Have you noticed the books out semi-lately with “un” things as main characters?
- The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, published in 2007 (un-Space and the Un-Space Exploration Committee)
- Un Lun Dun by China Miéville, also published in 2007 (Un-London and pretty much everything else)
- And not quite, but along those same lines: Coraline by Neil Gaiman, published in 2002 (Coraline had an “other” mother)
The link between them might be in the water; all of the authors are currently living in or were originally from England. That and, whether you like the books or not, critics have widely agreed that at the very least these authors have created unique worlds and ideas and display incredible imagination in their writing.