UN LUN DUN by China Miéville

Age 9+

This punning, 500-page epic adventure by a writer of adult gothic fantasies is indebted to such sources as Lewis Carroll and The Phantom Tollbooth for its other world based on wordplay. It is the story of two modern schoolgirls — and later one of them alone — who are drawn into UnLondon, a parallel city (others include Lost Angeles, Helsunki, Parisn’t and No York) and take on an old enemy, the Smog. Strengthened by pollutants from London, the Smog has a mind of its own and occupies and animates monsters. UnLondon is made up largely of what Londoners throw away, and is inhabited by such characters as “binjas” (armed, fighting dustbins), feral rubbish, an army of broken umbrellas (“unbrellas”), and a Speaker who makes words come to physical life, wrongly believing, like Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, that he can use them to mean exactly what he wants them to mean.

This teeming, inventive tale of friendship, duty, courage and loyalty makes extraordinary use of the ordinary, not least in its unposh heroine, who is given to using double negatives, but earns general respect and glory.

(Macmillan £9.99)

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