AIRMAN by EOIN COLFER
Puffin hardback, 432pp, RRP £10.99

Reviewed by Iain Emsley

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Eoin Colfer’s Airman is a wonderful novel which is greater than the sum of its parts, half quasi-historical novel and half steampunk fantasy. Set on the Saltee Islands off the Atlantic coast of Ireland, Colfer creates an alternate history of derring-do and great invention.

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Tags: Airman • book • Eoin Colfer • Fantasy • historical • review • steampunk • YA • young adult

STEVE AUGARDE interviewed by Iain Emsley

Steve Augarde has just completed his first young adult trilogy with Winter Wood. It has been five years since the first book, The Various, was published and he’s aware that his readers have grown up.

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Tags: author • Fantasy • interview • Steve Augarde • YA • young adult

WINTER WOOD by STEVE AUGARDE
David Fickling Books hardback, 512pp, £12.99 RRP

Reviewed by Iain Emsley

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Winter Wood, the final part of Steve Augarde’s trilogy about the Various, is a bitter-sweet read. In the previous two books, The Various and Celandine, he has created a wonderfully deep and very English mythological landscape.

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Tags: book • Fantasy • review • Steve Augarde • Winter Wood • YA • young adult

RUNEMARKS by JOANNE HARRIS
Doubleday hardback, 500pp, £14.99

Reviewed by Iain Emsley

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Joanne Harris’s d?©but children’s novel is a fantastic romp which is eminently readable. Her adult fiction flirts with the fantastic, delivering it gently, while Runemarks is a retelling of Norse myths which also sets up a mythical - almost ‘asterisk fantastic’ ‚Äì world within which she finds some very human characters.

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Tags: book • Fantasy • fiction • INTERZONE • Joanne Harris • review • Runemarks • young adult