adeaddaysTo cap off an enjoyably active weekend, I managed to finish Marcus Sedgwick’s The Book of Dead Days in the Eurostar on the way back. In fact, there’s a good probability that I’ll end up reading all of Sedgwick’s output, since I got all of his books for my son and promised to read each of them if he did. Dark, occult happenings are Sedgwick’s specialisation, but this one has the added interest (for this would-be writer) of taking place in an imaginary world. I used to think that it was easier to write about imaginary worlds, but the more I read of this sort of book (for some reason it reminds me of Jim Crace’s Arcadia) the more I realise just how difficult it is to pull off. When we set imaginary events and characters in a real world and a real period, we at least have a basic framework in which to place them.  But in an imaginary world you have to create everything and it has to be done in a convincing way.