Claire Mabey is already a valuable contributor to Aotearoa NZ's book scene. She's literary festival organiser, curator and participant. She's Books Editor at The Spinoff. Now she's a published author as well, via this inventive, evocative fantasy for middle readers, with its sumptuous cover from Zoe Gillett.

Its setting is geographically and chronologically non-specific, with colours of the alternative, pre-industrial medievalism that many fantasy writers favour.

Fittingly, it's a narrative with books at the core. Getwin and her Mum work at stitching, stamping and clandestinely reading them. Lea and others slave at copying them. A nasty, entitled social elite schemes at restricting access to them. After all, a book can be potent and subversive: it ''wants you to read it and absorb it and carry it with you forever....the more you read, the more you want to read''.

Things kick off with gutsy, bolshie Getwin of the troubled eyesight, and Sharp the similarly afflicted raven, who are suddenly alone when their mother is pulled away, leaving a runic message that leads to – ta-da! – a book. Elsewhere and simultaneously, Lea is yearning to escape from bleak, bullying Missall House, to the outside world of birds, trees, freedom. 

Hunger and oppression are the lot of both young protagonists, until, accompanied by Sharp and a sturdy young lad endearingly called Buckle, they start on a journey which is both quest and ordeal, which brings initiations and transformations. Classic stuff.

Magic stuff as well. Our foursome move in a world where plants, mice, even the light are sources of change and revelation. Tokens and talismans of all sorts abound: a book in luminous blue; other pages which erupt with text and emblems; a potion with three drops of blood; a tree that bows and saves. A scribe can cause murderous birds to explode into a room, or the Sun to go nova. It's pleasingly specific as well as marvel-crammed: those scribes write ''with ink made from the gallnuts larvae found in bulges on oak trees”.

Journey's (near) end is in the oppressors' sanctuary, where our resourceful, authentically vulnerable trio – one has departed en route – are helped by a Wise Woman who has blossoms sprouting from her hairline, and who plucks apples from her own tresses. A missing father's identity forms. Villains like Carver the Keeper get their comeuppance. (Satisfying, because young readers have a very strong sense of justice.) There's reconciliation, healing, an enjoyable bit of grumping, a nicely affirmative wrap. The young learn and grow, which satisfies as well.

Girl power rules, but has to work appropriately hard for it. The set-up takes a while to form – and needs to. Adjectives and the odd sonorous phrase roll by. Quirky chapter headings – ''Almost certainly after midnight....A warm bath (and a secret read) work nicely. It's a lyrical, lively debut, and promises more good things to come. No maybe about this Mabey.

Reviewed by David Hill.