'There was Tolkien, there is Pullman and now there is Katherine Rundell. Wondrous invention, marvellous writing.' - Michael Morpurgo

'A book stuffed full of fantastical, magical delight, and a world of richly imagined wonder' - Cressida Cowell

* BRITISH BOOK AWARDS CHILDREN'S FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR * WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER * BOOKS ARE MY BAG READERS' AWARD WINNER * FOYLES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE YEAR * SHORTLISTED FOR AMAZON KIDS AND YA BOOK OF THE YEAR

* THE TIMES CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * THE INDEPENDENT CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * THE DAILY TELEGRAPH CHILDREN'S BOOK OF THE WEEK * SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER IN SEPTEMBER 2023

There's a place where all the wildest stories began . From Katherine Rundell, the British Book Awards Author of the Year, comes the paperback release of the first novel in the critically acclaimed, award winning, best-selling Impossible Creatures series. This edition includes The Centaur's Spectacles bonus short story.

Christopher is stunned when he discovers a passage to the Archipelago: a cluster of magical islands where all the creatures of myth still live and breed and thrive in their thousands. There he meets Mal: a girl from the islands, who is in possession of a flying coat and a baby griffin, and who is being pursued by a killer. Together they embark on an urgent quest to discover why the creatures are suddenly perishing, voyaging across the wild splendour of the Archipelago, where sphinxes hold secrets and centaurs do murder, in a bid to save both the islands and the world beyond them from a rising evil - before it's too late.

'Rundell's first foray into fantasy is both a deft, rich homage to the greats of children's literature and an absorbing, profoundly poignant quest story for those aged 9+ - quite possibly her best yet' - The Guardian

'A marvellous, imaginative fantasy told with great style and sparkle - a book to race through in a day and keep for a lifetime' - Jacqueline Wilson

'The world of this new book is so intriguing and so well put together that I couldn't resist it. Readers who already know her books will seize this with delight, and new readers will love it and demand all her others at once' - Philip Pullman

'A masterpiece to rival Tolkien and Pullman' - The Daily Telegraph

'Fantastically exuberant, wildly imaginative, impossibly brilliant. Rundell's best, which is something to be marvelled at' - Kiran Millwood Hargrave

'Between the covers of Impossible Creatures is a world as enchanting, as perilous, as richly imagined as Narnia or Middle Earth' - Frank Cottrell-Boyce

'Rundell's book packs a punch with imagination and creativity in its purest form. She has created a story with potential to be adored by fantasy lovers for years to come' - The Independent

'With a delightful cast of characters, breathless adventure, and an abundance of myth and magic, Impossible Creatures offers the very best of fantasy' - Aisha Bushby

'A fierce, fantastic, wild-hearted adventure that roars and bristles with imagination. I devoured it like a hungry dragon' - Sam Sedgman

'A rare and remarkable feat of glittering imagination from a truly masterful storyteller' - Catherine Doyle

'The action is gripping. Every sentence sparkles. You can feel the flutter of griffin feathers and the menace of strange poisonous shrews. Magnificent' - The Times

'Surely the next classic' - The I

Katherine Rundell is a multi-million-bestselling author whose novels for children have won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Costa Children's Book Award, among many others. She is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College and a Fellow of St Catherine's College, Oxford, where she works on Renaissance literature. Her books for adults include Super-Infinite, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize. Very occasionally she goes climbing across the rooftops of Oxford, late at night.