"Good riddance!" is the reaction of the people in Dan Kissane's The Eagle Tree (O'Brien, £3.99), when their hated Prince Pugnax is turned into a giant cockroach after an encounter with a Wizard. But when the Prince's heir, his nephew Bembex, plans to cut down all the forest trees, the Wizard is asked urgently to change the cockroach back. Pugnax would be only too pleased, for as author Dan Kissane writes:
"I don't know whether you've ever noticed, but a cockroach's skin is not exactly the most comfortable thing to spend the day strolling around in. It's made out of very hard leathery stuff and is extremely tight fitting, with bits sticking in here and other bits sticking out there, and the poor cockroach is all cramped up inside and can't stretch or scratch himself or do any of the other things that make life worth living."
Pugnax has improved his lot somewhat by stealing a swimmer's bathrobe and disguising himself as a monk. He has consumed several pints of stout and four steak and kidney pies before he is unmasked, and made to promise that if he's changed back, he'll keep the forest as a nature reserve.
Then the chase is on to find the shell of a hatched eagle's egg, essential to the spell. Bembex is after it too, and so a gaggle of odd and entertaining characters go rambling into the forest in hot pursuit, giving the reader a lot of fun on the way.
Magic of the conjuring kind features in Leon McAuley's Albert and the Magician (O'Brien, £3.99). The magician is due to visit Albert's school, and unwisely Albert asks his big sister Fionnuala what magicians are. He is told that they change into dragons and kidnap small boys and take them to desert caves to face scorpions and rats and tarantulas.
Albert's dread of the magician lessens when he turns out to be an old man on a clattery motor bike with a pile of cases on the back. But then, Albert has to face other horrors when he is chosen to get into the box on stage while the magician gets his swords ready to stick through it ...
The feats of most magicians, however, are no comparison with those of the legendary Diarmaid, the lover of Grainne. His amazing leaps to freedom and his hand to hand battles with giants, witches, bloodhounds and whole troops of warriors, are recounted in a lively and straightforward style by Liam Mac Uistin in his latest Celtic Tale, The Hunt for Diarmaid and Grainne (O'Brien, £3.99)
Tales of the macabre kind are collected in Nightmares (Poolbeg, £3.99). It's subtitled Terrifying Tales from Beyond the Grave, so you can't say you weren't warned. Thirteen Irish writers set out to chill readers' spines with stories of burials alive, ghostly surfers, playtime at the haunted house, and a dead man who takes revenge on his killer.
The real life horrors of Easter, 1916, are vividly described in Gerard Whelan's The Guns of Easter (O'Brien, £3.99), in which the Rising and its street battles are seen through the eyes of a young boy, Jimmy, who risks great danger in making his way to and fro through Dublin to find friends and food to help his sick family. The soldiers, the Volunteers and the ordinary people he encounters change his ideas of life and loyalty.