Teenage fiction reviewed

So that's one teenage Christmas present solved: Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief (Puffin, £12.99) is one of the books of the year, erudite as well as vastly entertaining, and at 373 pages not a word too long. The first of a series called Percy Jackson and the Olympians, it weaves ancient Greek stories into a modern setting with all the good humour that the Coen brothers brought to their wonderful film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, also based on Homeric sources.

In this novel, 12-year-old Percy, standing in for Perseus, finds himself at a summer camp for half-bloods like himself who share an immortal parent with a normal one. Trusted with a quest that aims to stop war breaking out among the Gods, he and his two friends survive sirens, a Cyclops, Procrustes (and his water beds), lotus eaters and other immemorial characters, all transformed into low-life American types expert in verbal put-downs and given to wearing tacky clothing. With jokes as funny as anything in Harry Potter plus a strong sub-plot involving a disappearing mother and unbearable stepfather, here is something for everyone. Fantasy writing is up against a lot of competition; falling back on some of the best stories in the world dressed up in new clothes is a smart idea brilliantly realised. Book two, next year, will be most eagerly awaited.

Frank Cottrell Boyce is another new children's writer who can do little wrong, and Framed (Macmillan, £9.99) is well up to his Millions, now also a successful film. It is set in the tiny Welsh village of Manod, which during the Second World War housed the paintings in the National Gallery in one of its disused slate mines.

Now, at some unspecified time in the near future, Manod is needed once again by the art world due to heavy floods in London, and the upheaval this causes in an otherwise dying community is recorded here by young Dylan, the only boy left in the village.

A stranger to self-pity, Dylan has a sharp eye for local eccentrics as well as for his own family, going through financial problems that get worse page by page. But support comes from Lester, the mild-mannered curator in charge of this move, whose informal lectures on paintings are some of the highlights of this warm-hearted, funny and unpredictable story. Only in the last 20 pages does the writer's imagination take one step too far; before that, this story should leave readers of any age purring with delight.

Sophie Masson is an Australian writer with a good track record. In Malvolio's Revenge (Hodder, £5.99) she turns her back on the intricately imagined fantasy that has characterised previous novels in favour of old-fashioned melodrama. Set in 1910, this story follows the fortunes of that ever-popular fictional stand-by: the impoverished troupe of travelling actors, stranded this time in deepest Louisiana without money or prospects. But chancing upon a near-ruined mansion called Illyria, actor-manager Uncle Theo and his 17-year-old nephew Toby feel they have hit the jackpot once the beautiful young woman of the house agrees to finance their play in nearby New Orleans.

Yet all is not as it seems, and encounters with murder and voodoo combine to make a finale as theatrical as anything the actors mount on the stage. Seen through the eyes of Toby, this is storytelling at its most traditional, with overheard conversations on hand should the plotting ever look like becoming too complex. There is talk of "a big, booming river that would sweep everyone away," but that particular fate is left for another day.

Matt Whyman has been in terrific form recently, writing novels where the reality remains so bizarre there is never any need to reach for fantasy. So Below (Simon and Schuster, £5.99) sees a change of style in a story - the first of three - set underground in London some time in the future.

Ancient air-raid shelters and abandoned tube lines are inhabited by a group of children, who tap into life above ground with their own form of CCTV. This is the world that young Yoshi blunders into, on the run in Chinatown from a sinister figure out for his blood. Who exactly this person is only gradually becomes clear in a plot involving genius children locked away so that their elders can tap into their gifts at leisure. Well written and compellingly imagined, this distinctly odd story is yet another addition to the growing number of dystopian novels available to teenagers today at a time when the future, at least in fictional terms, has never seemed so bleak.

Nicholas Tucker is co-author, with Julia Eccleshare, of the 'Rough Guide to Books for Teenagers'