I have to confess that I'm not completely sure whether this book is very good or very bad!

Mal Peet has quite a range of work to his name - I haven't read the Brazilian football novels or his books for younger children, but I thought the Carnegie-Medal-winning 'Tamar' was wonderful and 'Life: a Diagram Exploded' was interesting. This is his first book aimed at adults and...it is quite odd!

It's about Philip Murdstone, an award-winning author who is unable to match his earlier achievement. His agent is losing patience with him and urges him to win readers and commercial success by drafting a trendy fantasy story.

Philip retreats to his home in Devon and becomes immersed in a mystical, magical world of strange creatures and unexplained happenings. Still uninspired, he meets a Greme and Philip enters a Faustian pact so that he can deliver the fantasy best-seller being demanded of him.

I found this a puzzling book. While enjoying the descriptions and finding the writing amusing and quite beautiful and accomplished in parts, nevertheless I felt slightly uncomfortable.

Elements felt slapstick and just too angry; the comments about the publishing world and literary success were a little too empassioned and the author comes over as very cynical! There were a number of autobiographical details that made the story feel a little too close to the mark. I didn't feel I was sharing in the joke with the author, but rather that I might too be the subject of his ridicule. And the ending was a disappointment.

I think this is a book you either love or hate. I don't like fantasy books as a whole and skipped over certain mystical features and language. But I really did enjoy reading it even as I was puzzling over all the different elements. I am left feeling, though, that whatever my response to the book, the author is laughing at me, and that's not a pleasant sensation.