Synopsis: On the island of Tarnagar, is an asylum where you can be locked up for dreaming. Dante is the kitchen boy who brings the inmates their meals. Bea is the privileged daughter of doctors. Their worlds collide when Ezekiel Semiramis, a new patient arrives. He knows more than he should. He knows Dante’s mother didn’t kill herself but was murdered. He knows about the ruined city that Bea dreams of and most important he knows how to escape from the tyranny of Dr Sigmundus, ruler of the nation. We follow the adventures of Dante and Bea in the first volume of a gripping trilogy.

Review: This absorbing, engaging adventure has shadows of other fantasy texts, which portray parallel worlds. It resonates with echoes of The Wizard of Oz, Titus Groan and Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and yet is an original mix of myth and science fiction.

Dante toils away as a virtual untouchable, clearing up the corpses of inmates driven to suicide. Bea dreams and is ashamed, for it is forbidden and to be dealt with at her coming of age ceremony, where she will receive ichor for the first time. Ichor stifles any form of creativity, including dreaming in the repressive regime of Dr Sigmundus, whose portrait as a handsome and benevolent leader is ubiqitous. Dante escapes with Semiramis and Bea but is then captured and finds Dr Sigmundus to be a frail figure in a wheelchair, possessed by a demon; a creature from another world. Dante is in extreme danger as we leave him trying to escape.

Keaney is a writer of the first quality. His succinct and poetic prose has a charm which invites us to read on into a story, which challenges us to understand tyranny, indoctrination and the triumph of innocence, hope and goodness over the most appalling odds. It is most suitable for key stage three readers and would be ideal to compare and contrast with other fantasy novels set in parallel worlds. It could also support work on citizenship.