Nick Green's first novel, The Cat Kin, was published by Faber last June and went on to garner a glowing review from in The Times and a wave of enthusiasm on Amazon. Six months later, the publisher decided not to bring out the second of Green's proposed trilogy due to poor sales. Poor sales? With a book as good as The Cat Kin, you've got to ask what kind of marketing support the publisher had given it.
Certainly, I'd never heard of it, or seen it in any shops, until a book blogger friend alerted me both to the book and the fate of its sequel. I checked on Amazon, as I always do, and followed it by googling Nick Green to find out what's what. An intelligently put together website is always a plus, and he also writes a blog. Being one for avoiding the big bookstore chain, I turned to my trusted independent, hoping they might actually have it already, as they specialise in children's books. The owner, who reviews children's books for The Bookseller, had not come across it either, despite the torrent of review copies coming through the front door.
When I finally managed to get hold of it I discovered that The Cat Kin is a stunning debut which features a group of children who learn the ancient art of Pashki, so they can take on the characteristics of cats. Green blends realism with fantasy, and there's a lot of humour and as much excitement as you could ask for. One of his main characters, Ben, comes from a broken home, in more ways than one, and finds the fate of his soon to be ex-home connected with the gang of cruel villains. Tiffany, his talented Pashki counterpart, has her own troubles with a seriously ill brother, whose fate is also curiously interwoven with the villains. The idea that a bunch of children can fight crime and evil by becoming some kind of human cats is an odd one, but it works very convincingly. And I don't even like cats.
Green had already written the sequel, Cat's Paw, when he was dumped, so he has now made this book available through print-on-demand company Lulu. This is lucky for his readers, because Cat's Paw is, if possible, even better than the first book. The Cat Kin get together again, minus their leader, facing a much greater threat than the last time round. What Green does well, is to allow subjects like abortion and serious cruelty to animals into a book aimed at relatively young children. The action and the friendships and the humour prevent the story from getting overpowered by this. Unfortunately, the set-back with the publisher means that Nick Green has decided not to write the third part of the trilogy. I'd like to think he could be persuaded back to the art of Pashki.
Perhaps the fact that The Cat Kin has been shortlisted for the Bolton Children's Book Award and the Sefton Super-Reads Book Award might help. It could be a bit embarrassing for Green's ex-publisher if he were to win. Personally I'm holding out to sell my Lulu-printed copy of Cat's Paw for a great deal of money when Nick Green is rich and famous.
