Light spoilers for the shape of the quest. Nothing about the ending.

Talking to UPI in the week The Neverfear was published, Katherine Rundell set out the rules she writes Impossible Creatures by. They explain a great deal about the Archipelago.

Every creature is borrowed, none invented

Rundell does not create creatures of her own. Everything in the Archipelago comes from existing myth, folklore and literature, so she can tell readers that every beast was dreamed up by people somewhere over roughly three thousand years. Her cut-off is around 1900. That rules out Tolkien, let alone anything from modern film. “There are no Minions to be coming,” she said.

She also avoids creatures closely tied to a single author, such as Stoker’s Dracula or Shelley’s creature, preferring beings that belong to a culture or a place rather than one writer.

The karkadann and the ratatoskr

Rundell picked out two Neverfear creatures she hopes will send readers back to the older sources. The karkadann is a fierce one-horned beast from Persian and Arabic tradition, a relative of the unicorn that appears in medieval bestiaries. The ratatoskr comes from Norse myth, where Ratatoskr is the squirrel who runs up and down the world tree Yggdrasil carrying insults between the eagle at its top and the dragon Níðhöggr at its roots. In the Archipelago, ratatoskrs speak every language, which is why none of them speaks any language quite perfectly.

A Herculean quest

The structure of the quest is drawn from the labours of Hercules, including a journey to the Garden of the Hesperides for golden apples. Rundell said she wanted young readers to feel they too could rise to tasks at the very edge of their ability. Anya’s anger in this book was partly inspired by Hamlet, and Rundell was direct that girls are too often discouraged from expressing fury.

One of her favourite scenes to write was a library where the books themselves have powers, including paperbacks that breathe fire.

Books Four and Five

Rundell confirmed she is writing Book Four now, and that Book Five will conclude Christopher and Anya’s story. She has known how the series ends since she started it. No title or publication date for Book Four has been announced.