The only thing worse than being invaded from outer space is being invaded by conquerors who are themselves on the verge of a civil war.

The Illyri, who rule a near-future Earth in Conquest by John Connolly and Jennifer Ridyard (Headline, £12.99), are close enough to human to be indistinguishable in a poor light. Their brand of imperialism is familiar too - a veneer of cultured civilisation and noblesse oblige is used to legitimise ruthless and bloody exploitation.

In Scotland at least the resistance fights on and, in this first instalment of a new series, one of its young leaders finds his life inextricably entwined with that of the first Illyri ever to be born on Earth - the embattled Governor's teenage daughter. Exciting and satisfying all the way through, this might be the book you're looking for if you're hoping to infect a young reader with the SF bug.

Michael is a young boy growing up on his grandparents' farm in Antrim in the 1950s, in Paul Kearney's A Different Kingdom (Solaris, £7.99). It's a world that is rapidly changing. Machines are replacing horses, the church struggles to maintain its power and, at a distance which is almost but not quite irrelevant to the folk of this self-contained community, religious wars begin to rumble.

Michael spends his free time wandering the woods on the edge of his grandparents' land and there he sees impossible wolves, living in another world that is older than his own, which only he seems able to enter.

This is a glorious piece of writing, a full-blooded quest through a land of monsters and magic, intertwined with an elegy for a rural childhood in an absolutely specific time and place.

Each of these two worlds, the author suggests, is as strange, far-away and hard to believe as the other. Neither is reachable today except through memory or imagination - and how much difference is there really between those two faculties?

Europe In Autumn by Dave Hutchinson (Solaris, £7.99) is a science fiction spy thriller set in a near-future Europe which has seen the crumbling of the EU super state taken to extremes.

After years of economic crises and a flu pandemic, the continent is now home to dozens of micro states.

It's not just historic nations which are reclaiming their sovereignty. Housing estates, national parks, tourist resorts and even a transcontinental railway line are declaring independence. Everywhere, Europe is full of frontiers as never before.

But a shadowy group of couriers exists to help people, objects and information travel across borders. Some are idealists, some are in it for the money or the power and some just love the life of adventure.

The author seems to view the Schengen Treaty as a brave attempt to create a borderless continent, rather than as a cynical plot to drive down the price of labour. But you'd have to be sectarian to the core to allow political differences to spoil your enjoyment of this original, captivating and elegantly written novel.