Miyuku Miyabe really should wear a t-shirt that reads, “I’m huge in Japan.” Her hugely popular, best-selling works have barely made it across the ocean, and it is difficult to understand why. Brave Story might be the book that changes that. At over 800 fun-filled pages and with its own anime and video game series, Brave Story has the potential to become a Harry Potter-style break-out hit.

Brave Story is about Wataru Mitani, a serious, smart, over-programmed and, ultimately, under-performing boy, and his journey through the magical world of Vision. The book starts out with Wataru living in a so-so part of town with his family that seems, at best, functional. Soon(ish), Wataru’s life starts to turn upside down – he starts hearing voices, his father leaves his family for another woman, and his mother tries to kill both of them by leaving the gas on.

Whereas that story would be enough to keep most novelists interested, it barely scratches the surface for Miyabe. Wataru soon learns that he is destined to be a Traveler, a human who must journey his way through the realm of Vision. Wataru’s quest is to gather five gemstones and then visit the Goddess in the Tower of Destiny, where she will grant him one – and only one – wish. Wataru’s initial wish is to make his family back into the way it once was. If you could abandon the real world for a while and get one wish, what would it be?

On his way, he meets a variety of different characters, from a lizard-man (the waterkin) to a cat-woman (the kat-kin), encounters racism and religious strife, and begins to work out where the real world and the magical world of vision truly intersect. Meanwhile, a fearsome, no-nonsense boy from the real world, threatens to reach the Tower of Destiny ahead of Wataru.

So, yes, parts of the book read an awful lot like a video game, albeit with far better prose and a much more interesting storyline. And, come to think of it, that’s a lot of the fun of the book. Miyabe keeps us on our toes with non-stop action, and reading Brave Story is so much fun that it’s easily as addictive as the best fantasy video games. And don’t you think that spending time reading just has to be better for you than video games, or do you believe that an active mind – regardless of activity – is a healthy mind?

It is also refreshing that, while this certainly has aspects of the typical, “Let’s wander through faerie-land books,” such as monsters and magic, Brave Story is really about how fantasy worlds intersect our own. There is an entire town in Vision that has an ethnic ghetto, a large political division between the police and the senate, and the persistent threat of an unknown, faraway land whose main export is refugees. Moreover, the coming-of-age portion of this book – and make no mistake, it’s definitely a coming-of-age novel – does not end with the boy standing up to all the bullies in the world, getting the girl and setting the universe completely right. It is a much softer, subtler story, and much more rewarding.

Brave Story, like Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, is written for a younger audience. And like Harry Potter and The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, it is meant for everyone. It is the kind of book that makes you want to crawl under the covers with a flashlight and stay up reading all night. How many other fantasy books make you feel that way?