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A review by halschrieve
Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge
5.0
Ohhhh how this book hits the nerdy sweet-spot.
Here we go: Mosca Mye is a tough girl with a goose named Saracen. She lives in a awful, slimy village called Chough, somewhere in a rural backwater; after the death of her father Quilliam, she has been raised by wicked, abusive relatives, who lock her into a mill each night. One day, a traveling con man is put into the stocks, and Mosca seizes her chance immediately for an escape-- she steals the keys, sets her uncle's mill on fire, and skips town with the ridiculously, fantastically named Eponymous Clent--who is wanted by the law for illegal erotica composition and the theft of a hurdy-gurdy, among other things. Eponymous, Mosca, and her goose start off on the run, but Eponymous has mysterious errands of his own. After being waylaid by highwaymen, a chance encounter puts Eponymous in the pay of a duchess who may or may not be orchestrating a coup against her dim-witted sociopathic brother. In the city of Mandelion, Mosca hunts for the revolutionary legacy of her father while resenting her own position as orphaned, alone, and friendless-- and she ends up selling out a free school whose leaders call for economic justice and uprising. But as the stakes raise around a brain-bendingly intricate plot, Mosca starts to reckon with what her own values really are, and who she can really trust. Also, there's a hidden printing press that is producing psyop radical papers intended to misdirect the duke into attacking leftists instead of the other royals intent on stealing the crown.
Do you want to see a highwayman become a revolutionary hero and fight a duke in a pistol battle between two floating houseboat cafes? Do you want to read about a goose fighting a civet and winning? Are you into weird black markets and creepy men of all descriptions who the protagonist must alternately trust and betray?
Based on 18th century Britain, the alternate world Mosca Mye inhabits overflows with religious unrest, proto-capitalist upheaval and complicated espionage between duchesses, trade guilds, and opportunistic revolutionaries. Its otherworldly setting frees Hardinge from grappling with colonialism directly, though various details indicate that empire springs here, too-- there are coffeehouses and sugar, after all, and the goose is called Saracen. What Hardinge does well is show a complex political landscape that could turn out any of a hundred ways, where every individual has agency and various motives, both noble and otherwise, and where revolutionaries win on occasion both because their cause is just and the public is on their side, and because just-the-right circumstances convene. Her portraits of villains and religious zealots excite because they are passionate and self-righteous, and all get their say in advocating for the world they want. The radicals definitely come out of it looking like the good guys, though they are also shown as being, too often, depressingly naive; the leaders among them who are effective are motivated by moral compunction but also by other obligations and ambitions, and the pacifists are spared from death only by the action of those willing to draw blood. Mosca's free-speech anti-authoritarian polemic at the end of the book is in my opinion extremely effective as a starting point for kids to consider propaganda, media manipulation, and power.
Hardinge's sentences are also delicious to read aloud in this book-- this is a work of craft by someone who adores language.
What can I say? I'm a nerd, and this is really a comfort read.
Here we go: Mosca Mye is a tough girl with a goose named Saracen. She lives in a awful, slimy village called Chough, somewhere in a rural backwater; after the death of her father Quilliam, she has been raised by wicked, abusive relatives, who lock her into a mill each night. One day, a traveling con man is put into the stocks, and Mosca seizes her chance immediately for an escape-- she steals the keys, sets her uncle's mill on fire, and skips town with the ridiculously, fantastically named Eponymous Clent--who is wanted by the law for illegal erotica composition and the theft of a hurdy-gurdy, among other things. Eponymous, Mosca, and her goose start off on the run, but Eponymous has mysterious errands of his own. After being waylaid by highwaymen, a chance encounter puts Eponymous in the pay of a duchess who may or may not be orchestrating a coup against her dim-witted sociopathic brother. In the city of Mandelion, Mosca hunts for the revolutionary legacy of her father while resenting her own position as orphaned, alone, and friendless-- and she ends up selling out a free school whose leaders call for economic justice and uprising. But as the stakes raise around a brain-bendingly intricate plot, Mosca starts to reckon with what her own values really are, and who she can really trust. Also, there's a hidden printing press that is producing psyop radical papers intended to misdirect the duke into attacking leftists instead of the other royals intent on stealing the crown.
Do you want to see a highwayman become a revolutionary hero and fight a duke in a pistol battle between two floating houseboat cafes? Do you want to read about a goose fighting a civet and winning? Are you into weird black markets and creepy men of all descriptions who the protagonist must alternately trust and betray?
Based on 18th century Britain, the alternate world Mosca Mye inhabits overflows with religious unrest, proto-capitalist upheaval and complicated espionage between duchesses, trade guilds, and opportunistic revolutionaries. Its otherworldly setting frees Hardinge from grappling with colonialism directly, though various details indicate that empire springs here, too-- there are coffeehouses and sugar, after all, and the goose is called Saracen. What Hardinge does well is show a complex political landscape that could turn out any of a hundred ways, where every individual has agency and various motives, both noble and otherwise, and where revolutionaries win on occasion both because their cause is just and the public is on their side, and because just-the-right circumstances convene. Her portraits of villains and religious zealots excite because they are passionate and self-righteous, and all get their say in advocating for the world they want. The radicals definitely come out of it looking like the good guys, though they are also shown as being, too often, depressingly naive; the leaders among them who are effective are motivated by moral compunction but also by other obligations and ambitions, and the pacifists are spared from death only by the action of those willing to draw blood. Mosca's free-speech anti-authoritarian polemic at the end of the book is in my opinion extremely effective as a starting point for kids to consider propaganda, media manipulation, and power.
Hardinge's sentences are also delicious to read aloud in this book-- this is a work of craft by someone who adores language.
What can I say? I'm a nerd, and this is really a comfort read.