A mouse-crossed mutant called Tiny uses scavenged materials to build a city with nobody in it. A teenage beekeeper called Frankie has a dangerous dream to become an artist, but according to his father, the only “drawing with prospects” is a mathematical money graph.

Until a mutual love of paint brings them crashing together, they live as strangers in a rural idyll with a far off city view. But there is carnage in the grasslands, where salt is a chemical weapon. And behind the walls of a nearby laboratory, bigger creatures are being tortured for their genes. When the secret is set loose, and a beguiling art dealer comes knocking, both their lives are thrown into turmoil.

Tiny’s genius makes Frankie an overnight sensation; the real artist becomes a hostage in the art market’s criminal underbelly; and while the bees work together to fend off the wasps, the people of the human hive take arms against a brain-machine tyranny. Only Frankie and a girl called Bink can help the little outcast survive in a city on the brink of anarchy, but only a runaway chimp can offer Tiny a clue to his true identity.

Tiny Life and the Monster Head is a tale of survival in strange times, as diverse in its appeal as the genre tags it defies: for younger readers, it’s a real-science fiction adventure fantasy. For adults, it’s a darkly humorous send-up of humanity’s belief in its mastery of nature.