Jones sets her story in modern-day England, but she combines her realistic depictions of contemporary life with elements of the fantastic. For example, Laurel Perry Lynn's home, Hunsdon House, appears to be an ordinary mansion, but it is there that her fantastic battles for power are carried out. When Polly enters the house, the scene becomes dreamlike, and she must determine what is really happening.

In Fire and Hemlock, the "real" world has a way of blurring with a fantastic world, as when Tom and Polly journey to the town of Stow-on-Water and learn there that the stories and characters they had made up have become real. Later, setting becomes a powerful force when Tom and Polly are shadowed by a "creature of rubbish" formed from bits of newspaper and garbage left on the street. The oftensurreal descriptions of setting not only place a fantastic story within a...