Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge

[lightreads]

Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Frances Hardinge understands all those important rules of storycraft like 'the true tension is internal,' and 'you don't have to be good to be relatable,' and 'if you put a loaded goose on the mantelpiece in act I, you have to fire it by act V.'

Ung, so good. So so good. This was her first published novel, and it's true, it doesn't have the tautness and precision of her later The Lost Conspiracy. But this is also a weird and wonderful book. It's young adult fantasy about a twelve-year-old girl who burns down her uncle's sawmill and blackmails her way out of her tiny town with a confidence man and her homicidal goose companion (though, really, given geese, that's redundant, I could just say "her goose companion.") This book kept shifting under my feet. First it was blackhearted bickering roadtrip funtimes, and then it was fantasy spy funtimes, and then it was about revolutions, and then it was about illegal printing presses, and then it was about trust and ferocity and betrayal and growing a conscience and so many other things all at once that I can't remember them all.

But mostly it's about Mosca, who is twelve and messed up and literate but undereducated and curious and coldhearted. And I loved her so much. Here she is, judge for yourself:

""Sacred just means something you're not meant to think about properly, and you should never stop thinking. Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about. And if it's still standing after all that, then maybe, just maybe, I'll start to believe in it, but not till then.""




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