Un Lun Dun

For some reason I held off reading this for years, because it seemed too close to Gaiman's Neverwhere. But it really isn't, it's well worth reading if you like urban fantasy or books with spunky child protagonists. I particularly liked the way it turned certain fantasy tropes on their head. I can't quite decide the target age group, but it feels definitely less horror tinged than Neverwhere..

I bought this book by mistake, having wanted to read something by Mieville for a while but not having realised it was his "young adult" novel. No matter - I loved it anyway. He did a beautiful job of keeping the language simple without ever seeming to talk down to the reader, and the plot uses a certain degree of naivety on the part of its teenage protagonists, without ever making them seem stupid or clueless. It's also a great, wild fantasy novel that manages to say rather a lot about the real London that's only ever in the background of the book.