THE CRY OF THE ICEMARK
By Stuart Hill
Chicken House, £12.99; 512pp
ISBN 1 904 44256 0
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In this miserable, two-faced month, stories set in the dark and cold might seem like too much of a bad thing. Don’t we want tales to remind us that the sun will return? Well, no, not if they’re as good as City of Ember and The Cry of the Icemark, both of which will have readers shivering with delight.

The idea of a troglodytic city is as old as the hills, and authors from Joan Aiken to N. M. Browne have explored what it might be like to live and grow up underground. None has come up with something quite as wonderful as Ember, a city designed by its builders to last for 200 years until an unspecified danger is over.

Instructions about how to find the only exit are handed down from mayor to mayor, but — as we know from the start — these have been lost. Now Ember’s electricity is giving out (not that its inhabitants know what this is, or how to make fire), as are its food and supplies of every kind.

As in E. M. Forster’s classic short story The Machine Stops the colourless dark of Ember contrasts with a rich descriptive style evoking the fear of the unknown and of a society turned in on itself. Brighter, or more curious, than their classmates, Lina and Doon discover the lost instructions (half-chewed by Lina’s baby sister) and, having defied the increasingly corrupt and dictatorial authorities, soon find themselves hurtling down a pitch-black river to an unknown destination.

This is a thrilling novel, funny, sympathetic and full of action, precisely the kind that pupils of 11+ would love to study. Written in clear, direct prose, it asks moral questions: what if the world as we know it came to an end, and only a few could survive? Who would be chosen? What kind of society would we create, and how?

At its heart, City of Ember is about the imagination and passions that artists and scientists bring to their society, and how it is their visions which are our salvation. Its engaging young heroine and hero have adults to give them good advice, but it is their own courage, energy and ingenuity which cracks the mysterious instructions and brings the novel to what is at once a satisfying conclusion and a terrific cliffhanger. I can’t wait for the sequel.

Stuart Hill’s debut, The Cry of the Icemark, which this week won the first Ottokar’s children’s book prize, is an adventure on an epic scale. From the moment that its 13-year-old heroine, Princess Thirrin, punches a werewolf on the nose you know you’re in for a rollicking good read.

Set in a world in which vampires and talking snow leopards coexist with a ruthless Roman-style empire attempting to gobble up smaller countries, this is a tale about the clash between individual ingenuity and relentless power.

Orphaned by the invaders, Thirrin has to learn the arts of diplomacy with only her robust common sense, a strong fighting arm and the magical powers of a young male witch, Oskan, to help save her small kingdom.

Children who loved the battle scenes in The Lord of the Rings will thrill to the cry of the Icemark: “Blood, Blast and Fire!” as desperate battles ensue. The freezing landscape through which the flame-haired princess travels, searching for allies, has its roots in myth, and so do these winter tales, which are just the thing to brighten up the bleakest time of the year.

Lost classics

I’ve never had such a postbag as that which followed my piece on lost childhood classics that deserve reprinting. Thanks to all who wrote in with suggestions, which have been passed on to Jane Nissen Books for consideration.

She has already brought some of these titles back into print. Violet Needham’s The Woods of Windri is on her list, as is Alison Utterly’s The Country Child and Eric Linklater’s The Pirates of the Deep Green Sea.

Victorian novels such as George Macdonald’s At the Back of the North Wind are harder to find, but www.amazon.co.uk offers an Everyman’s Library edition of this haunting fantasy. The popular 1930s book The Story of Ferdinand, about a peaceful young bull, can also be ordered through Amazon.

The most requested titles included Beverley Nichols’s The Stream that Stood Still, in which, as Rob Shirland-Ball wrote, “a wicked witch encounters a Magic Wood — wherein the animals are friendly and can talk to humans”.

The other novel people beg for is Noel Langley’s hilarious sequel to Aladdin, The Land of Green Ginger. Faber reprinted a version in the 1970s, with drawings by Edward Ardizzone, but the longer 1966 version is still as scarce as hen’s teeth. AC

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