59 pages • 1 hour read
Katherine RundellImpossible Creatures
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Genre Context: British Children’s Fantasy
Impossible Creatures draws many of its otherworldly aspects from a long tradition of British children’s fantasy, sharing traits with such modern and contemporary classics as C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass. These works feature courageous child protagonists who explore alternate worlds full of magic and danger, learning important lessons about good and evil as they embark upon dangerous quests, meet magical creatures, and master systems of magic that exist on the edges of the nonmagical world.
In many of these works, the antagonists are figures who seek absolute power and therefore constitute an existential threat to the entire world. Rundell’s novel also conforms to this pattern, for Francesco Sforza’s all-consuming need to dominate the Archipelago threatens this magical world and the ordinary world that Christopher calls home. As with most children’s literature, the young protagonists—whom the adults often overlook and underestimate—must take the lead and counter these challenges directly, using their own wits and bravery to prevail. Thus, tiny Mal and humble Christopher must take on the burden of saving the Archipelago: a feat that they can only accomplish at great cost to themselves. Throughout this journey, Mal and Christopher encounter great risks, and Mal ultimately sacrifices her current life to save the Archipelago. Also in accordance with patterns set forth by classic series such as The Chronicles of Narnia, Rundell has created a literary universe in which her characters can pass through literal portals and enter a magical world that few others have ever seen. While Lewis relied upon devices such as a magical wardrobe, the portal in Impossible Creatures is known simply as the “waybetween” and leads to the liminal space of the Archipelago.
Environmental Context: Nature Under Threat
While the premise of the novel is entirely fantastical, the environmental collapse that Mal seeks to prevent draws powerful parallels to real-world issues, and Rundell uses the novel to deliver a pointed critique of the many environmental issues that threaten to destabilize the natural world. As Rundell notes in a 2024 interview, the novel “is, in part, about the threat of endangerment: about the idea of fighting with everything you have to protect that which is vulnerable, because what is lost is lost forever” (Spotts, Kaitlyn. “An Interview With Katherine Rundell, Author of Impossible Creatures.” Penguin Random House: Secondary Education, 5 Nov. 2024). Rundell therefore presents the Archipelago’s vulnerability to the unscrupulous Francesco Sforza, a man who wants to consume more than his fair share of glimourie. Like natural resources such as land, air, and water, glimourie is a finite source that every living thing in the Archipelago needs to survive.
Thus, the misuse and overconsumption of glimourie stands as a metaphor for real-world issues like wasted resources, and as this precious substance is leached from the magical world, the Archipelago suffers widespread ill effects such as the extinction of entire species, the death of the soil, and the unnatural spread of dragons into the north. These issues all originate from a human failure to respect the balance of the natural world, and it is clear that these effects in the novel are intended to align with real-world equivalents. For example, climate scientists currently believe that the massive amount of carbon in the atmosphere is causing higher temperatures that lead to stronger storms and unusual animal migration patterns. Like the dragons in the novel, animals such as bears are entering human-populated areas because their own habitats are disappearing. However, Rundell does offer a note of hope; when Mal succeeds in putting a stop to Sforza’s blatant overconsumption of the glimourie, the novel’s conclusion also suggests that humanity can find a way to save the real-world environment from collapse.
