THE ARCHON
By Catherine Fisher
Hodder, £5.99; 304pp
ISBN 0 340 84377 2
Buy the book

For some reason, it seems much harder for women writers of fantasy to be celebrated than men. Probably the greatest of them all is Ursula le Guin, whose Earthsea novels have never quite gained the status of, say, Tolkien or Philip Pullman.

The only young writer to approach le Guin’s prose, passion and imaginative conviction is the Welsh poet Catherine Fisher, who has now written 16 novels: yet it took until last year, when The Oracle was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children’s Prize, for serious literary recognition to come her way.

I first came across her work in The Snow Walker’s Son, a trilogy of electrifying tension that uses Norse myths to depict a power struggle between Gudrun, an evil witch queen, and her rejected son Kari. Other extraordinary novels, such as The Margrave, followed, and gradually what emerged was a writer who has thought deeply not just about realising the supernatural, but about the extreme loneliness of being different.

As most bright children suffer from this feeling at some point in their lives, it is not surprisingly a classic element in children’s literature. But Fisher writes with an insight that reverberates beyond immature self-pity. There is no cure for such pains, but loyalty and courage always mitigate it, and the adventures she describes (whether in this world or another), illustrate the necessity for moral absolutes within gripping plots and haunting landscapes.

The Archon, which is the sequel to The Oracle, extends this preoccupation in that its hero is not just a magician but a god. Reincarnated as a beggar’s child, Alexos — dismissed by his village as mad — is exquisitely vulnerable both to incredulity and to the plotting of politicians.

His oracle is served by nine priestesses whose golden masks conceal seething rivalries. One of them, Hermia, is in league with her lover, General Argelin, and will poison anyone who stands in her way. Inconveniently, the only priestess who can talk to the god is the despised, lowly-born and atheistic Mirany. When Alexos leaves his city and sets off on a quest to bring rain back to his parched kingdom, accompanied by an alcoholic musician, a cynical scribe and a lord of the criminal underworld, it is Mirany, left behind, who has to fight a political war that escalates into battle, human sacrifice and terror.

Written in Fisher’s concise, suggestive style, the novel develops slowly at first, depicting an invented Graeco-Egyptian society and its creation myths in anthropological detail before unleashing its story. Not surprisingly perhaps, one of the big influences detectable in the trilogy so far is le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, whose unforgettable descriptions of how adolescent female cruelties could intertwine with the supernatural is here made hotter, brighter, but no less sinister. As a novel about the conflict between religious belief and scepticism it could all collapse into dreadful rubbish. But the toughness and realism underlying all Fisher’s fantasies is what makes them believable as well as wholly absorbing and aesthetically pleasing.

Read on

• The Book of the Crow by Catherine Fisher (Hodder) 9+
• Warriors of Alavna by N. M. Browne (Bloomsbury) 10+
• The Sterkarm Handshake by Susan Price (Scholastic) 12+
• Protector of the Small by Tamora Pierce (Scholastic) 12+
• Folklore by Catherine Fisher (poetry) (Smith/ Doorstep Books) 12+
• The Unexplored Ocean by Catherine Fisher (poetry) (Seren) 12+

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• Why do Pynchon, Ballard and Wallace provoke such online loyalty?
• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict