Advent [Paperback]

Most fantasies for older children/YAs are stories of the protagonist being drawn into another world, where magic reigns and natural laws do not apply. That is the template of the Hero's Journey, from Star Wars, to Lord of the Rings and many more. Usually, the hero eventually returns to the everyday world, transformed.

But this is a different story, a story of the terrifying, elemental power of magic re-entering our everyday existence, transforming not only the main character, but everyone and everything. Treadwell's keen ear for contemporary speech patterns and behaviour makes this a powerful and unsettling concept, and suggests that, even at the end of his projected trilogy, there will be no return to order as we now know it.

Cornwall is a natural setting for such a story to begin, and when Gavin, a disaffected teenager banished from boarding school and alienated from his parents, is packed off on a train to Truro to stay with an eccentric aunt that he barely knows, the scene appears to be set for a formulaic English fantasy. But what happens after he arrives and there is no dotty aunt to meet him takes us into very different territory.

Like many writers of fantasy who have created their own inner worlds, Treadwell writes haunting and beautiful prose and has a deep feeling for landscape and the way it is shaped by local history and topography. I've never seen Cornwall captured better, even by Daphne Du Maurier. But the familiar Gothic scenario of a mysterious, remote country house with its occupants marooned in time and menaced by supernatural forces develops into something equally influenced by classic science fiction narratives of a menacing alien presence invading the charmed world of faerie and the banality of everyday life. A sort of Rebecca meets Day of the Triffids meets Doctor Who (but without the lightness of touch).

The book certainly has its weaknesses. Treadwell is an academic and can't resist complicated sentences filled with qualifying subordinate clauses and abstract nouns. He adopts the voice of the omniscient narrator and, while this certainly suits the story's epic quality, this limits his ability to capture his character's language and thought proccesses in a gripping way. It takes about 150 pages of dense and repetitive exposition and worldbuilding to get to the point where things begin to hot up. But that doesn't necessarily preclude him from being the next Tolkien: plenty of people struggled to get as far as "The Council of Elrond" in LOTR. It's notoriously difficult to predict what the next cult fantasy phenomenon is going to be. Hodder just might have hit the jackpot and, while I'd have preferred a little more hands-on editing, the lack of it never seemed to do JK Rowling any harm.

For centuries it has been locked away

Lost beneath the sea

Warded from earth, air, water, fire, spirits, thought and sight.

But now magic is rising to the world once more.

Gavin has given up on the adults in his life, and they've given up on him. His father appears to hate him, his mother is scared of him, his teachers think maybe he should be in a different school. What he has is a gift - one he neither wants nor understands. At fifteen, his closest friend and confidante is the mysterious Miss Grey, although he has given up trying to talk to people about her as it only seems to upset them. Turned out of school, and not included in his parents' holiday plans he catches a train to what may be his last haven; his aunt Gwen in Cornwall.

However, she is not there to meet him. Instead the weather is turning bad, and unnerving things are stirring.

Gavin is at that difficult age between childhood and being an adult. He is filled with uncertainty and he doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. When the reader is first introduced to him you aren't given a great deal of detail about what is going on but as each new chapter unfolds a little bit more of a larger puzzle is revealed. There are secrets everywhere you look in Advent. Conversations occur and it is not until later on in the book that their relevance suddenly becomes clear. Gavin's journey is a voyage of self-discovery as he uncovers the truth about his family and the secrets that have surrounded him since birth.

As the main narrative follows Gavin the reader only discovers information as Gavin discovers it. I did start to panic at one point that I just couldn't get my head around what was going on but it turns out that I needn't have worried. Once Gavin starts to find answers to his questions I very quickly had my own epiphany moment, at around page three hundred, everything just started to click and it all suddenly made a wonderful kind of sense. I'm glad that I persevered and I should stress that it is entirely worthwhile sticking with the story.

The other characters that the reader encounters are just as intriguing as Gavin. It seems that everyone that lives in this tiny little corner of Cornwall has his or her own secrets. There is the `nutty' professor Hester Lightfoot who has left academia under a cloud, the Uren family who live at Pendurra itself and a whole cavalcade of other slightly odd types. I haven't even mentioned the mysterious John Fiste, the greatest magus the world has ever seen.

The author has taken key elements from various mythologies and deftly woven them into his story. Arthurian legend, classic Greek myth and Celtic folklore are represented amongst others. It's a strength of the narrative that these have all been blended together seamlessly to create a modern day fable.

The thing that really captured my imagination was the main location used in the novel. I've been fortunate enough to have visited Cornwall in the past and Treadwell's writing vividly captures the isolated house, Pendurra, where Gavin finds himself. It's easy to believe that if magic was going to return it would be to somewhere so remote like this.

Acting as a preview to the next novel the final chapter moves the story away from Cornwall, to somewhere completely different, and offers some tantalising hints that the scope of this trilogy is going to get much larger when the sequel does arrive. Advent is a compelling debut that mixes fantasy with reality to create the first part of what promises to be an extraordinary tale. I'm already looking forward to reading the rest of it.

I suspect I'm well outside the target audience for this one - I'd assume it'll be marketed for young adults of Gavin's young teen age but 400+ pages of tiny print, strong language in places and magical sequences from the 1500s might put it outside the comfort zone of the Harry Potter fan. But this really was a little gem. The first of a trilogy, set in Cornwall in the present day but turning into a fantastical magic story with engaging young characters and building a belief in magic, mythical creatures and incredible happenings. I was absolutely engrossed by it - the mysterious Miss Grey, Hester the "nutty professor" with the wall of masks, Marina and her unusual parentage, the vanished aunt, then the grotesques that appear and are as real as the earthly characters. Quite complex in parts - the Magus sequences break up the adventure but are central to the story - this really is a rattling good read and Gavin is a wonderfully drawn teenage hero. I'm not really a trilogy reader, but with its clever setting up at the end I think this is a series I'll stick with. This really is a highly accomplished first novel, for adults and the YA audience alike.