For a hundred lifetimes, a million souls have been born and reborn in Range. For them death is merely an interruption to the conversation, since identity is retained through each rebirth. Immortality is a given, as common as noses. Until Ciana died, and Ana was born.

A million, minus one. The paradigm of an entire world rocked on its axis.

To some she is the only new thing in the world; to others she is a cuckoo in the nest, stealing flesh that rightly belonged to another.

‘No one,’ her cold mother Li calls her. ‘Nosoul.’

Raised dutifully but reluctantly by her mother in the wilderness, where no one can see her shame, Ana is determined to find out ‘why’ she is and where she will go. The answer, she believes, is surely in the great libraries of Heart.

Except, haunted by sylphs and hatred, is the answer one that Ana can live with? Even if only for just one lifetime.

Incarnate by Jodi Meadows is an unbelievably accomplished work from a debut novelist. The polished narrative, deftly handled plot and cast of well-rounded, intriguing characters would be a source of pride for a writer with 10 books under her belt.

Range, in itself, is a vital and fascinating world, a newly opened sand-box with a whole lot of corners for Meadows to explore in future books. Sylphs haunt the shadows in the forest, dragons darken the sky with their wings and their hate and somewhere out where Ana has never been there is are rocs and trolls and maybe, one day, answers.

For now, however, the reader and Ana have to content themselves with questions. What does being a newsoul, or a nosoul, mean, what do the dragons want and where did the million souls start? Meadows dripfeeds answers with the skill of an experienced pusher, doling out just enough to keep us coming back for more.

One of the most interesting elements in the book is how Meadow’s prose and characters accurately convey the idea of how immortality has affected this society. The characters are old, but in a way that is different to how our society perceives age. It isn’t decay or decrepitude, more a bone-deep patience.

Sam, Ana’s friend and mentor, maintains a graveyard that is full of his memorials to his past selves. Crimes can literally follow you into the next life, but then so can love. If you don’t accomplish something in this lifetime, you can finish it in the next. The million souls, minus one, have forever. So they have spent their centuries to date, making forever as pleasant a prospect as possible.

Heart is, minus the dragons, pretty much a utopia. People are happy, the quality of life is high and everyone has what they need, at the very least.

Into that secure, certain existence crashes brash, impulsive, oh-so-young Ana turns things on their ear left, right and centre. It isn’t deliberate, just inevitable.

She hasn’t the time to be patient, and they have forgotten how to be anything else.

Oh, there are hints that there are darker threads, dangerous secrets, behind the apparent serenity of pre-Ana Heart. For now, though, it is interesting to see a heroine whose main job is fixing the problems caused just by her existence.

Ana is also a vivid, effortlessly engaging. Meadow’s has a knack for character – they are all distinct, all believable – but Ana’s is the dominant presence in the novel. She is brash, angry and, born into a world where she will never catch up, practically fizzing with frustration. It is hard not to sympathize when she lashes out or pulls back, struggling with an adolescence that no-one has experienced in centuries.

She is alone. A butterfly in a world of tortoises. Even the tortoises that care about her, like steady Sam and clever, quirky Stef, find it hard to understand her.

(Li is cruel to her daughter, resentful of the unthinkable demands of a real infant, but was it neglect that she didn’t teach her daughter to read or talk? Or simply that no in memory had needed to learn those things before?)

Incarnate spins lightly along, through dangers, plots and multi-coloured masquerades, as Ana struggles to craft a place for herself despite prejudice and plots against her. In searching herself she uncovers secrets that have been kept for all the history of Heart, even if she doesn’t quite understand them yet.

The violent, game-changing conclusion to Ana’s quest leaves Heart changed forever, and the world made a little wider. No matter what happens next, or how many lives Ana has, she won’t be forgotten.

She is Ana Incarnate.

Incarnate is available from Jan 31 2012