Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time by Philip Reeve

Cover: Paddy Donnelly

‘The sea . . . was full of tastes and flavours. . . It was like a tapestry of many coloured threads, and every thread was a current that led to another cove, or another deep, or another island, or another time.’ (p 260)

Traction record

Philip Reeve is one of the very finest contemporary writers of fantasy for MG/YA.  However, his novels are not the typical warriors/mages/dragons kind of fantasy. They do not involve heroic quests to fulfil rhyming prophecies, nor do they feature such currently rather over-used tropes as academies of magic, mortal combat trials or romantically-inclined vampires. Rather it is the remarkably rich originality of Philip Reeve’s imagined worlds that makes his books so special. 

He is also a very versatile writer. Aside from many entertaining books for younger readers (often working with Sarah McIntyre), he has already created several towering, but completely distinctive,  masterpieces of speculative fiction for  MG/YA. The Mortal Engines sequence is a highly regarded triumph, and rightly so.* It is sometimes described as ‘steam punk’, but its hugely inventive ‘traction cities’, and the thrilling adventures built around them, also involve richly drawn characters and highly involving human drama. The later-written prequel trilogy, Fever Crumb, is far too good to live in the shadows of its better-known predecessor. Finally, this world was topped up with an enjoyable collection of short stories in Night Flights and some quite superb additional illustrations in The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines.

However, for me, the best of the best of his previous work is the Railhead trilogy. This startlingly imagined world, centring around sentient trains, is a mesmerising experience. It is not only the wildest of rides, but has fascinating socio-political and even mystical overtones too. 

There are also a couple of splendid stand-alone novels, including the justly acclaimed  Here Lies Arthur. 

Deep and wild

In 2021 Philip Reeve started a new series with Utterly Dark and the Face of the Deep. Perhaps for a slightly younger audience**, it is once again very different in feel from these others. However, it shares with its predecessors both the strength of imagination and the quality of writing that are Philip Reeve hallmarks. Set in the early nineteenth century, a small but rich cast of characters, living on a wild and remote island, act out the conflict between ‘enlightened’ ideas of science and the powerful, elemental ‘magic’ of the sea. The writing is superbly descriptive, strongly evoking landscapes, weathers and moods and the story rapidly builds to a hugely exciting sequence of climaxes. 

Last year, a second volume was added, Utterly Dark and the Heart of the Wild, which takes Utterly to a quite different, but equally thrilling location, the ‘Hunter’s Wood’. The author draws in many aspects of traditional landscape magic, Druid circles, chalk figures and,  of course, the Horned Hunter himself. Yet he skilfully works these into his own wildly-imagined world, continuing his themes in a contrasting context. Whilst the first Utterly Dark book is a story of the ocean, this one is largely about the land, and its new elements make it differently the same in just the way a good sequel should be.

Timely

Now this year Philip Reeve adds Utterly Dark and the Tides of Time and this concluding title of the trilogy is the richest and most complex of the three. A thrilling triumph, it  lifts the whole story onto another level, into (literally) another dimension, and firmly into the realm of great children’s fantasies. 

This book starts where the first did, on the Wildsea island of 1812, and this period is once again skilfully evoked, both through historic references, and particularly in the dialogue, which cleverly establishes speech patterns from this earlier age without them ever sounding artificially quaint. However, early in this compelling narrative, Utterly plunges, with her strange mother the Gorm, into what turns out to be an ocean  of time. She is taught that

‘. . . time is not a river. Time is a sea. It has its shallows and its deeps. Its myriad currents lead to every part of it . . . through all the many ages of the world.’ (p 35)

She then follows these currents until she finds herself in the Wildsea of 1971.  It comes as a narrative jolt of the most exciting kind and is quite an authorial coup.

Quickly, the narrative splits between several significant characters, interleaving the exploits of each, in the manner of Tolkein after The  Breaking of the Fellowship. This storytelling style always makes for page-turning compulsion and here it is extended by the alternation of events in the two different time periods. It makes for amazingly engrossing reading. 

Skilful

Again and again the reader’s delight is compounded by Philip Reeves’ quite wonderfully writing. Whilst his words are never florid or obscure, his prose is awash with evocative language, so that characters and locations leap into sensuous life, pulling the reader deeply into different experiences. moods and emotions. Its highs  are excitement, tension and jeopardy, its recoveries thoughtfulness, reflection and great human warmth. It is by turns technicolour brilliance and delicate, pastel poignancy.

: . . . it was as if the earth were a Seville orange, and the red hot hands of the sun were squeezing it until its skin split and the bright juices squirted out.’ (p 264)

‘She had lost her lustre, like one of those pebbles that shines with a hundred delicate colours when you find it in a tide pool, but turns dull and grey when you bring it home and set it on the mantelpiece.’ (p 26)

It is breathtaking writing by any standards - and all the more thrilling when the thematic ripples of time and tide sparkle through it. 

Deeper yet

However, particularly special is the way the author deals with the concept of time and time travel. He does not fall, as many do, into the illogicality of the ‘time paradox’. Rather, what he presents is far more in tune with recent quantum physics and philosophy. The idea that, in universal terms, all  time is present, that our thinking of time as a flowing river is merely a human construct to deal with our own memories, would, I think, resonate with Carlo Rovelli (The Order of Time) as well as T S Eliot (The Four Quartets). It is simultaneously scientific and poetic. 

Such concepts may well challenge many young readers, but if they open up their thinking, and awaken imagination, then that itself is a most valuable thing.

Magic

On a different, but equally challenging level, the  time split story also allows an interesting contrast between an age of  (already fading) magic and something closer to our modern scepticism.

‘Utterly, the time you were born into is the last age when magic dared to show itself, and the tide was turning even then. Humans had already begun to grow too clever, and now they have grown cleverer still, and there is no place left for the old things in their world.’ (p 254)

Perhaps it is a loss to be regretted, despite the fact that the Gorm and her sea magic, the Hunter and his land magic, are far from consistently benign.

Elastic

However, this third volume does not only reconcile different time periods on Wildsea. Like Utterly herself, it is of the sea and of the land. As such, it brings the different strands of the whole trilogy together beautifully, thrillingly and indeed most surprisingly too. 

The Utterly Dark books provide wonderful entertainment for all and will provoke thoughtful reflection for many. They are not directly about changing our own world for the better, but they will do a great deal to develop children who can do so. Philip Reeve, and other fine writers like him, are elastic for young imaginations; they allow them to stretch.  And the world so desperately needs children with expansive imagination. They need to imagine what our world might be - and what it could be.

Now we have three truly wondrous multi-title sequences from the uber-imaginative pen of Philip Reeve*** Will they ever stop coming? I sincerely hope not. 

Notes;

*   Please don’t judge these books on the back of the 2018 movie. Immerse yourself in their mind-blowing, emotion-tugging writing instead.

**Perhaps 9 yrs upwards. Although readers should always read what they want to read, without the restriction of age (or any other) labels.

*** Four, if you count Fever Crumb as separate from Mortal Engines.

Island; the illustrated edition by David Almond and David Litchfield

‘That is the big question . . . Why is there a me in the universe? And there is no answer, but it is a kind of question we must ask ourselves, time and again.’ (p97)

Newly imagined

David Almond is one of the very finest living writers for young people. His stature is right up there with the greats of the past like Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Lois Lowry and Ursula Le Guin, although his canon of exceptional work for a wide range of age groups is actually far more extensive. A new publication from him is something very exciting indeed.

It does need to be noted, though, that his novella, Island, is not itself completely new. It was first published back in 2017, as one of the little £1 titles issued for World Book Day. However, despite its short length, it is a wonderful, almost quintessential, piece of David Almond writing. Indeed it must be amongst the most distinguished of these tiny books ever produced. Nonetheless, whilst these physically slight paperbacks are vitally important for the occasion, they are easily lost and forgotten as the years pass. It is therefore thrilling to have a new edition of this significant work now re-published in splendid hardback - and with copious, wonderful new illustrations by David Litchfield to boot. It finally gives this title the presence it merits and allows it to take a proud, permanent place on the David Almond shelf. 

Much of his writing is deeply and significantly rooted in specific place, most often his native North East. This novella is no exception. The ‘island’ of Lindisfarne is central to a story that digs sensitively and passionately into our common humanity. Place, characters and themes are intimately interrelated in an exquisitely written narrative that is both thoughtful and affecting. 

Novella 

The novella format, can often feel somewhat unsatisfactory, a short story that outgrew itself, or a promising novel idea that didn’t quite have the legs for the full Monty. But this is most certainly not the case with Island. It is a perfectly formed, rounded miniature, complete and satisfying in and of itself. 

Essentially, a teenage girl, Louise,  who has lost her mother, arrives with her father on Lindisfarne, the location of many previous family holidays. Although she has lived without her mother for several years, the visit highlights that she is not completely ready to move on  herself, or to allow her father to do so either. The subsequent story is that of her growing into acceptance and seeing a positive future. The catalyst for this development is a mysterious boy, ‘Dark Star’. He is an an enigma, an acrobat, perhaps even a sorcerer, and even a threat in some eyes, Although Syrian, he is in many ways a symbol of the strange ‘magic’ of the place, but also of the dangerous excitement of Louise’s potential. Yet he is also a fully rounded character with his own background and issues. 

A big journey on a small island

It is quite remarkable how many important themes David Almond manages to thread through this relatively brief narrative: loss, grief and family, identity, war and displacement, prejudice, memory, wild nature, mystery, beauty, history, pilgrimage, freedom, the universe, healing, love. Even so, the piece never feels contrived or congested. Although the ideas are huge, the language is simple, but so apt, so potent. Place and story are alive with subtle but resonant images: the island itself, its causeway and isolating tides; a hut that is an upturned boat; a deer, alive and dead. As with David Almond’s writing, the sights, sounds, and even smells, the ‘holy’ air of Lindisfarne all refract and reflect, but never distort. And, ultimately, they let through shafts of sea-sparkling light that are hope and promise. 

It is a miniature masterpiece and no less a masterpiece for being miniature. In fact it is in its smallness that its greatness lies. It is hard to conceive a more satisfying novella. It is fiction. It is poetry. It is Lindisfarne, which is ‘Also called Holy Island, because of the miracles that were supposed to happen there, for the masterpieces that were supposed to happen there, for the atmosphere that still lingers there.’ (p 5)

It is a transcendent journey in a place that is almost, but not quite, cut off from reality, in a boat that sails upside down across the sky. It is an inverted voyage ‘through the astounding stars’.

The power of pictures

David Litchfield is a wonderful choice to illustrate this (almost) lost David Almond treasure. He has already produced images for several stunning jackets of David Almond books, including two of my absolute favourites, the recent masterpieces, The Colour of the Sun and Bone Music. I also much prefer his cover for the 2012 reissue of the fine story collection, Counting Stars, to the original one. In addition, he also complemented the simple but very moving text of War is Over with images that catch perfectly the affecting memories it conjures, childlike, but never childish. 

Beyond David Almond’s work, David Litchfield has also created a number of deservedly acclaimed picture books, both in his own right and with others. Further, his stunning illustrations for Gregory Maguire’s delightful Cress Watercress are a very significant element of an absolutely treasurable book that does not always seem to be known as well as it deserves. 

His stunning contributions to Island are another triumph. Apart from the cover, his images are entirely greyscale, but have immense impact. His simple figures, often silhouettes, are generally set against impressionistic, evocative backgrounds, displaying rich imagination, yet generously leaving much for us to imagine ourselves All are redolent with meaning and deeply sensitive to David Almond’s text. I have seen few more potent images of the island of Lindisfarne itself that that on page 5. And if it were possible to capture the essence of David Almond’s work in a single image, then I think the cover depiction of a human face melded with the topography of an island  (repeated on the title page) would come pretty close. Inscape and landscape. Deep humanity grounded in particular place. 

This new edition is breathtaking - and so very welcome.

Let’s Chase Stars Together by Matt Goodfellow

Illustration: Oriol Vidal

‘I am born

in the storm

of each second that we waste.’

(I am here p, 112)

Although poetry means a great deal to me and I read it often, I am only very occasionally moved to review poetry books for young readers. They need to stand out strongly to excite me enough to write them up. However here is one such stand out title, a collection whose apparent simplicity overlies keen perception and emotional depth. 

Vignettes of life

Now a grandfather myself, but still cherishing dear, if distant, memories of my own ‘Grandpa’, I was particularly affected by the poem Blackbirds; it captures perfectly a grandchild’s feelings about a relationship that is so often precious but inevitably ephemeral. However this is not the only gem here. Again and again Matt Goodfellow fixes in skilfully words  particular moments and thoughts from young lives. Here are the very real joys and losses of those growing towards adulthood, but. thankfully, not yet there. Many of the experiences reflected are extraordinary in their ordinariness - as young lives are. Others explore the trauma of difficult relationships and painful loss. (Darker Now is one of many sensitive and deeply moving examples.) They are poems with which many will identify; they will help young readers deal with their own feelings as well as developing empathy and understanding of the feelings of others..Yet overall Matt Goodfellow’s message is positive. He emphasises the joy and freedom that is to be found - if the young only look for it.  

Adolescence 

I think of this collection as adolescent poetry in a very positive sense, filling a vital gap in the available offerings. Not only does it hit very pertinently many issues of this age group, surely making it easy for a young audiencfind themselves there. It also bridges a gap between the lightheartedness of much children’s poetry and the challenge of many adult poems. This is to say, Matt Goodfellow skilfully crafts pieces that are short and accessible, yet are real poetry, not just entertaining verse. His poems are sometimes funny, sometimes surprising, but always communicate experience that feels deeply true. I would say that he repeatedly hits the nail on the head, were not that particular phrase so totally inapt for the subtle and sensitive way in which he captures the thoughts and feelings of the young. He is a refiner, a distiller of gentle spirit, and never hammers home his points.  When he plays with words and form, which he often does, everything is cleverly employed in the service of what he has to say. And he has a great deal to say, even, and perhaps especially, when he says it simply. 

Lose to find

The attractive cover and internal illustrations by Oriol Vidal reflect the spirit of the poems whilst also remaining strong and clear, adding to the accessible mindfulness of the whole.

This collection is subtitled Poems to lose yourself in; but even more these are poems for young readers to find themselves in. It has the potential to touch many young lives - and affect them for the better. 

Were I still teaching (children of 10+ say) this is a book I would most certainly want close to hand. I never approve of young readers being force-fed books, even good ones, but this is a little volume that should discreetly be put in their way, in the hope that many will find it for themselves. 

Note:

It seems that a new book by Matt Goodfellow is to be published this coming September, a verse novel called The Final Year. I am now looking forward to it keenly.

Global by Eoin Colfer & Andrew Donkin, illustrated Giovanni Rigano

Coming into their own

I am delighted that graphic novels are finally included in the range of material provided in those classrooms where children are offered rich reading experience. No longer are such books considered simply as vehicles for the exploits of comic characters or superheroes. Nor is their only benefit that of providing  accessible versions of prose titles for less able readers. (Although they can, very valuably, do both of these.) Rather they are now more widely recognised as a rewarding literary medium in their own right. Many are not ‘easy reads with pictures’, but challenging texts with complex narratives and rich characters that demand sophisticated levels of visual as well as verbal literacy. Further, some deal with issues of high contemporary relevance, with powerful impact on their readers’ intellect and emotions. Graphic novels certainly do provide a most important way into books for some otherwise reluctant or less confident readers, but many have enormous amounts to offer more able and experienced readers too.

Artists at work

The incomparable Philip Pullman gave the medium a big boost when he authored his John Blake graphic serial for the The Phoenix comic. His full story was later issued in book format, a stunning volume titled The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship (Art by Fred Fordham). Another important marker was set down in 2019, when popular author Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl) joined forces with Andrew Donkin and visual artist Giovanni Rigano to create the devastatingly important and deeply affecting graphic novel Illegal.* It is a book that should be on every Primary School’s shelves. Now the same team that have followed up with Global, another title which deserves a prominent place in upper KS2 classrooms.

Warming

Many of our children are already alive to issues of global warning, but in this new book they have the reinforcement of seeing them from a new perspective. In fact two new perspectives, because Global shows climate change very directly affecting the lives of two children from very diverse backgrounds. The two are widely separated by geography too. They are an Indian boy, whose former life with his fisherman grandfather is devastated by rising sea levels, and a girl from northern Canada, who is trying to save polar bears in the face of a melting ice cap. However, the  book is certainly not any sort of lecture in print. It is a totally engrossing, indeed thrilling, adventure, made all the more exciting, and ultimately moving, by the interweaving of its twin strands.

Art into action

The graphic medium is quite beautifully exploited with much of the story told through its images, not only the action, but its characters, relationships and emotions too. These images are wonderfully drawn and can be both dramatic (as in the cells depicting the storm on pages 113-116) and tender (as in the fireside scene in p 124). They can be joyous (p 88) and heart-rending (p58). But with their restricted colour palettes, subtly shifted for the two story threads, they always ravish the eye in a way that seems to awaken all the other senses and the emotions too, providing a truly immersive experience. They are a superb example of how the images of an outstanding graphic text are so much more than mere illustration of a storyline.

The text that accompanies them is clear and accessible yet strongly communicative, with, generally,  narrative thoughts in rectangles and direct speech in the conventional bubbles. But there is so much more to read here than the words themselves, just as there is so much more yet to be done in our world. This is ultimately not only a book about action, but a call to action. 

Global is another significant contribution to the canon of contemporary children’s literature from this remarkable trio of verbal and visual artists. It is important for children. And it will be important to them. 

*Other ‘serious’ graphic novels that pack a huge punch, and well deserve a place on Primary School shelves, include:

New Kid (and its sequels), Jerry Craft

When Stars Are Scattered, Victoria Jamieson & Omar Mohamed

The Breadwinner (film adaptation, OUP)

Nightjar by Katya Balen; Jodie by Hilary McKay

Accessible fiction - plus

Publisher Barrington Stoke continues to do a brilliant job in producing high quality, accessible books to entice and support dyslexic and other less confident readers. Many of them provide enjoyable reads for a wider audience, too.

However, just a few of its authors demonstrate that even such concise novellas, with highly readable text, can be elevated to the level of significant works of literature. Anthony McGowan is certainly one such, as were two sadly missed masters of writing for young people, Mal Peet and Marcus Sedgwick. Now here are two more, Katya Balen and Hilary McKay.

Track record

In the last few years Katya Balen has proved herself one of the very finest of contemporary writers for children and has shot right up my list of all-time great authors for this (or any) readership*. I was honoured to have my review of her previous title, Birdsong quoted in the front of her latest Barrington Stoke book, Nightjar. And this new story is another gem, every bit as sparkling; a Chopin Nocturne of a book, short but gently poetic and replete with human truth. 

Writing skill

Katya Balen bring a range of brilliantly honed skills to bear here. Not only does she succeed in keeping her language simple and accessible but she can craft it in a way that is flowing, lyrical and tellingly evocative. Through this she is able to convey both atmosphere and emotions with remarkable depth and deeply affecting humanity. Added to this she has a remarkable ability to capture quite complex aspects of character in richly telling detail: communicating so much through a particularly thought, action or response. She understands that, on this scale, she needs to keep narrative tight and limits her story to a few days only in the experience of protagonist, Noah. Her focus is the interplay between a difficult visit from his estranged father and the adopting of an injured nightjar. In miniature, she finds an essence of the same interaction that made her much longer October, October such a masterpiece, that between a child’s emotional development and their intense connection to nature.

This little book is to fiction, what a finest haiku is to poetry. It is perfect in its smallness. And in its smallness it is great. 

Diversity and inclusion 

There is yet a further plus to Nightjar in that it foregrounds a Jewish child and his family. This is a representation that seems much more common in children’s fiction from The States than it is here. This is probably not surprising in the light of far wider Jewish heritage in the overall population over there. Nevertheless, it is minorities like these that still need better representation in children’s books here, so that those from the same background can find themselves in books and others come to appreciate the multifaceted richness of our common humanity. This story will be a big help and should encourage many to find out more about why certain family traditions and the ceremonies of Bat and Bar Mitzvah are so important in some children’s lives.

Treasure trove

Hilary McKay is a well established treasure of children’s/YA fiction and some of her best books are the apotheosis of the involving family saga for this age group (and older)*. Amongst her other outstanding titles, her Casson Family sequence (think The Larkins meets Outnumbered) will delight any readers interested in this genre. - and those who don’t think they are risk seriously missing out. Of her more recent titles, her stories covering the period of WWI and WWII, The Skylarks’ War and The Swallows’ Flight, are most strongly recommended for any readers upwards of about eleven. 

Now, in the newly published Jodie she shows that she can create truly fine fiction within the Barrington Stoke parameters, too.

Pitch perfect

Like Katya Balen, Hilary McKay establishes her main character (here the eponymous Jodie) in a way that is tightly economical, yet rich, truthful and deeply affecting. In just a few simple sentences she catalogues all that had gone wrong in Jodie’s short life, yet the writing does not feel at all abbreviated or rushed. Rather it creates instant empathy with a fully realised character,  deeply troubled, isolated and almost pathologically quiet. Although Hilary McKay’s language is generally not as overtly poetic as Katya Balen’s, she also paints for us a  a vividly atmospheric picture of the salt marsh location for the school field trip in which Jodie is reluctantly participating. With consummate storytelling, landscape and inscape complement each other potently.

Self and others

However, it is not only the character of Jodie herself that this author conjures with remarkably effective economy. In the space of a single chapter she introduces the five girls with whom Jodie is required to share a room. The skill with which she brings to vivid life their remarkable individuality, each with their own distinctive personality and implied issues, is quite breathtaking. And she does this with no more that a few pieces of simple dialogue, or a subtly but effectively established quirk. Truly remarkable.

As a novella, Jodie, seems to be being most frequently described as an ‘atmospheric and chilling ghost story’. And, of course, on one level, it is. Yet, for me, this is not the heart of the story. The ‘ghost’ element is only a catalyst for the important development in Jodie’s character and situation. There have been many recent books where protagonists themselves come to realise how specially different they are and this is indeed an important theme. However, I think what Jodie learns is more how special and different others are - and how people can come to help and support each other through that difference. I think it is of no small relevance that the final graphic image in the book does not relate to the ghost story as such, but shows the silhouette of the six girls in a group together, with (what I take to be) Jodie, tentatively reaching out a hand to touch another’s. It is subtly but  deeply affecting, as is this whole very special book.

Artistic Intelligence (and talent)

And that leads me on to say something about two absolutely stunning collaborations in these outstanding creations. Although very different in style, the illustrators of these two books (Richard Johnson for Nightjar and Keith Robinson for Jodie) each make an indispensable contribution. They demonstrate beyond the slightest doubt how important the images of highly talented, real-life artists, as opposed to computer-generated pictures, can be in complementing, and indeed extending, a fine piece of writing.

Richard Johnson’s tender drawings have a hazy softness, particularly in the landscape backgrounds, that feel almost pastel in quality (even in black and white!). They echo beautifully the heightened emotion and deep sensitivity of the story. The sharper, figurative elements are wonderfully expressive too, both in the characters’ body language and in their faces. Noah’s reaction to his pizza on page 49 is an excellent example. Overall they are very much an integral element of the narrative, not an adjunct to it.

Keith Robinson’s images feel somewhat more solid and ‘realistic’ (in a very good way). In terms of the Barrington Stoke primary target readership, they do an outstanding job of helping unpack the text, particularly in a rather complex scene like the rescue from the creek. Exactly who is doing what and where is cleverly clarified by the image on pages 76-77. However, the drawings are equally sensitive to the emotional content of the story, as beautifully illustrated by Jodie’s stark isolation in the image on page 39, or her facial expression on page 25. Here too is no mere ‘illustration’, but co-creation.

And what ultimately makes these two artists so very special is that they empathise fully as human beings, with the story and with its characters. This is something AI can never do

Note:

*If you’re interested, you could use the ‘search’ above to quickly find my earlier reviews of her books.