Ever remember why you started reading fantasy novels in the first place?

Whatever you're into these days, whether it's generic multi-volume pageturners set in what the magisterial Encyclopedia of Fantasy calls 'Fantasyland', or Marxist urban grotesques like the work of China Mieville, I expect you started out with the same goal: escape.

Not in the dodgy sense of trying to blot out the world entirely, but simply in the desire to imagine a place that Wasn't Here. And even if you've read nothing more than Narnia and The Lord of the Rings, you'll know that feeling of having a Land to explore can be a heady enticement into a whole new bookworld.

Of course, there's more to fantasy literature, good or bad, than this. But the special tie that fantasy has to cartography reveals its deep-rooted connection to the Unknown. Every time you read something in a made-up world, you're mapping it out, too. You're back on the frontier, the unexplored, what Tolkien neatly summed up as 'unexplained vistas'.

Yeah, don't worry, I'm getting to the book!

Anyway. Where was I? Oh yes. The more fantasy you read, the more tropes you recognise, the more maps you see, and the more you feel that, oh, you've actually been here before. Sometimes it's comforting; sometimes it's just plain dull. there are only so many enchanted swords you can read about before you wish someone would just buy a gun.

So when you find a story that hits the sweet spot between the icy shock of the new and the pull of the good old Quest format, it's worth telling the world about. The House on the Border Land... isn't that story. (It's the first novel in this collection, and it's about a man who may be utterly insane and who may be defending his lonely house with a shotgun from endlessly spawning pig-men. The House on the Border Land, in fact, matches the modern videogame Survival Horror template with eerie accuracy. I wonder if the original Frenchies who made Alone in the Dark had read it? I think so.)

No, the real diamond in the rough here is the last novel - The Night Land, written in 1912. Set mostly a million billion years in the future, after the Sun has died and all humanity lives in a single towering pyramid, it's the journey of one man to rescue his lost love. Yes, as that summary implies, it's a queasy mixture of Edwardian sci-fi, epic and romance. The lands outside the pyramid are pitch-black and haunted by every manner of numinous evil, from giants to horse-sized hellhounds to degenerated humans to spectral nasties, and even incomprensible powers of spiritual death. Ominously, the Pyramid itself is surrounded by mountain-sized and malificent Watchers who have not moved for millenia.

This is a soulscape as much as a landscape, and like Lovecraft, while the prose is clunky and embarrassing, the sheer self-belief of the writing only serves to draw you (unwillingly, even) into this one-of-a-kind universe. Like a badly-spoken but honest witness in the dock, this may not be well-told, but the truth underlying it is undeniable.

Every step of the hero's journey there and back again is painstakingly covered - every food pill, every ravine, every sleeplessly watchful night. Most of it is in the dark. Most of it is without human interaction. Did I mention it's told in cod-Elizabethan prose, for a reason too ridiculous to go into here?

And yet, and yet. After following our musclebound (and actually rather autistic) hero through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, the payoff is the ending. When suddenly, everything comes together to pack an emotional wallop. In short, it tries as hard as it can to break your heart and mend it again.

In the unwritten Lonely Planet guide to non-existent places, this isn't a package holiday, it's a brave backpacker's adventure. But if you've got the patience and the stamina, it's worth the journey. Best bring a torch, though.

The Man Who Was Thursday is one of those books, like The Borribles or The Name of the Rose, that you're vaguely aware of, you think might be cool, but you end up never getting around to reading because there just doesn't seem to be A Way In. It's not like you'll have your feet up in front of Emmerdale and something makes you go 'Ah, that reminds me - I've always wanted to read The Man Who Was Thursday. I'll order it off Amazon now.'

Which is a shame, because it's a very special book.Like PG Wodehouse or Elmore Leonard, GK Chesterton just has a wonderful, fun way with a sentence. He's the kind of guy who could write six paragraphs about European farm subsidies and make you come away wanting to dance the tango in your living room. But the action here is far from dull. TMWWT* is about a clever young man who infiltrates a secret society of deadly anarchists - each named after a day of the week. Can our hero keep his head, his identity and his life in the face of Europe's most grotesque and sinister murderers?

All of which is amazing. But it's not really what TMWWT is about. The ruse leads the hero through a maze-like plot which is pretty much entirely composed of twists. You'll be on the edge of your seat as he tracks down each member of the gang and tackles their unique brand of evil head-on. But somewhere around the middle of this short novel, you spot a pattern. A very large pattern that makes the plot as stylised as the dialogue. A plot which is insane, infuriating and brilliant, and which will have you smiling like a Cheshire Cat as you turn each page. If I gave it away here I'd be the world's biggest bastard, but it's fair to say that it's unique in the world of literature. To put it bluntly, Chesterton has written a book about the pursuit of God.

There's something enticingly movie-like about the novel, what with all the chases around London, special effects (including a memorable elephant), sword fights, dreamscape countryside and constant mortal peril. But like all that's good about Chesterton, it also has a devil-may-care, winsome, romantic streak a mile wide. If it was going to be a film, it should have been directed by Hitchcock, starring a Princess Bride-era Cary Elwes, and Orson Welles. And it would be a classic.

So go on - order The Man Who Was Thursday off Amazon right now!

*It's somehow very appropriate that this looks like TMNT. Go figure...