Are we just tired, as the Millennium limps to a close? A few excellent new authors have appeared in the last couple of years, notably J.K. Rowling with the unstoppable Harry Potter series and David Almond with his brilliant Skellig and its successor, Kit's Wilderness, but nearly all the most recent batch of books are reprints, or books by writers who have been a long time at their trade. Mind you, this may be no bad thing. Brian Jacques is an author with many fans in Ireland and yet he's not a household name. Think of The Wind in the Willows crossed with Narnia and the Cadfael books, and you'll get some idea of what he does. The Legend of Luke, (Hutchinson, £12.99 in UK) is the twelfth book in the Redwall series. In it, the hero of Redwall Abbey, Martin the warrior mouse, sets out to discover the truth about his father. The story of Luke, which forms the central section of the novel, is thus (very topically with the new Star Wars movie upon us) a prequel to the whole Redwall saga.
We are in traditional animal-tale country: the goodies are mice, squirrels, otters, etc., the baddies the usual "vermin". Jacques extols the virtues of honour and valour, and thus, despite the odd token heroine, portrays a largely male world of fighting and feasting. The Redwall books are not in the same league as Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy but they are a good read, with enticing maps, plenty of songs, a dose of natural history, and loads of excitement, charm and humour.
Robin Jarvis is another established author. The Fatal Strand (Collins, £5.99 in UK) is the final book of his Wyrd Museum trilogy. Jarvis uses elements of Norse mythology but sets his tale in contemporary London with a young lad, Neil, as chief protagonist. Woden, renegade Captain of Askar (shades of Lucifer) is out to finish off the last of the daughters of Askar and destroy the Loom of Fate. The Wyrd Museum itself is an uncanny place where the past intrudes on the present. Inmates from its time as a lunatic asylum, children from its days as a workhouse, Elizabethan grandees: all appear and disappear. But terror stalks the museum, too. Neil's only allies are a talking raven, the elderly Misses Websters (one of whom is already senile, the other slipping into senility), the ghost-catcher Pickering and the strange working-class child Edie, an unlikely immortal, rescued from the London Blitz and living with the Websters as their heir.
This book is printed in good-sized print (other publishers please note) with illustrations at the start of each chapter. Jarvis can overdo the adjectives at times and the archaic speech of Quoth the raven jars pretty quickly, but the evocations of past historical periods are convincing and the end has a surprising twist to it. Most importantly, he is excellent at nail-biting terror: "Even more terrifying in its advanced decay, the tiger's banded fur seethed with its crawling infestation of moths and the stitches which held the skin together unravelled with each menacing step". Great stuff!
On the home front, Don Conroy is one of our most popular children's writers. When the Sea Calls (Mentor, £4.99) is set in the early years of this century. It is the tale of a Connemara girl, Sinead, who is mysteriously attracted to the sea. The story refers back to the Famine and moves forward to the War in Europe and the Troubles at home. It is, as always with Don Conroy and despite the depiction of horror and death in the trenches, a gentle book, replete with closely-observed nature lore.
Deborah Lisson, a new name for Ireland, is an established author in her native Australia. She writes well, wears her learning lightly and, in Red Hugh (O'Brien Press, £4.99), tells the tale of young Hugh O'Donnell's escape from Dublin Castle with pace and excitement. It is no surprise that the book won a Western Australia Premier's Award.
And finally, a bit of light relief. If your daughter hasn't discovered Jacqueline Wilson yet, she has a treat in store. How to survive summer camp (OUP, £3.99 in UK) is for the younger end of this age group but Wilson aficionados will read anything by their favourite author. Here, Stella's Mum and her new stepfather have dumped her in a grotty summer camp while they swan off on their honeymoon to Europe. She is definitely not a happy camper. Wilson's strength lies not only in her humour, her convincing dialogue and the fast pace of her plots - she also manages to capture the ambivalence of feelings we have all experienced, the fear which can masquerade as superiority and the kindness which can co-exist with even the most hateful behaviour. New authors have a hard act to follow.
Margrit Cruickshank is an author and a critic. Her latest book, Don't Dawdle, Dorothy!, is a picture book for young children