DARK TALES FROM THE WOODS (9+)
by Daniel Morden illustrated by Brett Breckon
Pont, £7.99; 64pp

FAIRYTALES HAVE grown from a cottage industry to the biggest business in entertainment, and few have had as much fun with them as Eoin Colfer.

In six years and as many books, he has established a superb series about Artemis Fowl, an obnoxious teenage criminal who discovered that the Little People really do exist, and held one to ransom for several million in fairy gold.

The joke is that, apart from the Little People’s powers of healing and hypnotism, all of their characteristics, such as wings, invisibility and their life underground, are due to technology that so far outstrips our own as to appear to be magic.

Artemis’s former victim, the fairy policewoman Holly Short, and Mulch Diggums, a flatulent, foul-mouthed dwarf who can do unspeakable things with the earth he digests, have gone into business as private investigators.

The fairies have bugged Artemis and found him hot on the trail of a colony of demons, lost in time and space. If humans find out demons exist fairies will be next — and a pretty French prodigy, Minerva, is bent on capturing one to obtain a Nobel prize.

All that the demons know of us “Mud Men” comes from a romantic novel entitled Lady Heatherington Smythe’s Hedgerow, but their leader, Abbott, tells them that human beings deserve extermination. The thoughtful imp No1 is not so sure. Despised for not yet having warped into a pumped-up demon, he tries to commit suicide. However, with the time spell unravelling, the demons preparing to attack mankind, and two human kidnappers on his trail, the imp has a job just staying alive.

You either love this stuff or you hate it. Colfer’s technological wizardry, Chandler-esque dialogue and comic gusto have built a robust and detailed world, comparable to those of J. K. Rowling, Philip Pullman and Diana Wynne Jones.

As with Sherlock Holmes, enjoying it depends on whether a child feels intellectually confident to appreciate Artemis — although who could fail to love Mulch Diggums and his hint about where the bubbles in “Derrier” water come from? Artemis is pubescent, and cruising for a bruising: “Every time I see a pretty girl, I waste valuable mind space thinking about her,” he complains; the equally clever Minerva is set up to be his nemesis. For a boy who can tell the architect Antonio Gaudí that he should rethink his “derivative” mosaics while time-travelling in Barcelona, this can’t come too soon.

Dark Tales from the Woods are the real thing, reminiscent of many of the grimmest Grimms’ tales. Retold by the Welsh storyteller Daniel Morden from originals by the celebrated king of the Gypsies, Abram Wood, these fairytales draw on common stock but have their own unique cadence and charm. My favourite is The Leaves that Hung but Never Grew, a tale-within-a-tale about two unhappy lovers who outwit a witch.

Several involve Jack, the Everyman who triumphs over evil thanks to luck, wit, kindness and a bit of courage. Children cannot learn too soon how crucial these qualities are.

Some here are strong stuff. In The Squirrel and the Fox, Jack is forced to give up not only his gold but his eyes in exchange for his brother’s food: Brett Breckon’s illustration is horrifying, and beautiful.

Blood falls like rain from a tree, a thief dresses up as a lady’s husband to steal her ring and her bedsheet, and a tramp tricks a giant into believing he is “the smallest giant in the world”. Gruesome, fantastical and hypnotic, Morden’s stories show why the fairy world will never lose its power over our imaginations.

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