The Poison Throne by Celine Kiernan

O'Brien €12.99
A NEW Irish fantasy talent has appeared. Celine Kiernan is one of the crop of animators developed by Sullivan Bluth when the company was in Ireland.
She went on to follow the work around the world, then she and her husband came home to set up their own studio in Dublin.
She's always had stories niggling away in her head, one of them about Wynter Moorehawke, Protector Lady, well-qualified carpenter's apprentice, former King's Cat-Keeper.
With the first burst of happy laughter, you know you can settle down to a happy fireside read with this fantasy set in a version of a 14th-century south of France.
But this is a France not only of witch-hunts, torture and roadside gibbets, but also of talking cats, clubbable ghosts, and supernaturally chilly statues (which, handily, can be used to keep the milk and butter cool).
That first laugh was at the traditional greeting for cats: "All respect to you this fine day, mouse-bane" - and its most cat-like response: "All the finer for you, having seen me".
But as Wynter arrives home after years, the cats won't acknowledge her, and even the ghosts run away at her greeting. Something is most definitely wrong.
The first of a trilogy, this shows serious promise. I forecast a rosy future for Celine Kiernan.
Author's website

The Fire Gospel by Michael Faber

Canongate €10.99 (easons.ie again)
JESUS was a fat little guy whose last words were "Please, someone, please finish me", and his most faithful disciple was a spy for the High Priest, in Michael Faber's The Fire Gospel.
His hero, Theo Griepenkerl, is an academic hoovering up some of the goodies of Iraq's antiquities after the war. A gurning curator pauses in leading him through a museum and goes to answer the door.
The subsequent explosion blows a relief of a pregnant goddess to bits, and Theo discovers nine scrolls of perfect papyrus dislodged by the blast.
Which he forthwith steals, and sets out to make his fortune with the translation.
They turn out to be priceless - the words of an actual eyewitness to the Crucifixion, Malchus, who was converted when ... well, it gets a bit graphic here.
In former Whitbread contender Faber's horribly funny book, Theo becomes a Christian version of Salman Rushdie, with enraged crowds and stalkers following him from reading to reading. Not to mention the suicides.
I somehow doubt this is going to be a best-seller. Theo isn't a likeable enough hero - not until the end, anyway.
And it will probably enrage all those who believe, as the song has it, in an interventionist God.
But if it's grim humour you're after, Faber is your man.
Publisher's website