I recently read Un Lun Dun by China Miéville, a fantasy YA book, which like many other books of that type, managed to appeal to me as an adult as much as it would have done if I’d read it as a child. Similarly to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, this is a book about parallel worlds and secret fantastical cities hidden beneath (or to the side of) real world cities, in this case London (the title being one of many rather neat puns and word games that appears throughout the book). In this particular instance the city is populated by a mixture of ghosts, fantastical monsters, flying buses and broken umbrellas, and of course the young protagonist must save the day. What I really liked about this book, beyond the wonderful city and its inhabitants, is the fact that Miéville managed to subvert the typical YA fantasy quest story, as the ‘chosen one’ here is sent home sick and instead the ‘sidekick’ is left to fill in as the heroine. It’s a really fun book, very well written, and I’d really recommend it to anyone who likes a good fantasy story and isn’t ashamed to read the occasional YA book.