“The great dragons are dying in their dozens. Nobody knows why.” With this, the adventures begin in book 2 of Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures series, The Poisoned King.
Katherine Rundell is an internationally best-selling author of fiction and non-fiction, and her work includes the books The Wolf Wilder, The Explorer and Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne.
Impossible Creatures was published in 2023 and introduced us to the Archipelago, a cluster of unmapped islands where magical creatures of every kind have thrived for thousands of years, and Christopher Forrester, a boy from London, or the “outerlands” to those from the Archipelago. Christopher is tasked with being its guardian.
In The Poisoned King, we are introduced to Anya Arden, Princess of the Island of Dousha whose grandfather the king has been murdered and her father falsely accused and imprisoned. When it becomes clear that she is in danger as well, she sets off to get justice and revenge for her father. We learn that the dying dragons are connected to the poisoned king and Christopher and Anya unite in their quests.
In a recent What We’re Reading interview, Katherine noted that for the plot of The Poisoned King she borrowed from Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet.” Both stories have an uncle who the protagonist is sure has committed the murder, so they seek justice and revenge.
She explained, “Anya finds herself torn from her normal life and into this new adventure in which she first needs to essentially solve a murder mystery, but then she needs to face the fury within her own heart, and she needs to decide where her love and passion and rage can go.”
Where Hamlet famously pretends to be crazy to fool his enemies, Anya realizes that she must also wear a mask—to hide her rage. She pretends to be sweet and innocent to hide that she knows the truth. Katherine noted how she writes to “salute the idea of a child’s intelligence” so she doesn’t shy away from expressing real love, real courage or real anger.
“I think we live in a world in which young people, and in particular young women, are not always allowed to feel their rage, to truly know their anger. And I think anger can destroy you. It can burn everything, but it can also be a weapon for justice. And Anya's journey is learning how to take that anger and use it not for destruction, but for the creation of something new. “
Katherine also notes how fantasy can be an effective vehicle to teach children about humanity. She explained, “I do think that one of the great things about fantasy is that you can offer such a range of ideas in a fairly short book. Fantasy is…one of the first ways that I, as a kid, encountered philosophy, encountered big ideas about truth and endurance and courage and death.”
And despite the themes of revenge and justice, Katherine also wanted her readers to be drawn in to experience lighter moments, in particular: jokes.
She said, “I think the best way to salute a child's intelligence has always been and will always be with a good joke. I think a good joke honors us all. And so, I make sure…that there are also every range of joke, from the kind of more sophisticated ones that an adult would delight in, and also just really straightforward fart jokes, because I think, we ignore the pedagogical importance of a fart joke at our peril.”
Book three in the Impossible Creatures series is in the works and will be released in 2026. Katherine also revealed that Disney Studios has acquired the rights to adapt the series into film and she will write the screenplay.
More information on The Poisoned King can be found here.
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