This ambitious book is a rare achievement . . . Subtle, stimulating and morally complex but it is also evocative and convincing: we feel keenly the chill of both soulless hegemony and its frozen wastes

It carries lessons to be re-assimilated by young readers - how society can be deceived, how people can become powerless and how tyranny can breed tyranny

A hybrid of political concern and an excruciatingly exciting adventure-thriller, Anne Fine's The Road of Bones could easily be described as a Magnum Opus . . . The Road of Bones might be cold in setting but at heart glows with an intensity of warmth, passion, fervour and belief, it is the novel that all should resolve to read

The Road of Bones is a startling achievement, not least for its refusal to wrap it all up into a neat and tidy happy ending. It will leave its young readers with a great deal to think about. Most children will know of the Holocaust, but few will realise how many perished during Stalin's purges. This alone is a story worth telling. Cleverly though, The Road of Bones also makes its warnings contemporary, timeless even

Beneath its cold white cover a story of magnitude unfolds

All demand to be read in translation of the originals and not sanitized retellings. Here, by examining letters, journals, annotations and posthumously unavailable papers, Zipes found some hitherto untranslated "ironic and macabre fables, humorous anecdotes, stories about the crusades, Norwegian legend, one 'feminist' tale among other things