What struck me first was how much life there is in the world. The Archipelago never reads like a backdrop built so the characters have somewhere to have an adventure. It is strange, dangerous, funny and slightly chaotic on its own terms, full of creatures with odd habits and histories and opinions. Even the small details have imagination behind them, from gossiping ratatoskas to things that manage to be beautiful, ridiculous and genuinely dangerous at once.

Christopher and Mal are the strongest part of the book. They are very different children, which is what makes the friendship believable rather than manufactured. Christopher is quiet and careful. Mal is stubborn and impulsive and far more likely to throw herself at a problem and deal with the consequences later.

I especially liked how her flying is written. She has not been handed a magical ability and mastered it in a paragraph. She learned by falling, by breaking bones, by getting hurt and going up again. That tells you almost everything about her.

Their friendship is not made artificially perfect either. They irritate each other. They argue. They say the wrong thing. That matters later, because when things go badly they do not turn into small wise adults who know how to comfort one another. Their grief comes out sideways and awkwardly, the way it actually does.

Where it wobbles

The middle is very busy. Islands, creatures, histories, magical rules, journeys, riddles, new faces, and at points I wanted it to stop and stay somewhere with the people I already cared about. The quest structure is sometimes visible too: they need a thing, so they travel, which reveals they need another thing, so they travel again. It is entertaining, but you can see the machinery turning.

I also found the world more interesting than the villains. The ecology of the Archipelago, the friendship, the idea of magic itself running out, all of that stayed with me more than the people doing the threatening.

What it gets right

Gelifen is the one I got most attached to. I assumed at first he would be the adorable magical companion and nothing more, and then he becomes so much a part of the group that losing him genuinely hurts. Mal cannot bring herself to lower him into the grave, so Christopher carries him down into the earth. That has stayed with me more than any of the battles. It does not land because the book announces that it is sad. It lands because by then you feel the absence.

That was the surprise. Underneath the creatures and the quests, this is a book about loss. Christopher has already lost before the story starts. So has Mal. And the threat to the Archipelago is not a castle under siege, it is entire forms of life going out. The fading glimourie means magical creatures are literally beginning to disappear. There is real melancholy running under all the wonder.

The ending works for the same reason. Mal's final act could easily have tipped into sentiment, and it does not, because the book has earned it. Christopher's grief afterwards is allowed to exist alongside the hope. The idea that loving Mal made him braver is far more affecting than being told that Mal was brave.

There is a lovely moment where Mal is astonished to learn that panthers are real, because to her they are mythical, and Christopher is equally baffled that anyone could think otherwise. That is the book in miniature. What counts as impossible depends entirely on which world you grew up in.

And my favourite thing in it is smaller than any dragon. Mal flies up into clouds with her mouth open, because she wants to know what different clouds taste like.

That is what Impossible Creatures does well. It remembers that magic is not really about the biggest monster or the most elaborate mythology. Sometimes it is looking at something ordinary and deciding there might be more to it than anyone thought.

Written by a collector who owns the editions catalogued on this site. Independent, unpaid and not supplied by the publisher. Corrections to info@theneverfear.com.