolves around two not-quite-teenage heroes: Christopher Forrester, from London; and Mal Arvorian, from Atidina, one island among 34 in the Archipelago, a realm magically concealed in the Atlantic Ocean. Mal, able to fly with the aid of a charmed coat, is fiercely self-possessed. “She walked with the look of a moveable battleground,” we learn. “She was a one-girl army . . . she had the agility of a child and the nerves of all eternity.” No less capable (both kids are decisive to the point of occasional rashness), Christopher is more practical and tender-hearted. Animals are drawn to him (his “allegiance was to wild and living things”) because, mysteriously, he is touched with a bit of “the glimourie,” a primal magic that animates the Archipelago.

Inevitably, an intersecting of worlds occurs, and Christopher joins Mal in the Archipelago as she attempts to evade a man who, for reasons Mal can’t guess, wants to kill her. The larger plot is driven by a calamitous development: the glimourie, as Mal begins to suspect during her solo flying excursions, is losing its vitality. Animals are dying in the Archipelago, and the realm’s soil is degrading. Christopher and Mal, their friendship taking hold immediately, realize they need to shake Mal’s pursuer and save the islands somehow, endeavors that may be intertwined.

A type of quest ensues. Allies—including a literally fearless Berserker, an earnest marine scientist, and a testy squirrel-like creature—are enlisted. The band moves from one island to the next, seeking insight and assistance from various guides. Unicorns, dragons, and a host of other storybook beasts appear. An elaborate myth involving a primeval magical tree, a nearly impenetrable maze, and a lamentably oblivious godlike being known as the Immortal is slowly pieced together. A primary character’s destiny is gradually unveiled. Tolkien likely would be pleased. Many readers will be charmed.

The islands of the Archipelago, which are overrun with mythical animals, allow Rundell wide scope for the oft-invoked “world-building” readers expect from fantasy tales. Centaurs, mermaids and griffins populate the Archipelago, sure; but Rundell also packs in lesser-known exotica: longmas, hippocamps, kankos, and manticores. A handy illustrated bestiary at the back of the book, in which we learn that lavellans are provoked when humans engage in “sniffing, laughing, and all forms of interpretive dance,” and that unicorns “carefully and politely trample [potential riders] into the ground,” is something of a whimsical aide.

Subtext feels ever ready to bubble up and swamp the book, but to her credit, Rundell is more concerned with telling a propulsive, vivid story than hammering readers with lectures on climate change or species extinction. These concerns lurk but never commandeer. Instead, and better, we get private turmoil: a fear of one’s calling, anxiety over the responsibilities that come with age.

At times, the psychological deftness of the story is overtaken by an exalted, fabulist-leaning voice that may land as precious on some ears. “Love” can’t be just “love”—it must be a “ferocious and careful love.” Townspeople have “shrewd, hard-worked hands and faces.” A creature “that came around the corner of the curving corridor” has “hard intelligence in its eyes.” These pronouncements, modifier-thick, apply brakes to the story. In the middle of a tense scene, a manticore says, “You have the bumptious, graceless confidence of the recently born.” Semi-aphorisms dot the pages: “The words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these: ‘I need your help,’” or “Even the wisest of the old forget, sometimes, the care and subtlety of the young.” The line between generous and overwrought feels, at times in Impossible Creatures, porous.

Moments of surprise stand out. There is an unexpected reverse incredulity in which Archipelagans tell Christopher they find it as difficult to accept the existence of, say, giraffes or hedgehogs as it was for him—prior to visiting the Archipelago—to believe in nereids. An anxious meeting with a group of sphinxes eases when the lion-like creatures confess even they are tiring of the riddles they ask and are beginning to feel underwhelmed by the ostensible gravitas of their station. In these passages, Impossible Creatures, the first volume in a projected series, feels fired by something truly fresh, something unbound in ways young readers might not anticipate. “Children have been underestimated for hundreds of years,” a character observes near the end of the novel. “Why are you continuing the tedious tradition?” It's easy to imagine Rundell herself levelling this critique broadly—perhaps even in self-challenge—beyond the confines of her smart and satisfying story. It might not be impossible for her to raise the bar on her sequel.