Come to the Edge, By Joanna Kavenna

There's no hesitancy in the opening of Joanna Kavenna's witty and provocative third novel, which brandishes a vision of rural apocalypse, then hurtles through a darkly comical back-story to explain how we got there.

Beautiful, tall, flame-haired Cassandra stands above Cumbria's remote Duddon Valley, armed with her antique blunderbuss, exulting in the house-fires dotting the landscape while ignoring the police helicopter buzzing above.

Aglow with revolutionary zeal, Cassandra cuts an imposing figure against her doubt-filled accomplice. She has arrived at Cassandra's ramshackle but highly organic farm after bailing out of a suburban routine of dreary consumption, office tedium and an adulterous husband.

"Eccentric" doesn't do justice to Cassandra's unorthodoxy. Bread is banned and she eschews all grain as "a hoarder's commodity", linked to the historic rise of armed conflict. As for the wealthy absentee owners of the valley's many second homes, she classes them as "perverts" for their usurpation of the natural order of things.

Kavenna's plot is as simple as it is logical. Cassandra begins to orchestrate the not-so-clandestine resettlement of the rural poor in the abundance of empty, luxurious dwellings. Brimming with doubt, the narrator cravenly admits to being a "parasite" on Cassandra's unyielding sense of outrage and purpose – but quickly falls into step.

By pairing these two lavishly flawed characters, Kavenna has confidently invaded the uncertain landscape of Magnus Mills, whose delicious novellas polarise conviction and doubt in familiar but unsettling landscapes.

Come to the Edge delivers richly on the promise of Inglorious, Kavenna's uncomfortably edgy debut novel. A resonance of mental instability thrums throughout as Kavenna probes received notions of justice and equality, property and rights, in this often hilarious and fast-paced tale of rural revolt. Come to the Edge has resolution writ large from the outset, and powers up from its brazen characters' challenge to moral rectitude.