THE STARLIGHT CONSPIRACY (11+) by Steve Voake

Faber, £12.99

THE SPELLGRINDER’S APPRENTICE (12+) by N. M. Browne

Bloomsbury, £6.99

LIKE ALL IRRATIONAL people, kids are big on conspiracy theories. Given them alien invasions, spooks, Atlantis and dictatorships exerting mind-control on the populace and they’ll lap it up; and modern stories, from Harry Potter to Men in Blackplay on this paranoia. Yet it’s been a while since anything as much fun as Steve Voake’s The Starlight Conspiracy came along.

Voake’s third novel is a giant leap forward from his debut, The Dreamwalker’s Child. Fourteen-year-old Berry is a home-educated, caravan-dwelling traveller’s child, and once her single mother dies, she’s on the run from Social Services. When an old man saves her from being hit by a bus, he gives her an alien artefact – a beautiful bracelet that endows its wearer with special powers of strength, speed and the ability to freeze time.

At all costs, neither terrorists nor the FBI must get hold of it, though it can’t prevent Berry’s saviour from being murdered. With an air ticket and a rucksack full of money, Berry has to cross the Atlantic in the company of a troubled, beautiful boy called Elle. Pursued through cities and across deserts, she has to find the bracelet’s true owner, or die.

All this is classic, seat-of-the-cinema stuff but what makes Voake’s book so fresh is his feeling for the people of Alternative Britain. Berry is cool enough to ride a motor-bike, and escapes her pursuers on a Harley-Davidson. Yet she is vulnerable because there is so much she doesn’t know, including things ordinary teenagers pick up with their cereal.

Settings such as the Glastonbury Festival are described with affectionate accuracy, and there is a pleasing mixture of good and bad adults to pick up the pieces of two damaged children. Although the American half feels as if it has been bolted on after seeing too many episodes of The X-Files, the quality of the writing, and the heartwarming sympathy it evokes makes this a really good, thought-provoking and exciting choice.

The Spellgrinder’s Apprentice is N. M. Browne’s sixth book, and if not quite as thrilling as her time-slip tale Warriors of Alavna (which cries out to become a trilogy), it is another striking and addictive fantasy about living in a totalitarian society ruled by corrupt magicians. Tommo, a runaway spellgrinder’s apprentice, has eight days in which to leave his land, or be hanged. Advised by flocks of birds with human faces, assisted by the sulky fisher-girl Akenna, he has no idea of the struggles between adults higher on the food chain. The evil Protector wants to stamp out all magic, and imprisons and tortures those born with it.

Browne’s themes, which she returns to in each of her novels, are about how we come to recognise our true selves. The dying Tommo’s agonised travels across a treacherous land are matched by the minute, passionate struggles of Vevena, the Protector’s enchanted wife, to regain control over her own mind and heart. Tommo and Akenna have inborn powers that they can discover only in adversity, but as we gradually discover who (and what) they are, the story moves towards a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

If it is true that our children are the unhappiest in Europe, it’s no wonder that they are drawn to conspiracy theories to explain why; but stories such as these are more complex versions of the fairytales that too few parents now bother to read their children when young. Fantasy, paradoxically, is the best way to draw children out of paranoia.

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