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Fly by Night

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
The award-winning author of The Lie Tree "has created a distinctly imaginative world full of engaging characters, robust humor, and true suspense" (School Library Journal, starred review).
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's father 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 and aunt, 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, Mosca begins to discover complicated truths about the world she inhabits and the power of words.
"Intricate plotting, well-developed and fascinating characters, delicious humor, and exquisite wordcraft envelop readers fully into this richly imagined world." ?The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)
"Hardinge's stylish way with prose gives her sprawling debut fantasy a literate yet often silly tone that calls to mind Monty Python." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Mosca's ferocity and authentic inner turmoil [are] both reminiscent of Philip Pullman's Lyra Belacqua." ?Booklist
"Incredibly well written." ?The Seattle Times
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from May 8, 2006
      In a broken-down medieval kingdom where reading is forbidden, 12-year-old Mosca Mye is drawn to a traveling con artist who "brought phrases as vivid and strange as spices, and he smiled as he spoke, as if tasting them." Hardinge's stylish way with prose gives her sprawling debut fantasy a literate yet often silly tone that calls to mind Monty Python. Plucky Mosca rescues the con man—called Eponymous Clent—from the town stocks, accidentally burning down her uncle's mill in the process. Their journey unfolds against a wickedly complex political backdrop, a fragmented civilization largely run by guilds of locksmiths, boatmen and printers (the only ones allowed to decide which books will survive). Mosca and Clent find themselves embroiled in intrigue between the guilds, an entry point to a sly bit of allegory involving a secret printing press and "dangerous" pamphleteers ("Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings.... And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth's voice are more destructive by far," a teacher reads aloud). Along with an infusion of high-camp fantasy, Hardinge firmly plants in the novel the heroine's serious love of reading, which informs nearly everything Mosca does ("I'd been hoarding words for years," she says in an introspective moment, "buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly into bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them"). And the setting is detailed and complex enough to inspire many sequels. Ages 10-up.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
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Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1010
  • Text Difficulty:6-8

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