Frances HardingeReseñas

“You couldn’t trust people. Dogs snarled before they bit you, but people often smiled.”

I picked this up simply because the cover and title were interesting, having no idea that this was actually a children’s book! However it was very enjoyable and one of the most appealing and unique stories I’ve read in a while.

The main character was strong and entertaining, without being your typical naïve beauty. Bear was also a fun addition. It was refreshing to read a YA book that had no romance. Not everything needs to revolve around a very old vampire seducing a very young child!

To anyone that follows me---READ. THIS. BOOK.

The story blew me away and I can't explain, because to do so is to spoil elements of the book.

Just read it and don't read any book descriptions.
Trust me on this.....

This is a 2024 Lone Star novel.

I don't think I'm a Frances Hardinge person. It took me FOREVER to read this book, and I had to make myself pick the book up. I had trouble following what was going on, as the characters are moving around constantly. The initial catalyst got lost in the moving around with Kellen unravelling curses.

So, Kellen unravels curses. Someone seems to be collecting cursers; Kellen and Nettle are recruited to help discover what is really going on, only to discover the Kellen has unknowingly been cursed. You'll meet Nettle's brother, a bird, who helps them as needed. They run about meeting different people, unravelling curses, and try to solve the overall mystery.

For younger readers who are ok with creepy things—the story of a young boy forced into his father’s job of ferrying the dead’s shoes to an island, so they won’t become dangerous ghosts. It’s got Hardinge’s endless imagination (the headless birds are quite something) and gentle illustrations.½

Way way WAY creepier than the title or cover suggests, this book actually made me want to stop listening so I wouldn't have nightmares. Basically, these kids steal money from a well and are then given "powers" to help them grant the wishes of the people who threw the coins into the well. The main character, Josh, has eyeballs growing on his hands! How's that for a power? He can see the witch of the well with these hand-eyeballs and she is freaky as freak.

Probably better for older readers (say 11-14) or kids who like to be disturbed by what they read. It's very well written and kind of deep in its analysis of wishers and wishes. Did you ever think that under the superficial premise of a wish lies the real, deep down wish? And that the deep down wish can be something terrible that you really don't want to come true? This books gives a whole new jolt to the old adage "be careful what you wish for." We're talking death and destruction here. Srsly.

First of all, let me say upon finishing this book: Wow. Now let me start from the beginning: This is a big, thick doorstop of a book. I almost decided it wasn't worth the commitment, but then I re-read the glowing reviews and resigned myself to lugging it around for a week. When I was halfway through, I realized that this book is enormous for a good reason. The epic story that takes place in this book could have easily been spread into a trilogy (or more) but the author bit the bullet and told the whole darn thing in one go. I really, really admire that, especially in light of my experience with year-long waits between finding out, say, whether Snape was evil or not, or what the prophecy about Percy Jackson said, or whether there really is a District 13. So there is a great reason to forgive it its length: no cliffhanger ending to put you on edge while the author spends the next year working out what happens next.

Now for the story. The Lost Conspiracy was originally titled Gullstruck Island in the UK, which is name of the setting, an island whose native populations live alongside their imperial conquerors. At the center of the story is a native tribe called the Lace. Our two main characters are Lace and they're sisters. They younger is Hathin whose sole purpose in life is to watch over her older sister Arilou. Arilou is a not a normal human being, but a member of a small race known as the Lost. The Lost can send their senses out of their bodies to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch anything anywhere on Gullstruck Island or beyond. So obviously, they're revered and considered very powerful. The thing is, Hathin isn't 100% sure her sister is really Lost, but her whole village is counting on her to "translate" Airlou's slurred speech and prove to government inspectors that she really is one of the Lost.

And that's just the first few pages. What follows is no less than the entire history of the struggle between the Lace and the Cavalcaste nation. I told you this was epic, right? It has shades of many powerful stories: The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Schindler's List, Robin Hood. It also feels anthropological. Like Hardinge studied and then blended together hundreds of details about ancient civilizations, religions, folklore, and the history of colonial conflict. Overall, it's a pretty amazing accomplishment. And did I mention the writing? Beautiful writing. Highly recommended for all fantasy buffs.

Very good, I really liked it. Interesting story, nice characters.

This was really quite good. I liked the characters and the story was quite intriguing. The best part was the diversity in how women deal with their subordinate position in 19th century society.

Firstly, I didn't expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, having previously read one of the author's straight fantasy novels. This is a blend of historical novel, set in 1865, and fantasy or magical realism, because there is one big element - and no spoiler, given the title - which is slightly reminiscient of 'Little Shop of Horrors'. However there is so much here - mystery, murder, gender politics, rite of passage/adolescent passions and fixatedness, family relationships, the huge societal upheaval caused by the emergence of the theory of evolution and the effect this had on religion and society at the time - that the author has a huge amount to juggle and interweave and on the whole does so successfully.

To say just a little about the plot as I don't want to give too much away, Faith and her family arrive at the island of Vane as the story opens. Her father, the Reverend, is a celebrated amateur palaentologist in an era before the term was coined - he is widely known for his discovery of fossils, including one which seems to support the Biblical account and refute the evolutionary theories published a few years previously by Charles Darwin and others. He has never taken his family to a 'dig' before, yet he is doing just that, and daughter Faith, who has learned to evesdrop and read other people's letters if she wants to find out anything, soon discovers that he has been persuaded by his brother-in-law, who has accompanied them, to accept an invitation to the excavation on Vane in order to evade a huge scandal triggered by an article in a respected newspaper that alleges that his fossils are fakes. However, the scandal is not long in pursuing them to Vane.

The characters are all well realised - and there are a lot of them - and nothing is black and white. The heroine, Faith, has a singleminded love of her father despite its being increasingly obvious in the first part of the book that he has no regard for her whatsoever: something he makes perfectly plain in their big confrontation in his study late one night. As a girl she is constantly slighted, passed over, belittled - despite her intelligence and her obvious superiority to her six year old slightly thicko brother who is unthinkingly granted the privileges she yearns for - she has to ride on his coat tails if she is to be allowed any access to the tunnel at the excavation, for example. She despises her mother's tactics of using her prettiness and feminity to get her way, and she looks down on other women, though the events in the book cause her to change her opinions. But she is in a cleft stick: she identifies with the male world of science only to have its door slammed in her face and told that her only use is to be 'good' and to marry.

The world of 1865 is very well realised with the class snobbery, the very restricted and belittling attitudes to women and the tactics they have to resort to in order to try to get around the barriers raised against them, plus the clash between those who view the Bible as literally true and those who accept the evolution idea. Faith's blinkered love for her father is very true to life, despite his misogyny and blatant hypocrisy - he recruits her to help him conceal the secret behind his frauds, asking her to use her cleverness to help him, straight after lambasting her for daring to be clever in the first place. And her singleminded crusade to uncover the truth in the later part of the book is driven by that love, although gradually she comes to see that he is really not a nice person at all.

The only niggles I found were a) not being really convinced that the main villains would have that relationship - I did start to wonder about a certain person but couldn't see a real motive when it became clear that the villain had not acted alone and b) the plant of the title being completely anti-science. Ranging from its reaction to sunlight to its ability to produce a fruit that would relate to the lie told to it - even if, as Faith wonders at one point, it is really the eater's own sub-conscious that is being tapped in the resulting visions - and its astounding growth in response to her lies when her father's more widespread frauds had a far less spectacular effect, none of it really hangs together, which is why I've described this story as a blend of historical novel with fantasy or magical realism. But the other elements, the plotting and the character interaction enabled me to overlook that while reading, so I would only deduct a .5 for the niggles. So really a 4.5 but as that isn't possible on Goodreads, it's a 5-star rating.

This is a dark fairy story in which issues such as family relationships are explored. Triss is a 13 year old girl who wakes up after an accident in which she had somehow fallen into a deep pond near to the holiday cottage where her family are staying - except that it soon becomes obvious that it was no accident. Triss' parents are afraid that someone has deliberately tried to harm her to get back at her father for an unspecified grudge - and her younger sister, Pen, is eaten up with what appears to be hatred and spite against Triss and insists she is fake and not Triss at all. Odd things start happening so that Triss fears she is losing her mind - including a doll that starts screaming when she goes near it.

I won't say much more about the plot but it becomes clear that the family has buried grief for a lost son (the story takes place a few years after WWI) and copes by making the elder daughter into a pretend invalid and the younger one into the 'bad girl' of the family who oblidges by acting out accordingly. Into this dynamic comes the fallout from a bad bargain the father made to try to get back their son, a bargain with a definite downside for all the family's children, including lost son Sebastian. And a sinister tailor who believes he is doing the right thing even if it involves murder of children. This is certainly not a tale of Tinkerbell; all the fairies in this story are very dark and have their own agenda. I enjoyed the book but found it didn't quite reach the level of The Lie Tree - it does have the same originality but the story was allowed to flag a little here and there. So an enjoyable 3 star read.

Twilight Robbery, apparently titled Fly Trap in the USA, is a long and complex tale set in an alternative Eighteenth century/early Victorian England. I was reminded very early on of Joan Aiken's series for children published in the 1960s and 1970s set in a similar alternative world and centred around a streetwise orphan named Dido Twite, and wonder if it is the author's homage to that.

The main character, a 12-year-old girl named Mosca Mye, is a scrawny, streetwise orphaned urchin with a propensity for getting involved in local politics and causing dramatic changes in the towns in which she finds herself. She has a pet goose which occasionally causes mayhem, although I worked out its role in this story as soon as the big heist that occurs in a mad blend of Keystone Kops and pantomime goes drastically wrong.

It was quite near the beginning of the story that this is not a standalone book and that momentous events had occurred earlier, but, as they are explained in several bits of exposition throughout, there was no requirement to halt and read Fly by Night first. The current story is very ingenious with the nicely novel idea of 'Beloveds' - gods that rule every hour of every day, so that if someone is born at a particular time and date they come under that deity and are given a name ruled by them. This also dictates how other people see a person regardless of what that person is really like. Because of the way in which everyone is bound up in their Beloved, no one can lie about their name - even Mosca, who is starting to doubt that Beloveds actually exist - which is rather tricky when trying to avoid the fallout from one's previous activities. Mosca and the con man with whom she travels, Eponymous Clent, have made enemies and there is a reward out on Clent due to his previous cons.

To escape this 'heat', they travel to a town called Toll, which controls the only way across a dangerous river gorge, and steal the means to enter, but then have only three days as visitors in which to try to get the fee to escape on the farside. To make matters worse, Mosca was born under a nightime Beloved, so is treated with contempt and distrust, and will become a permanent resident of the nightime town if she and Clent cannot raise the exit fee. They attempt to do so by tipping off the subject of a kidnap plot- Mosca has already nearly lost her life to the would-be kidnappers - but everything that can go wrong does, and the two are soon embroiled in umpteen hidden agendas, plots and conspiracies. At one point, I thought I had spotted a dramatic inconsistency when a villain acted against his own best interest, but it turned out to be deliberate clue and I still didn't guess the actual major plot twist.

The book is written in a lively wry tone and develops the characters well, including minor ones such as the midwife who helps Mosca. There are some great names especially of the various Beloveds and their attributes and the author obviously enjoys the word play. There are lots of twists and turns, with conspiracy, spies, plots within plots, and a town which is under a protection racket and literally changes as dusk falls, with false fronts hiding buildings or creating or shutting off roads. The question of identity is a big theme due to the total predetermination of one's natal date and time and hence name.

I did find though that the story dragged a bit towards the end until it picked up again as the various plot strands came together. An enjoyable read, but I don't feel impelled to seek out book 1 which was adequately summarised in the backstory in this one, and for these reasons am rating this as a 4-star read.

Faith discovers a strange tree as she searches through her dead father's belongings. The tree thrives on being told lies and reveals a truth to whoever eats its fruit. Faith uses the tree to discover how her father died, but the heady mixing of lies and truth spirals out of control.

This is an excellent read for young people, providing strong storytelling, an evocative atmosphere and a powerful moral and ethical message. Faith has a strong sense of what she wants to do and to find out, but has to learn to control her impulses and become mindful of how what she does and who she is affects those around her. The 19th century setting and close-knit community generate a claustrophobia that squeezes Faith and leads her to trike out for what she believes in.

Actual rating: 3.75/5, rounded up

Unraveller was my third Frances Hardinge book, and by now I can safely say I'm looking forward to catching up on all her books! As with the others I read, this book was just dark and creepy enough which made it a perfect November read. The world-building was also spot on, with the main storyline enriched with little nuggets of local lore, customs and magical creatures. I alternated between the e-book and the audio version for this, and I have to say it worked beautifully: the audiobook narrator in particular did a spectacular job bringing all the characters to life!

The plot was very original and definitely highly engaging: in the land of Raddith, anyone who strongly hates another person may curse them and only one boy, Kellen, has the power to unravel curses. Kellen himself is cursed, however, and unless he can learn how to unravel his own curse, he risks destroying everything and everyone around him. The story soon starts to show its multiple layers and, just like a complex tapestry we follow a thread at a time until the whole picture is clear before our eyes. The author does a great job weaving and unweaving the tale and the luscious, atmospheric setting plays a big part in that.

As Kellen and his friend Nettle journey across the land, they engage in a series of quests, unravelling various curses as they go. Pretty soon, it started to feel as though we were deep in a cycle of travel, quest, curse, unravelling and repeat. Although some of the places they visit and the characters they meet were fascinating, it did start to feel a little repetitive at times, and there was an almost endless parade of secondary characters who were introduced and left so fast I struggled to keep up with them. Sadly, this also meant I didn't really grow attached to any of them so that, when a few made a further appearance at a key point later on in the book, I was mostly unfazed.

This was really a shame, as in contrast I liked the main characters very much! Both Kellen and Nettle were unique, complex and deeply flawed and I loved them both so much for it. Their friendship and loyalty to their other friends and family members were an absolute delight to read about, and I really appreciated how they were called out on their mistakes and worked to put them right. There was real character growth here, which made me even sadder that it was limited to the main characters only.

Unraveller is a perfectly creepy read, perfect for readers who are looking for vivid settings and original world-building, despite the story dragging on a bit in the middle.



I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

I read Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree a few years ago and I absolutely loved it, so I was really excited to read Deeplight. Also, can we just take a moment to admire its GORGEOUS cover?

Deeplight is an extremely original book, and the author's world-building is top notch. The islands' history and lore are explained in detail, and the people's complex relationship with their now-extinct gods is explored without it ever feeling like a (fictional) history lesson. It does, however, really take its time with this and I ended up finding the slow pace of the first half rather challenging. I struggled a bit to push through it, and the second half more than compensated for it, but it could easily put some people off.

I really enjoyed seeing the characters evolve throughout the book, although I was more than a little frustrated with them most of the time. Hark was definitely one of the most infuriating characters I've seen in a long time, as he keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. He is completely beholden to his best friend Jelt, who supposedly looks after Hark but is rather obviously manipulating and coercing him the entire time. This extremely toxic friendship is the focus of most of the book and, while it does make sense that Hark would be the last one to realise what is glaringly obvious to literally everyone else in the book and out, I was quickly bored by this dynamic.

After pushing through a slow start and an annoying main character, we are rewarded with a wonderful second half and some brilliant supporting characters, all of which more than made up for this book's flaws. I would have liked to see some more of the gods, but what we did get was enough to keep me reading.

Overall, this was a very original and unique fantasy. It's a slow burn with a very slow start and depicts a toxic relationship which could be triggering to some, but once the pace picked up it was definitely worth the initial struggle.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

Milo's father is the ferryman who takes the souls of the dead from the island of Merlank to the Island of the Broken Tower. While Milo has expressed an interest in his father's work, he's deemed unsuitable for the job because he's too sensitive – the ghosts of the dead are dangerous, and their look and touch will kill. But when the lord of Merlank's daughter dies, events spiral out of control, and Milo must find his courage if he's going to survive.

This is a very strange book: while it's suffused with loss and grief, there is also Milo's story arc filled with warmth and hope, and finding one's courage and purpose in life. Frances Hardinge's beautiful and imaginative prose is the thread that weaves the story, and Emily Gravett's lovingly detailed and atmospheric illustrations support the narrative and help to build an image of a world very different and at the same time very similar to ours. Wonderful.

3.5
It’s well written and I’m basically giving all the stars for Makepeace & Bear.
Otherwise the pacing is slow and the plot is confusing - I also didn’t care for any of the other characters including the ghosts.½

Twelve-year-old Mosca Mye hasn't got much. Her cruel uncle keeps her locked up in his mill, and her only friend is her pet goose, Saracen, who'll bite anything that crosses his path. But she does have one small, rare thing: the ability to read. She doesn't know it yet, but in a world where books are dangerous things, this gift will change her life.

Enter Eponymous Clent, a smooth-talking con man who seems to love words nearly as much as Mosca herself. Soon Mosca and Clent are living a life of deceit and danger -- discovering secret societies, following shady characters onto floating coffeehouses, and entangling themselves with crazed dukes and double-crossing racketeers. It would be exactly the kind of tale Mosca has always longed to take part in, until she learns that her one true love -- words -- may be the death of her.

Oh Kellen really did need to be brought to realise how his treating others was just not on.
In a world where spider-like Little Brothers can grant someone a curse, sometimes that curse is used more for harm than good. When Kellen is cursed his unraveling skill goes out of control and it might just bring the world to an end if he doesn't control it.
In essence this is a story about control and the importance of control and also about the power of love, there's a lot of sibling love here and a lot of hate for people who need hatred, only a warning about how hate can damage the hater as much as the person they hate. I found it really interesting and really wanted the characters to succeed.

I thought this was much better than the first book. Less violent, for sure.

It seems like a little thing: Ryan, Josh, and Chelle are where they're not supposed to be, and they don't have enough money for bus fare home. Josh, the daredevil of the group, steals a handful of coins from a wishing well, and they think no more of it until strange things start happening. Lights and electronics start to go wrong around Josh. Chelle starts spouting the thoughts of random strangers. Ryan gets weird warts on his hands that start to look more and more like eyes. Then, the creature that lives in the well makes herself known: Ryan, Chelle, and Josh must make the wishes come true for the coins they stole . . . or else.

I appear to have read this book before, over ten years ago, under a different title. At no point while I was reading did I get even the slightest hint of déjà vu, not even a twinge of a thought that the book seemed familiar to me. I had forgotten it entirely. That said, it wasn't a bad read this time around. (I gave it three stars last time; I'm bumping it up to 3.5.) It's a neat premise, with just enough suspense and tension for young readers to find it compelling, I would think. I didn't love any of the characters particularly, which may be part of the reason why I didn't remember it at all. I will probably not read it again, unless I manage to completely forget it and then come across it all over again in another ten years!½

I really enjoyed this parable on evolution, emerging feminism and honesty. You'd think that a speculative fiction book about a girl's role in society, the tension inherent in being a natural scientist while being clergy (as most Victorian scientists were), the Victorian obsession with death, and evolution would be pretty scattered. However, I found The Lie Tree to be one of the most tightly woven books I've ever read: no subplot was left unresolved, and barely a sentence was included without being tied back to one of the central themes of the book. This smoothness may be a turnoff for some -- in places, it made the book feel a little juvenile to me -- but I couldn't help but marvel at the artistry.

And at the end of the day, my favorite themes are women's place in science, the marvel inherent in natural science, the importance of uncomfortable honesty and speculative fiction, so I enjoyed this thoroughly.

1.5 stars

there was an intrigue that kept me reading up until about halfway through but then it took a turn into grimes fairy tale lane. The big revelation that showed up at about 40% into the story killed the intrigue and what was left was a long arse race to a predictable end that I didn't care to read about.

I liked this story, except for the parts that weren't about Mosca and her travels and trials. The extra parts describing the political climate of the community were tedious to read.

Teenager Kellen is an Unraveller - someone who can undo curses. Nettle is his best friend who he freed from the curse of being a heron but who still has a touch of strangeness to her. Their mission to discover why cursers are being spirited away from their iron-bound prison takes them into the dangerous Wild, where nothing is as it seems and it's hard to tell truth from lies.
Another excellent and dark YA tale from Frances Hardinge.

Looooved it! Shocking no one, I think. I have loved every book I've read by Frances Hardinge, she always has kickass protagonists, cool worlds that are kinda like ours but not really, and isn't afraid to put her MCs through quiet a lot of shit before the ending. But that shit is never sexual assault which I'm so thankful for