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Jane Doe and The Cradle of All Worlds — Jeremy Lachlan (Hardie Grant Egmont, $22.99) by Louise Ward, Wardini Books

In a fresh approach to the explorer/adventurer story, we are introduced to our hero, the feisty, funny and clearly quite dangerous Jane Doe. These traits, along with her sardonic turn of phrase, serve her well in the strange half life she inhabits living in a basement with her chronically ill father.

Jane and John Doe are pariahs in a town that believes them cursed. They were spat from The Manor, the mythical heart of Bluehaven, when Jane was a baby and the sealing of the portal from which they emerged, along with Jane’s strangely luminescent amber eyes, cast her as the cause of all Bluehaven’s ills. All comes to a head when local legend Winifred Robin decides it is time for Jane to fulfil her destiny and re-enter The Manor. Jane is separated from her father and her only friend, Violet, and is cast into a hostile environment full of booby traps and unimaginable creatures. Jane is a wholly likeable character. She is wily and resourceful — sweet and sassy and written in such a warm manner that we are on her side from the start. Jane is also one of the few characters I’ve read to pee at an appropriate point in the narrative! Peripheral characters are just as well developed — Violet is spirited, loyal and tightly bound to Jane; Hickory is an enigma — whose side is he on? Add the bad guy, Roth, who is rank, poisonous, the stuff of nightmares and we have a cast guaranteed to provide drama and intrigue.

Jane Doe is a cracking, pacy read for lovers of adventure and derring-do. It’s funny and dark, and has created a brand new, original world while making good use of fairytale and fantasy.