The Silver Child (The Silver Sequence, Book 1)

This first book in a planned series, The Silver Sequence, spends most of its time setting up the characters and situation. That's not to say that the characters have much depth, but just that the changes they're going through are described at some length. The setting, in the dumps of Coldharbour, is fairly vivid, but there's not much action -- this first volume is pretty much all setup. Perhaps it will pick up in future volumes.

Meanwhile, the author is exercising his bizarre imagination in interesting and unusual directions, and kids who like that sort of thing may be intrigued. Very little here is ordinary or predictable -- even the nature of the approaching evil, hardly more than hinted at in this first book, seems unlike typical fantasy fiction. McNish has made a start that promises more than it delivers so far. If he can pick up the pace and get the action rolling in the next book, though, this series could become very interesting indeed.