Impossible Creatures
by Katherine Rundell; illus. by Ashley Mackenzie
Middle School    Knopf    368 pp.
9/24    9780593809860    $19.99
Library ed.  9780593809877    $22.99
e-book ed.  9780593809884    $10.99

When Christopher finds a wounded baby griffin in a Scottish lake, his grandfather reveals that he is (and Christopher will be, when he comes of age) a guardian of the “waybetween” to an archipelago where the creatures of myth still live. Then Mal, a citizen of the Archipelago and the target of a deranged murderer, arrives in Christopher’s world to reclaim her griffin, and Christopher chooses to go back to the Archipelago with her to protect her. There they chance upon Fidens Nighthand and the crew of the Neverfear. Nighthand is a Berserker sworn to protect the Immortal, the only being who can tend the source of the ancient magic upon which all creatures of myth depend. But a century ago the Immortal took a potion to forget the pain of existence, and every Immortal incarnated since then doesn’t know their own fate. Suggestions that Mal is more than she appears to be grow into a plot of resolute earnestness, where the characters serve a noble purpose that binds them into a closely knit ensemble. Rundell successfully pulls off a powerful drama filled with self-sacrifice and great-heartedness and achieves full reader buy-in. Epic and interpersonal elements balance each other out, and the fresh take on fantastical creatures, in such sure and capable hands (with Mackenzie’s black-and white illustrations interspersed), is entrancing and refreshing.

From the ">September/October 2024 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.