Frances Hardinge

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.… (mais)

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.… (mais)

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.… (mais)

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.… (mais)