Fly by Night: Frances Hardinge - Softcover

Hardinge, Frances

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1419724851 ISBN 13: 9781419724855

Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, 2017

Synopsis

Everybody knew that books were dangerous. Read the wrong book, it was said, and the words crawled around your brain on black legs and drove you mad, wicked mad. Mosca Mye was born at a time sacred to Goodman Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jams and Butterchurns, which is why her father insisted on naming her after the housefly. He also insisted on teaching her to read--even in a world where books are dangerous, regulated things. Eight years later, Quillam Mye died, leaving behind an orphaned daughter with an inauspicious name and an all-consuming hunger for words. Trapped for years in the care of her cruel Uncle Westerly and Aunt Briony, Mosca leaps at the opportunity for escape, though it comes in the form of sneaky swindler Eponymous Clent. As she travels the land with Clent and her pet goose, Saracen, Mosca begins to discover complicated truths about the world she inhabits and the power of words.

About this title

Review:

As baroque and bonkers as anything dreamt up by Mervyn Peake or Joan Aiken -- Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday, July 9, 2006

Book Description:

In a fractured realm, struggling to maintain an uneasy peace after years of civil war and religious tyranny, a twelve-year-old orphan and her loyal companion, a large and homicidal goose, are about to become the unlikely heroes of a revolution. Mosca Mye has spent her life in a miserable hamlet, where her father was banished for writing inflammatory books about tolerance and freedom. Now he is dead, and Mosca is on the run, in search of a better life. With Eponymous Clent, a smooth-tongued swindler, she heads for the city of Mandelion, living by her wits among highwaymen and smugglers, dangerously insane rulers, secret agents and radical plotters. But the city is in uproar, for someone is once again printing seditious material and no one is quite what they seem. With suspicion and peril at every turn, Mosca uncovers a shocking plot to force a rule of terror on the people of the Realm, and all too soon merry mayhem leads to murder . . . Funny, surprising and fantastical, with an unforgettable cast of characters, FLY BY NIGHT contains at its heart an inspiring truth - that the power of books can change the world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1419724851
• ISBN 13: 9781419724855
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432