This 'Eel Island' is inhabited by a ragamuffin band of disparate people scrabbling, and fighting, for survival. The story concerns a girl who, separated from her family, refurbishes an abandoned rowing boat and bravely escapes the devastation of Norwich only to find herself stranded on an even smaller island centred on the ruins of Ely cathedral. How fanciful this may be is perhaps a matter for careful consideration.

Its subject matter is fantasy only in so far as it imagines a world following serious global warming where East Anglia has been widely inundated to the extent that places such as Norwich only remain as small islands in the sea. It was considered a very notable debut at the time, worthily winning accolades and awards, and if it seems just a little less exciting now it is only in comparison with some of the very remarkable and indubitably great books he has written since. Marcus Sedgwick's first novel, Floodland (2000), is a short and relatively straightforward story, primarily, it appears, for a readership of around 9-13. Despite Garner's undoubted genius and ground-breaking achievements, his later novels are so erudite and abstruse as to make for very hard going.

In this, and in other ways too, he quite closely parallels the writing journey of Alan Garner, although he has actually been considerably more prolific and has never(as yet at least) become quite as obscure as his illustrious predecessor. Setting aside for the moment his very young children's series, his 'mainstream' novels, have, become increasingly sophisticated and complex, and been aimed at increasingly older readers, as his writing has developed. As intended I have gone right back to the beginning of Marcus Sedgwick's oeuvre and have so far managed to re read all of the first three.

The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick