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Every so often a series of fantasy books comes along that doesn't so much capture the popular imagination as grab it by the throat, hold it hostage and leave it breathless and begging for more. Adults and children alike have been entranced by Hogwarts wizardry, the rediscovery of CS Lewis's mythical beasts, the sexy vampires of Twilight and the post-apocalyptic brutality of The Hunger Games.
And now the witching hour is upon us. This week sees the much-heralded publication of Half Bad, a glittering debut novel for young adults (and youthful oldies) written by the least likely international blockbusting author since a certain impoverished single parent penned Harry Potter.
Sally Green, who made headlines last autumn when she banked a Pounds 1 million three-book advance and Hollywood film deal before a single volume of Half Bad had hit the bookshelves, is a 52-year-old accountant from Warrington.
"I wince when my age gets bandied about, but it's something I do believe is important to mention," says Green, who is already being compared to JK Rowling. "It's proof that it is never too late to sit down and write a book. I've worked really hard at it. There's no point pretending otherwise, but, if all this could happen to me, it could happen to anyone."
Slender and composed in an expensively sober Kooples grey sweater, Green looks like an accountant. She talks like an accountant: "Yes, I'll blooming well be doing my own accounts!" She even thinks like an accountant. "I've bought a very expensive pair of boots to celebrate," she confides. "I mean, they were Pounds 275!" But the woman writes like a sorceress. Hers is a bewitching style of prose, one moment staccato as machine gunfire, the next a breathless internal monologue of such courage, pathos and terror that it kept me and my 11-year-old daughter up and spellbound well past bedtime.
The story - no spoiler alert, I promise - is set in the contemporary world, in which Black witches and White witches live quietly alongside humans, who are known as "fains". But the forces of Black and White are permanently at odds, and when the protagonist Nathan is born to a Black witch father and a White witch mother, there are no flowers...