Impossible Creatures

Impossible Creatures is a 2023 children’s fantasy by Katherine Rundell, an award-winning author of children’s literature. Set in both Scotland and a magical world called the Archipelago, Impossible Creatures follows the burgeoning friendship of Christopher Forrester and Malum “Mal” Arvorian, a girl who can fly, as the two children band together to save the Archipelago from destruction. With Impossible Creatures, Rundell crafts a fantasy that is full of magical creatures and offers plenty of adventure for middle grade readers.

In addition to penning nonfiction for adults, Rundell has garnered widespread recognition for her middle grade novels. In Great Britain, Impossible Creatures became a Sunday Times bestseller and also received the Waterstones Book of the Year Award. The novel offers nuanced observations on The Importance of Friendship and Love, The Corrupting Influence of Power, and The Value of the Natural World.

This guide refers to the Alfred A. Knopf Kindle e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, and animal death.

Plot Summary

Using a third-person omniscient point of view, Rundell alternates between the lives of her two main characters, Christopher Forrester of Scotland and Mal Arvorian of the magical Archipelago. One day, both protagonists have a variety of strange experiences. Christopher is on the Scottish Highlands estate of Frank Aureate, his grandfather. His day goes awry after he visits a nearby lake and nearly dies in a stampede of mythical animals, encountering unicorns, a griffin, and a dog-like animal. Christopher takes the griffin home, and when he tells his grandfather what happened, Frank reveals that Christopher is from a line of guardians of the “waybetween,” the portal that lies between the nonmagical world and the Archipelago. Frank gives Christopher a map of the Archipelago and a bestiary (a book of animals). Although Frank tells Christopher to stay in the house, the boy instead takes the griffin back to the lake and soon finds himself being stalked by the dog-like creature.

Meanwhile, in the Archipelago, Mal’s day goes wrong as well. Mal is a young girl who usually travels around with her pet griffin, Gelifen, the last of his kind. She starts the day by looking at a glamry blade, a magical blade that can cut through anything. She then buys a casapasaran (a device that always points its owner toward the way home) and uses her magical coat to fly to a dying part of the forest. In this area, the life has gone out of the soil, and dead animals are scattered about. She can tell that something has gone wrong in the Archipelago, but no one will listen to her.

When she returns home, an assassin named Adam Kavil attacks her and her aunt. (It will later be revealed that Kavil is working for the person who is causing the environmental devastation of the Archipelago; this person has good reason to view Mal as a threat to his plans.) Now, Kavil kills Mal’s aunt and tries to kill Mal as well. He slices through her flying coat, so she escapes into a nearby river and slides through the waybetween, entering Christopher’s world. However, she drops Gelifen in the process. She later comes to Christopher’s rescue, saving him from the dog-like beast. Mal reclaims Gelifen and convinces Christopher to come through the waybetween and enter the Archipelago. She needs his help to escape Kavil and put a stop to whatever is killing the Archipelago.

When they return to Mal’s house, Kavil is lying in ambush. Christopher manages to capture Kavil and tie him up, but the old rope cannot hold the assassin for long. They run away, and he soon pursues them. At one point, the children ride on the backs of unicorns to stay ahead of Kavil, but they run out of luck when they come to a cliff over the sea. With the murderer gaining ground, they have no choice but to jump over the cliff. They land on the Neverfear, the ship of a drunken smuggler named Fidens Nighthand. As a Berserker, he is destined to protect the Immortal, a magical figure who carries the memories of all of humanity and has always reincarnated in new forms to protect the integrity of the Archipelago. However, the Immortal has not reincarnated in generations, so Nighthand now lives a purposeless life. Nighthand has a soft heart and allows the children to stay on his ship. He even agrees to take them to the next meeting place of the Azurial Senate, also called the Flying Senate: the only governing body of the Archipelago.

When they arrive at Flying Senate, the children are not allowed to enter, so they sneak in instead and overhear a marine scientist named Irian Guinne pleading with the Flying Senate to do something about the dying sea life. They tell her that it will take them six months to establish a procedure for doing this, not acknowledging that it will then be far too late to stop the accelerating death of the Archipelago. When Irian refuses to leave, they arrest her, and the same officers arrest the children for breaking in.

Nighthand saves them just as Kavil manages to catch up with them, so Nighthand, Irian, and the children run back to the Neverfear. While they are at sea, a monstrous kraken attacks and destroys the ship, but the kraken is nonetheless careful to save Mal by putting her on some floating pieces of wood. Irian, who is secretly part nereid (a mermaid-like creature with legs), calls the other nereids to save the children. The children, Nighthand, and Irian then go to the City of Scholars and learn that they will need to visit the sphinxes, keepers of knowledge who may be able to explain the devastation across the Archipelago.

In the City of Scholars, Anja Trevasse, a rich, ruthless woman who is the most powerful person in the city, takes them in, clothes them, and gives them her ship, Shadow Dancer, in exchange for a chat with Mal about her early life. Later, Anja secretly gives this information to Kavil, and she is also aware that Mal is the latest incarnation of the long-lost Immortal whose destiny it is to protect the Archipelago. However, Mal does not know her true nature because a previous Immortal named Marik, who lived long ago, rejected his responsibility to hold the knowledge of all that humanity has wrought—both good and evil deeds. To renounce his role, he took a potion of forgetting, and all Immortals born after him (like Mal) were likewise ignorant of their true nature.

The group learns that the Immortal is charged with guarding the Glimourie Tree, which is the source of all magic and life in the Archipelago. Only the Immortal can remember the way through the booby-trapped maze that surrounds the Glimourie Tree. Anja doesn’t want Mal to become the Immortal because she knows that the girl will then become privy to the evil doings of Anja’s family. Anja therefore joins forces with Kavil and his employer, Francesco Sforza, the man who is eating the power of the Glimourie Tree and thereby destabilizing the entire world. Sforza wants Mal dead so that she cannot stop his quest to consume all the glimourie and become omnipotent.

Meanwhile, Mal and her group take the Shadow Dancer to the Island of the Sphinxes and learn more about the Immortal. They discover that they can create a potion of remembering to restore the Immortal’s memories of all of human existence. This will allow her to recall how to get through the traps hidden in the maze. Although there is every indication that Mal is the long-lost Immortal, Mal initially refuses to accept this truth.

Kavil catches up with them when they return to the City of Scholars, and in the ensuing fight, he kills Gelifen. In her fury and grief, Mal finally accepts the truth about herself and agrees to take the potion of remembering. Only a centaur called Petroc, who is jailed on the Island of Murderers, can make this potion. The island is cursed; although anyone can land on it, no one can leave unless they use a boat of dryad wood. There is such a boat on the long-abandoned Island of the Immortal, so they retrieve it. Nighthand receives a deadly wound in the process, and he nearly dies, but Anja transports him to someone who can save his life.

Petroc makes the potion but leaves out one ingredient. He then tricks them and steals the Shadow Dancer. With the help of the dryads, Mal and Christopher complete the potion, which Mal drinks. She becomes the Immortal and remembers the way through the maze, but Christopher has to carry her because she is so weak. In the end, he has to leave her behind and navigate the maze himself, even knowing that no one but the Immortal has ever returned alive. At the heart of the maze, he finds Sforza, who reveals his quest for absolute power. Sforza has grafted himself onto the Glimourie Tree and is eating it and all the glimourie. He comes close to killing Christopher.

Mal uses her flying coat to reach the center of the maze, and she and Christopher capture Sforza. He escapes from them after they exit the maze, so Mal recaptures him and sacrifices herself by flying both of them straight into the Somnulum, a sun-like object that is the hottest place in the world. This is a death sentence for most people, but Mal’s action saves the Archipelago from destruction. The Archipelago begins to heal, and Christopher recovers from his ordeal, cared for by the sphinxes. All the creatures of the Archipelago hold a funeral march for Mal, and somewhere, a new Immortal is born. Christopher returns to his world.