Prepare to embark on a fantastical journey with Hyddenworld: Spring, William Horwood’s new novel and the start of another new fantasy series. Hyddenworld is a kind of world-between-worlds, located in our own Great Britain but somehow on the margins and out of sight. Its people – half the size of humans, and (perhaps you’ve guessed this already) known as ‘hyddens’ – live in liminal, unused, derelict spaces in out-of-the-way corners of the human world. While hyddens know about humans, humans don’t know about hyddens – that is, until a giant-born hydden enters the lives of a human family, disaster strikes, and human and hydden worlds collide. Hyddenworld: Spring is all about the fruition of ages-old hydden prophecies: of Imbolc the Peace Weaver’s millennia-long quest to find the Shield Maiden coming to an end, and of a hydden giant falling in love with a human, all of which is to signal a new epoch in human and hydden worlds alike.

Horwood’s previous works include several series including two concerning an allegorical community of moles (The Duncton Chronicles and The Book of Silence), a couple of novels concerning humans and eagles (in The Wolves of Time) and a number of sequels to Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Horwood was also behind Skallagrigg, a novel about disability that was translated into a BBC film. This authorial pedigree has, it seems, influenced to some degree what we are presented with in his latest novel, which also seems to blend elements of Norman Hunter’s Professor Branestawm, HG Wells’ Mr Polly, with a bit of Phillip Pullman and the Wombles thrown in for good measure.

Fantasy fans can probably be divided into two camps: those who ‘get’ silly made-up names, and those who don’t. It may take a while for readers that find themselves in the latter category to get into the story, because the first few chapters contain an onslaught of apparently made-up names and unusual spellings such as ‘hydden’ and ‘Beornamund’ and ‘Imbolc’ and ‘Brum’, to pick just a few. At least most of these unusual names apparently have roots in Olde English, which makes it all somehow slightly more palatable. Happily, it doesn’t take too long to overcome any initial distaste for this kind of language and after a couple of gloriously short, snappy chapters the unusual words and names are hurled at the reader with ever decreasing velocity, and it is impossible not to get swept up in this richly imaginative story.

Perhaps it is because the first half of the book has to work the hardest – describing the parallel worlds and the characters within them, and setting up the rest of the story – that it feels stronger than the second, which feels much slower and less captivating.

It might be because of the sheer number of parallel storylines that are thrown into the mix, that never seem to overlap. There’s the mediaeval tragic romance between Beornamund and Imbolc, which constitutes a Hyddenworld mythical understanding of the world and also frames the whole story. There’s the human academic couple, who suspect the existence of the Hyddenworld and set about trying to prove their hypotheses, which lands them in a whole heap of trouble. Then there’s the human family whose lives are dramatically transformed on unwittingly meeting with a giant-born hydden child. The relationship between this giant-born hydden and a human child develops into a romance that takes us on a journey through human and hydden worlds.

Each of these storylines is put to work, but rather than leaving the reader with a sense of a well-integrated, holistic whole, we’re left with a slightly jarring, jagged-edged fragmented array of half-told part-stories clearly only there to move the larger story on to the next stage. Engagement with most of the characters is superficial and sometimes transitory: Horwood is skilled at creating interesting characters with intriguing back stories, but the reader never really seems to get to know them.

Only one storyline is integrated seamlessly throughout, and that’s the human-hydden love story. Perhaps the surprisingly absent-yet-ever-present nature of this particular storyline was crafted in such a way as to make the book suitable for a younger audience – although the early scenes of graphic horror and tragedy that introduce the two lovers in the first part of the book would seem to suggest that the book might not, in fact, have been targeted at a young readership or, indeed, the easily alarmed. Rather like the chase/fight/journeying elements that loom large in the second half of the book, the love story could easily be condensed – or perhaps developed – in order to improve the overall story.

On the whole, Hyddenworld: Spring rests on an intriguing premise, yet despite being a real page-turner to start with, it soon dwindles into disappointing drudgery towards the end. The cynical reader might wonder if Horwood slows the pace in the second half of the book in order to set us up to read the next volume, and possibly another after that. He just about gets away with it, because elements of the story are so clever and engaging that they almost make up for the very many agonisingly slow parts. Here’s hoping Horwood is saving the big guns for the inevitable Hyddenworld: Summer.

If you’re a closet fantasy fan with a penchant for whimsy, looking for something to get you through the morning commute – or perhaps to get you off to sleep at night – then Hyddenworld: Spring could be just the season for you.