The Edge of the World.

By John Gordon.

Synopsis:

Tekker (a boy of indeterminate age) sees a ghost. But no-one believes him except for his best friend's sister, Kit. He attempts to prove it to his friends, and inadvertantly stumbles across a gateway into another world, opened decades ago when two sisters fought over the same man...

Review:
It's good, in an unfinished sort of way. The bad guys, the horseheads, are very creepy in the Nazgul style, which is the best bit about it. Nothing else seems to have been followed through. The parallel dimension, are whatever it actually is, isn't really described in much detail, and it's hard to get a clear picture of it. Similarly, we don't know anything about the characters beyond their actions throughout the story. It feels as if it should have been a novel, rather than a children's story.

The pacing is rather odd, as well. They don't start off on the actual quest until almost half way through the book. You can't help feeling that the story would perhaps have been better if the beginning had been glossed over, rather than the later, more interesting, bits.

Which isn't to say that it's not good - I enjoyed it - but it suffered from all the worst aspects of writing for children - it's rushed and over-simplified. But then it's also damn creepy, which children's books should be.

The only reason I bought this, while trawling through the Mills and Boon/Jilly Cooper wasteland of the bookshelves of an Oxfam shop, was that an ex-library sticker (my copy is late of the Hertfordshire library service, in case you were interested) was covering up the last half of the author's name, and the word 'Gor' caught my eye. So I took it down to have a look, and the cover was pretty, so it bought it. In fact, the cover art (uncredited, as is the norm in such matters) is very good, and indicates that the artist must have actually read the book quite carefully. Which is nice (ISBN 0006722490, published by Fontana Lions in 1985, in case you were suddenly seized with the urge to find it).