Fly By Night
Frances Hardinge
HarperTrophy
Fiction, YA Fantasy
**
DESCRIPTION: Many years ago, wars both civil and theological shattered the land, creating the Fractured Realm of today. Dozens of would-be claimants to the vacant
throne now wait while a neutral committee endlessly postpones announcing the victor. Meanwhile, the worship of countless Beloved - minor gods and goddesses governing
everything from life and death to keeping vegetables crisp - continues... with only a vacant hole as a reminder of the feared Birdcatchers, who sought to raise belief in a
holy force greater than the Beloved in a brutal, bloody campaign of terror. In the fallout of these clashes, books - vessels of dangerous ideas, inciters of sedition and
moral decline - were burned and outright banned unless printed by the official Guild of Stationers, and more than one "radical" author and suspected Birdcatcher
burned along with them.
Mosca Mye's father, Quilliam Mye, left her a legacy of letters and ashes. He taught her the letters - reluctantly, as she was only a girl - and the townsfolk of remote, swampy
Clough turned the rest to ashes after they burned his hidden stash of books when he died. When a golden-tongued con artist with a mouth full of fancy phrases wanders through
town and runs afoul of the law, Mosca, whose hunger for words makes her overlook his questionable occupation, risks everything to free him. She and her reluctant traveling
companion end up on their way to the grand city of Mandelion, where an increasingly insane Duke barely holds sway over the powerful, infighting guilds. Mosca always understood
that words could be tricky, but here she learns just how dangerous they can be, not just to her but the whole of the Fractured Realm.
REVIEW: "Imagine a world in which all books have been BANNED!" reads the eye-grabbing banner on the cover. Very well, but it's not Mosca's. In her world, many books have
been banned, indeed, but they do still exist, so long as they are printed by the Stationers Guild and determined not to have any "radical" content; more appropriately, free speech
has been banned, not the books. To some, this would seem a minor point, but it's at the center of my dissatisfaction with the story, namely false advertizing. Well, maybe that's
not the right phrase, but I repeatedly felt set up for storylines that never materialized and ideas that were never fully explored. No, it's not just the cover that deceived me
(I'm used to that, unfortunately.) The book itself never quite seems to know where it's taking its own plot, setting up one situation only to abandon it or double back or peter
out until it picks up something else. From religious persecution to literacy to the importance of names to power corruption to everything else, Hardinge can't settle on an idea
to explore or a tone to set; her story ranges from silly to gruesome, often in the same chapter. At first it was fun just exploring the world, but I soon grew restless,
hoping for a clearer hint of where things were going and wondering why they seemed to be taking so long to get there... and hoping for the arrival of a consistent, likeable
character somewhere along the way. Towards the end, the many discordand threads can only come together in an eye-glazing tangle. As a topper, that tangle was overlaid with
multiple Messages culled from the seemingly endless ideas hurled out indiscriminately by the writer, which weren't quite neon-sign glaring but were definitely stronger than
boldface-type glaring; in other words, too prominent of to blend seamlessly into the plot, requiring the characters to stop in their tracks and debate or lecture so that the
author could discuss them.
I liked fragments of the book, mostly Hardinge's descriptive writing style, but overall I felt let down and overwhelmed by half-formed ideas and generally unlikeable characters.
She should've saved some of it for the sequel... which, of course, is already in the works. I suppose it's wrong of me to wish that book, and this one, into the world
where books have been banned...
You might also enjoy:
The Secret School (Avi, YA Fiction - Rural children form a secret school after their teacher leaves and the schoolhouse is locked)
The Tale of Despereaux (Kate DiCamillo, YA Fiction - A young mouse is exiled for his un-mouselike behavior)
Scriber (Ben S. Dobson, Fiction - A disgraced scholar and a shunned warrior woman race to save the Kingsland from malevolent forces)
The Inkheart Trilogy (Cornelia Funke, YA Fiction - A girl whose father can read characters out of and into storybooks learns the power of words)
Princess Academy (Shannon Hale, YA Fiction - Girls from a small mountain hamlet must be educated before the prince arrives to choose a bride)
The Book of Story Beginnings (Kristin Kladstrup, YA Fiction - Stories written in a special journal spring to life)
The Glasswright's Apprentice (Mindy L. Klasky, Fiction - A girl in a caste-bound society finds herself at the heart of a dark revolutionary plot)
Guardian Cats and the Lost Books of Alexandria (Rahma Krambo, YA Fiction - A housecat must help defend a powerful book from evil forces)
The Halfblood Chronicles (Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, Fiction - In a world of tyrannical elf lords and enslaved humans, a halfblood girl raised by dragons might bring liberty or disaster)
The Piratica series (Tanith Lee, YA Fiction - A girl in an alternate Earth sets sail as an honorable pirate)
Witch & Wizard (James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet, YA Fiction - Two teens in a modern dictatorship are imprisoned for powers they don't know they have)
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman, YA Fiction - In a church-ruled world, a girl uncovers a dark secret and darker conspiracy)
The Harry Potter series (J. K. Rowling, YA Fiction - An orphaned boy learns that he has magical gifts... and that his parents were murdered by an evil wizard)
The Septimus Heap series (Angie Sage, YA Fiction - A fantasy world is threatened by dark magic and a corrupt monarch)
Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians (Brandon Sanderson, YA Fiction - A boy discovers that the true nature of the world has been kept hidden by an insidious cult of evil librarians)
Return to Top of Page - Return to Book Review List
Return to Brightdreamer Books Home
Brightdreamer Books is created and maintained by TBW, a.k.a. "Brightdreamer."
E-mail: tbweber AT comcast DOT net. (Remove spaces, replace AT with "@" and DOT with "." - please put "Brightdreamer Books" in the subject line, or your e-mail may be deleted as
spam! Thank you!