Variety and variance

What a pleasure it is be transported from mundane life and traverse the realms of the imaginary with a good guide. Mind you, some guides and imaginations are better than others, and so it is for these four journeys into the fantastic, which cover a variety of treatments, from Isobelle Carmody’s quest fantasy of small creatures, to the parodic melodrama of Gary Crew, to Emily Rodda’s intertwining of the fantasy world and our own, and Juliet Marillier’s romantic historical fantasy in the inspired setting of Istanbul at the time of the Ottomans.

For the youngest readership, Isobelle Carmody’s A Mystery of Wolves (Viking, $24.95 hb, 264 pp) is best described in a word that reviewers hesitate to use – ‘charming’. But charming is this small, magical fable in its deep blue furry cover, accompanied by the author’s whimsical illustrations, which capture the spirit and tone of the adventure. Little Fur – a half-troll, half-elf remnant from the Old Age before humans came into ascendancy and lost belief in magic – has knowledge of remedies and powers of healing. In this gentlest of fantasy quests, Little Fur must travel far to save her friend, a cat called Ginger, who faces danger in the distant mountains, where the Mystery of Wolves threatens all animal and surviving mythic creatures. Little Fur is accompanied by an old wolf, Greysong, whom she helps escape from the city zoo, and a most appealing owlet, Gem, and her protector, Crow.