V.M. Jones: Beyond The Shroud

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

I was lucky enough not to have read Vicky Jones' first book of the Karazan quartet, The Serpents of Arakesh, until just before I began this one, the second in her fantasy series. Thus, utterly captivated by the adventures of her outcast hero, Adam Equinox, and his unlikely cohorts, I could move straight on to the next instalment. And I have to say, the second is even better than the first.

Jones is a startling phenomenon in New Zealand children's publishing. On Thursday, she won the Junior Fiction award in the New Zealand Post Book Awards for Juggling with Mandarins, a category in which she was up against another of her books, The Serpents of Arakesh, also a finalist. Last year she won the same category and the Best First Book award, for Buddy.

In Serpents of Arakesh, Adam Equinox, an orphan who has trouble reading and writing and is reviled at both school and the orphanage he lives in, wins a competition to help the world's most brilliant computer games inventor to develop a new edition of his most famous game.

Soon, Adam finds himself with four other competition winners on a perilous quest in a parallel world, Karazan — the world of the software programme which has developed an independent existence.

Beyond the Shroud finds Adam and co back in Karazan on a new quest, but this time evil has become more menacing and pervasive, and we begin to see more clearly exactly where Adam fits into this world's mythology, and just how this quartet's central plot might unfold.

Yes, there are tried and true fantasy elements — a land that lies in the grip of evil, a quest with unlikely heroes and seemingly impossible odds, a boy who is the promise of legend — but Jones' telling is nothing but fresh.

What gives these books their emotional impact is the vulnerability of Adam himself. Like Harry Potter, he engages our sympathies through his loneliness and maltreatment. Yet he's more real than Harry — more shaken by his experiences, more damaged, far less innocent.

His fellow adventurers are similarly not obvious candidates for hero status, and so there's a wonderful sense of children having to overcome their inherent weaknesses in order to solve the many mysteries and survive the dangers in these pages.

Then, of course, there is Jones' compelling storyline, the skilful unfurling of her plot, and her exuberant imagination, bringing us lethally voracious spiders, a rainbow bridge that vanishes when the sun goes, a black mist (the title's shroud) that whispers fatally beguiling messages to those trying to cross it, and the stinking, evil Faceless who leave fragments of rotten skin on things they touch...

All in all, a fabulous read for adventure-loving children, probably aged from around 10 and up into the teens. With its tricky mysteries, it'll appeal to problem-solving computer-game aficionados, and anyone who loves to lose themselves in another world.

Fans of the Karazan quartet will be thrilled to know that book number 3, Prince of the Wind, is written and will be released in November.

HarperCollins, $16.99