Impossible Creatures: Perfectly serviceable

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

I really wish I hadn’t seen all the hype around Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures — the Waterstones Prize, the comparisons to C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Rowling, and Tolkien, the sales numbers off the charts. That way I could have come to the book clean of expectations, even though I (as one should) took all such comparisons with heaping bucketfuls of salt, if not entire mines’ worth. Unfortunately, I did see all those comparisons, and so despite all that salt, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what in the end turned out to be a perfectly serviceable MG fantasy, but one whose comparisons honestly just mystify me.

The basic premise of the novel comes via a character explaining to his grandson Christopher that “ There is a secret place … hidden from us to keep it safe — where all the creatures of myth still live and thrive … the Archipelago … thirty-four islands —some as large as Denmark, some as small as a town square … It’s the last surviving magic place.” What drives the story’s action and urgency is that the magic that the Archipelago needs to remain hidden and that all the creatures need to survive is somehow being drained. To solve the mystery of how and why, a small group travels from island to island gathering information and necessary materials to save the Archipelago:

• Christopher: a young boy from our world whose family has been the “Guardians” of the Archipelago
• Mal: a young girl of the Archipelago with a magic coat that lets her fly and an unknown connection to what is happening
• Fidens Nighthand: a smuggler and Berserker, warriors whose job at one time was to guard the Immortal (a being at the center of the Archipelago’s history though the last one known was a hundred years ago)
• Irian: a scientist concerned about what is happening to the Archipelago’s magic and the number of creatures dying off

The book starts off with a bang, as we’re introduced to the two younger characters via two separate POV chapters. Christopher’s begins with “It was a very fine day, until something tried to eat him,” while Mal’s starts off with “It was a very fine day, until somebody tried to kill her.” We then back up a bit to get some exposition and character introductions out of the way: Christopher’s mom is dead, his dad is afraid of everything, he comes from a long line of Archipelago Guardians, Mal’s an orphan being raised by her great-Aunt Leonor who forbids “an immense, book-length list of things.

But soon we’re into the thick of action, with Christopher plunged into the Archipelago, Mal almost murdered, a flight that lands both of them on Nighthand’s boat, the addition of Irian to the group, and then a quest involving a lot of fast-paced island hopping, encounters with fantastical creatures (friendly and not-so-much), some startling revelations, and a final climax at the center of magic with the big bad.

To start with the positives, the two young characters are highly engaging, easy to spend time with and even easier to root for. As one of the adult characters says later in the book: “Children have been underestimated for hundreds of years,” and here Christopher and Mal prove that faith in their ability to rise to the occasion is absolutely earned. As engaging as they are individually, their friendship and loyalty to one another also shines throughout the book.

The number and variety of creatures is another positive that will surely engross young readers, as Rundell mines myths from all over the world, introducing into the mix dragons, unicorns, sphinxes, Kankos, karkadanns, manticores, and more. As a nice touch, an illustrated glossary at the end offers up a complete listing with extra information about each of the creature’s we meet.

The book as noted is fast paced, and the nearly non-stop action will probably win over a number of young readers as the characters fly (sometimes literally) from one predicament to another, barely escaping death. That isn’t to say there isn’t loss, however, as Rundell does not shy away from the world’s darker aspects, as the characters will experience death more than once, something to consider when deciding what age reader adults might purchase this book for. And the action also has a substantive allegorical connection to our own world in how too many people are willing to turn a blind eye to the current mass extinction we’re moving through or the impact of climate change.

If the fast-paced action will be to the liking of many a young reader, it’s also I’d say a barrier to Impossible Creatures being one of the books that “crosses over” into dual territory with adult literature or even into older YA. The fast pace combined with the episodic one-island-after-another structure means that we don’t linger in any scene, or any emotion, for very long. So while the variety of the creatures is a plus, it’s all done in a very cursory fashion, so we don’t really (save for a few types) get to savor the wonder of coming across a nereid or dragon or unicorn or get a sense of them having individualized personas before we’ve left them behind to encounter yet another creature.

That holds true as well for the Archipelago itself and the underlying worldbuilding of this universe, which feels all too thin and is one of the biggest reasons the novel falls short of those comparison works like Narnia, Hogwarts, or Middle-Earth, which feel like wholly realized worlds, rich in detail and history. In contrast, the Archipelago feels like a setting, not a place. In the same vein, while the two main youthful characters come alive and are engaging, the others are far less developed, both in their own sense of individuality and in their interactions (a romance angle for instance feels more like a plot prop than an attraction that grew naturally out of the two characters’ personalities and interactions and the adversary feels pulled off the stock villain shelf)

The literalness of much of it doesn’t help (calling the setting the Archipelago rather than a more atmospheric name — like Earthsea — or naming the immortal center of the magic “The Immortal”), nor does the encyclopedic nature of the bestiary, which sometimes makes it feel like we’re running through a checklist of global myths. In fact, if I had to generalize my response it would be that Impossible Creatures has a sense of remove to it, almost as if it were a craft exercise: “take your adventure story but now write it as a fantasy story”. The recipe elements are there: fantastical creatures, evil villain wanting to dominate, a sad death after the accordant plot beats, etc. They’re presented as real, but they don’t feel real as good fantasy should.

The best fantasists are tour guides first and writers second; they don’t seem to be crafting a world so much as having us over into their living room and plying us with photo after photo and anecdote after anecdote about this wonderful trip they just go back from. Rundell knows how to write the story here, but I can’t say I felt she ever lived in, or even visited, the Archipelago.

Though perhaps that is overly harsh. As I said at the start, Impossible Creatures is a perfectly serviceable, even enjoyable MG book with a lot to recommend it to younger readers who I’m sure will eagerly await the promised sequel. If it won’t garner a similar reaction from older teens or adults, that’s hardly a mark against an MG book. And if it won’t linger long in the minds of its readers and down through the decades like Narnia or Middle-Earth, that’s hardly a fair standard — how many books do, after all? So happily recommended as a gift for younger readers (but think about how young given the deaths that occur) but that’s as far as the recommendation goes.