Lucy, George and Lockwood are comfortable ensconced in their little world where children fight ghosts during a terrible outbreak of hauntings. Things are even worse than normal, however, with a serious cluster of deadly hauntings in Chelsea, but Lockwood & Co have notfor various reasons, been asked to assist even though nearly every other reputable agency in London has. Still, they're kept busy; so busy, in fact, that Lockwood takes on an new assistant. Lockwood and George are delighted with the new, efficient and organisationally brilliant addition. Lucy not so much. Then again, Lucy is exploring her own Talent, a unique ability to communicate with ghosts. Though dangerous, Lucy is attracted by the idea of solving hauntings with methods that don't involve fighting and swords and chains and salt bombs - Lockwood and George are not so sure.

After a spectacular success, Lockwood & Co are brought into the Chelsea outbreak, but the mess is complicated, and only George, with his way of looking at things, can see through to heart of the problem. Rivalries and repressed feelings and sneaky use of unique talents are the very worst things to bring along on a mission of this magnitude, but nonetheless they're all there as the gang try to find the truth and stop the haunting.

Another fantastic adventure, wonderfully written, spooky atmosphere, terrific worldbuilding and great characters. Perfect supernatural fun.

Ireland has been cut off from the rest of the world by the Sidhe, who themselves are trapped in a hellish Fairyland. All teenagers are taken and hunted. Some survive, most do not. This is the world of The Call.

An absolutely blistering book, from the horror of the set-up to the pragmatic response to the plight of the teenagers training for the Call, to the battle for survival when each one is Called, to the happy demented sadism of the Sidhe to the bloody and nerve-shredding climax. The pace never lets up, the book hunts you down through its pages just like the Sidhe hunt their unfortunate prey, pursuing you through twist and turn and reversal, praying for someone to survive. It's a read.

Our protagonist is Nessa, least likely to survive because of her disability, and the most driven, utterly determined to come out alive. But with tensions rising in the Survival College and the possibility of enemies within, she might not be alive long enough to be Called. She's a feisty, passionate and ferocious, and she surely doesn't stand a chance.

The Call is hands-nailed-to-the-ages good. Violent, grim and nightmarish, it moves like a freight train and never lets up, an utterly unremitting fantasy horror thriller.

Can't do a proper review because I've a thing on my finger, but this at times harrowing bildungsroman about a young Roman, rescued from a shipwreck by a Celtic tribe, eventually cast out and forced to endure years of slavery and suffering before finding a place for himself, is one of Sutcliffe's best books. Brilliant scenes of life in the ancient world. Magnificent climax.

Solid, well-conceived, pacy, action-packed fantasy adventure. Good world-building, and the magic is interesting with lots of horror overtones. Engaging characters, and it doesn't avoid either sex or death, keeping it grounded and giving the adventure a real cost. Honestly found the writing a bit clumsy, though, making it a bit of a chore at first, and my eyes began to slide over sentences. It's not badly written, just a bit heavy and plodding when it clearly has ambitions to be more.

Action-packed adventure full of magic and thrills and heroic battling against the forces of evil armed only with swords, balls of fire, elemental magic, bones, and razor-sharp wit. A fun ride, well-written, inventive and funny. Terrific names, too.

Some Joan Aiken books are perfect for when the days get colder and shorter, and this is one. Abandoned impoverished orphans thrown out into the the cold and the snow to survive while surrounded by villainy. In this case it's Lucas and Anna Maria, under the guardianship of the horrible Sir Randolph, who owns a particularly dark and satanic mill in the dark and satanic town of Blastburn. Lucas and Anna Maria seek employment, not too hard to come by since child labour is all the rage, the more disgusting and dangerous the better, and find themselves in deadly danger from a couple of different sources. Will they survive? Will they find a measure of comfort and security and love? Is Blastburn just too horrible to save, and most of the people in it likewise? A great read, full of the usual dark invention and strange horrors and homely delights.

It's Gaiman and McKean, so it's a gorgeous object, and it reads well, but after a strong opening set around Helena's father's slapdash circus, halted in its tracks by the illness of Helena's mother, leaving them stuck in her Nan's apartment in Brighton, it takes off into a surreal quest through a sort of dreamworld that feels sketchy and rushed, with characters, ideas and settings that are woefully underdeveloped and a story that feels like a particularly shallow paint-by-numbers fairy-tale, and you tend to wish you were back in the apartment with the stranded circus, which was much more interesting. Thematically, the whole thing feels like an early draft of Coraline. Possibly it all works better in the film?

Greenwitch always had a special place in my heart, perhaps not quite my favourite book in the Dark is Rising Sequence, but it has something the others don't. Jane, Simon and Barney meet Will Stanton for the first time. Will's an Old One of the Light, the others aren't. Will's one of the in-crowd, full of secret knowledge and magic and authority. The kids generally go along with this a bit too meekly for my liking, but in Greenwitch there's a spiky bit of resentment and irritation.

The grail recovered by the kids in Over Sea Under Stone has been stolen, and Merry brings the kids and, through some Old One machinations, Will Stanton, to Cornwall on the eve of the ancient ceremony of the Greenwitch. Only Jane can attend the actual ceremony of the making of the Greenwitch, and it's her wish that makes all the difference - the Dark is after something, and it needs the Grail, and it needs Barney, and it needs the Greenwitch, but the Greenwitch is Wild Magic and not to be ordered about by Light or Dark, resulting in unpredictable and dangerous forces unleashed in a small seaside town.

Fantastic writing creates a wonderful atmosphere, and it's a terrific story full of folklore and a sense of deep dark magics, even if the Old Ones are an awfully smug lot. Jane is really at the heart of the book, for all that they keep trying to sideline her for the stranger bits, and she's much more interesting and engaging.

Two lovers from opposing sides in a bitter war on the run with the new-born baby, accompanied by one grandmother and a ghost baby-sitter travel to the planet Quietus in search of the writer who inspired them to bridge the impossible divide. In pursuit are old lovers, bounty hunters, aristocratic robots and journalists sniffing after an extraordinary story.

Lush, violent, tragic, and funny, with at least one page that'll shatter your heart into a million pieces, Saga remains one of the great titles of comic's current golden age.

Tom Taylor seems to have come into his own, wielding powerful spells from his father's fantasy novels and turning the tables on the Cabal and their murderers. But the magic comes with a cost, and the cabal are not easily defeated, and beyond them is the terrible Pullman who has his own agenda. The story of the Unwritten goes far back into history, the story of the mysterious Leviathan who feeds on stories and the Cabal who want to control them.

Fantastic stuff by Carey, Gross and a selection of other artists, weaving all sorts of stories, fables, myths and legends into the narrative about someone who is trying to find out if they themselves are real or a story, and whether there's any real difference between the two.