Alternate realities

Not quite. That isn’t to say that Un Lun Dun, a tale of two teenagers stumbling upon a kind of mirror version of London populated by the discarded objects, ideas and sometimes people of the real city, isn’t a thrilling and entertaining romp. Mieville’s linguistic inventiveness and creepy, fevered imagination (killer giraffes, smog-powered zombies, a man with a birdcage for a head) are in pleasurable evidence. It’s just that they are being employed in the service of a story that seems overly familiar.

Readers au fait with this sort of thing may find the ‘alternate London’ concept easy to grasp, as it’s been lifted from graphic novelist Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere– a book that Mieville has the grace to acknowledge in his afterword. However, there are other whiffs of familiarity – fans of JK Rowling will recognise the youngster with a mundane life touched by the Hand of Destiny, while Terry Pratchett’s devotees will have no trouble with the infinite library connecting together parallel universes or the bumbling, pompous local wizard analogues (the ‘propheteers’).

To be fair, Mieville adds some mild subversion to the mix. The ‘Chosen One’ drops out of the picture pretty quickly, leaving Deeba, her prophesy-designated ‘funny sidekick’, to save the day. Deeba gets on perfectly well without the Hand of Destiny behind her, thank you very much, and has neither the time nor the inclination to quest about for the usual shopping list of mystical objects. Far from refusing to believe the youngsters about the existence of a strange world parallel to normality, the adult world has known about – and exploited – it for decades.

It isn’t quite enough. This is an entertaining children’s adventure, but it doesn’t stray nearly as far from the tradition of such things as, given its author’s previous pedigree, it might have done. Parents hoping for a radical alternative to Harry Potter’s boarding-school chic or the Oxonian high-mindedness of Philip Pullman will be pleased.