Fly By Night
The Fly By Night series, Book 1
Frances Hardinge
HarperTrophy
Fiction, MG Fantasy
Themes: Books, Girl Power, Religious Themes
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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 original 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...