Review of At the World's End by Catherine Fisher, pub. Barrington Stoke 2015

[sheenaghpugh]

This is a YA book (Barrington Stoke Teen) with a difference: this series, which has attracted some fine writers, including Michael Morpurgo and Fisher herself in the past, was designed specifically for teenage readers who have difficulties like dyslexia but who want to be reading something suited to their age, not pitched way below it. There are some physical differences, like specially chosen fonts and thick paper to stop text or illustration showing through and confusing the eye. The editing process has been developed with speech and language experts, but if it involves much interference with the writer's normal process, this is not obvious in the product. It is very pacy, but then Fisher's dystopian fantasies, of which this is one, seldom hang about doing nothing. Its characters develop through action rather than being explained to us; that too is normal for her, as is the fact that she does not go in for lengthy exposition but plunges straight into the story at the point where something exciting is about to happen. Fisher's keen sense of place is there as usual in the icebound city and the deserted tunnels of the Underground:

She looked around at walls that had once been white. Huge adverts hung in ragged strips. They showed a woman's smiling face, a sleek black car, scraps of what looked like a beach in the sun. Things people had worked and longed for. Things that didn't exist any more. Caz looked along to where the tunnel curved out of sight, and thought of all that world, all those people, gone and forgotten. A world that could never be rebuilt.

The one point where I did wonder if she would normally have written otherwise was when the story moves beyond the frozen city and there is a change in the natural world which must have become obvious to the young protagonists more gradually than it does here. I did think that in a series like Chronoptika, for instance, she would have spent more time and physical description on this, and probably to great effect – even as it is, the moment of the swans is stunning. In fact the ending comes quite quickly and feels provisional, not in a bad sense but in the sense that it feels like a natural place to stop for a while, rather than a permanent ending – like the first instalment of something longer. We leave Will and Caz "staring out at their future", and though for the moment they do seem to have found refuge, the more we think about it, the more we can see that there may be quite other problems ahead. I am sure this is deliberate, and that the story will be continued by its author, but it may also have the beneficial effect of leaving the young readers in a mood to do that for themselves, because we now know enough about Will and Caz to mind what happens to them, yet there are still questions we'd very much like the answers to.

I want to avoid spoilers, with such a book as this above all, so will only say that it strikes me as admirably suited to its intended purpose. Its format is a journey, and one with such attendant dangers and surprises that I can't imagine it being easily put down, especially since there is, as usual with Fisher, not only a male protagonist but a particularly stroppy, resourceful female one as well, who is actually the POV chracter. Its concerns, too, are essentially adult: there is grief, injustice, the sudden assumption of responsibility, the facing down of old fears, some completely non-gratuitous violence, and if there's very little hint of sex, that is because everyone is far too busy staying alive. If you have a young relative or friend who is a reluctant or easily discouraged reader, this book, and indeed this whole Barrington Stoke series, might be just what they need.