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I'm just making my way through Barb Comyns' novels. I bought all of them from a charity shop a few weeks ago - she was new to me but I always snap up any old Virago Modern Classics that turn up. I'm loving her writing, it's unlike anything I've read before. I didn't know about the new biography - that's one for me!

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Just started it — pretty good!

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I felt similarly about ‘Impossible Creatures’ - huge fan of her previous books, I didn’t even try to persuade my daughter to read this one - there are still some great pages and turns of phrase, but I don’t think she’s a natural fantasy writer in the way that, say, Frances Hardinge is - a writer who feels far more the natural heir of Pullman. ‘Impossible Creatures’ felt like a misapplication of Rundell’s obvious talents.

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Yep agreed but I also think she’s going too far into being “literary” and promoting moral lessons. Haven’t read Hardinge, where should I start?

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Do you mean having a backstory based on a William Blake poem? I think most of her books have strong moral themes - kindness, resilience, doing what is right over what is legal, etc - and they’ve always stretched language - there’s a good essay where she talks about the importance of putting language in that children will look up in a dictionary, but crucially not doing that in the middle of an action scene.

Up to this point, I’ve been a huge fan, and that’s partly been a reason - it’s difficult to find books that push the reading age, while still largely being in the 9-12 range thematically - our daughter had largely moved onto YA stuff by 10, which means she has a great knowledge of different types of drug for a 12 year old.

I wonder if it’s because Rundell’s other books were grounded in the real world and research (going up the Amazon for Explorers, Rooftoppers drawing on her own experiences climbing college buildings) while this one felt constructed of other books and tropes? And as you say, the environmental metaphor is banging you over the head.

Hardinge - her most recent, Island of Whispers, came out the same time as Impossible Creatures and I thought it excellent - it’s a short illustrated book for older readers, that has a similar quality to Joan Aitken’s shorts - it could be a retelling of a Greek myth or European fairy tale, based on the archetype of the ferryman to the Isle of the Dead, but its original. It’s also atypical of her work, which tends to the long, but I thought was far more deserving.

Of her novels - I particularly like Fly by Night and the sequel Twilight Robbery - they’re the ones that remind me most of Pullman. I liked the way they have a heroine who is clever and cunning, but not precocious - her greatest skill is in letting adults underestimate her.

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