If you crossed Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights with the film Truly, Madly, Deeply, a bit of steampunk, and a serious message about bullying you would come up with something like Darren Simpson’s young adult fiction novel Furthermoor.

Though there is no alethiometer, twelve year old Bren slips in and out of a parallel world, Furthermoor, which he and ​Evie, ​his sister​,​ had created through a magical watch, which has birds and animals made from bits and pieces of metal rather than flesh and blood. There he meets up with Evie, but we know that she died in a crash. Is this a ​completely ​fantasy world or a “real” alternative universe? We are never quite sure, but for Bren it is a refuge from home where his parents have never recovered from the death of their daughter, and a refuge from school where he is in trouble for fading out academically. At school he is also hideously bullied by a gang. A new boy, a Chinese boy, turns up at school and stands up to the ​main ​bully, but can Bren find the courage to do the same? Throw in the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz here.

And then things start to go really wrong. His utopia becomes a dystopia as a crow-like creature starts to destroy the other animals and taunts him as a coward. The creature, Featherly, starts to take control creating even more scary creatures and appearing to turn those Bren loves against him. Will Bren finally stand up for himself? Of course he will, because this is a positive book (if​ ​really scary at times). And Truly, Madly Deeply? No Alan Rickman or Juliet Stevenson, alas, but Evie finds a way for Bren to let her ​- and Furthermoor – ​go, though she says in parting “But I’ll always be here, right?”

Signed copies of Furthermoor are available in the shop or here:  fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/product/furthermoor/