(Untitled)

[bookelfe]

A few months ago villanny emailed me to flail about Francis Hardinge's Fly By Night. And once again Nny earns her place in the annals of the wise, because, having now finally read Fly By Night, I can safely say THIS BOOK IS AMAZING. In my head it goes into the same category of "deceptively complex books about revolution" as the Dalemark Quartet and the

Comments

[e_mily]

That book sounds AWESOME. I must find it.

[bookelfe]

It is SO GOOD, I recommend you hunt it down immediately! I could not even talk about half the awesome in the review or I would be rambling for the length of a Dickens novel.

[miscellanny]

ALSO THERE IS HOPEWOOD.

[bookelfe]

ALSO INDEED. I had a whole other paragraph written out where I was like "and HOPEWOOD! And Blythe and Kate and coffeehouses!" and then I looked at how long that made the review and kind of sheepishly deleted it. >.>

[miscellanny]

I love the whole concept of Blythe. :D

[bookelfe]

Me tooooo. He never wanted to be a romantic hero, he just wanted to do some highwaymanning! IS THAT SO WRONG.

[genarti]

AWESOME. WITH EXTRA AWESOMESAUCE.

...Okay, from the sound of it I'm completely unsure whether or not I would actually like Mosca. But I feel I ought to give this book a try sometime and find out. I do love me some complex and morally ambiguous revolutionary worldbuilding!

[bookelfe]

My suspicion is that you will be frustrated with Mosca for a significant portion of the book, but she does hit a turning point and stop making terrible decisions and starts making awesome ones! And you will like the worldbuilding, and also THE GOOSE. It is not a book that shouts "GEN" to me but it is a generally awesome book and you should read it anyways.

(Speaking of books that shout out people's names, it turns out that the next book this author wrote after Fly-by-Night involves three siblings and wishing magic. *giggling*)

[genarti]

From this review, that sounds entirely likely. But if she turns awesome, that is a good carrot to keep in mind as I read through the bits where she annoys me! It's not topping the (insanely long) to-read list, but I will try to get my hands on it at some point.

(Ha! WELL WE KNOW WHAT THIS TARGET DEMOGRAPHIC IS. And its name is Becca.)

PS. Did you look at the author's website? *dying* I googled to try to double-check which pronoun I ought to be using, but didn't stick around there long enough to find out for sure anyhow.

[bookelfe]

I loved Mosca (unsurprisingly) but I did spend a large portion of the book facepalming at her. She's very loyal to her goose, though! And there are several other awesome characters; Nny will hit me with something if I don't mention Hopewood Pertellis, Mild-Mannered Lawyer, who sort of absently becomes a revolutionary figurehead because it seemed the thing to do at the time.

(PRETTY MUCH. Thank you, Frances Hardinge!)

PS. *cracks UP* I HAD NOT and HAHAHA!

[dramaturgca]

I need your address. I got you a wee tiny thing at ConCon.

[bookelfe]

Catch me tonight on IM! :D

[dramaturgca]

Yes ma'am. (P.S. Am caught up on FMA. YOU should be caught up on Leverage because it is in fact AWESOME. Even if Kane fans are sort of irritating as hell.)

[bookelfe]

(As it happens, I watched three episodes this past weekend! So now I am only three behind.)

[mask_and_mirror]

You had me at she's more like what would happen if you cross-bred Lyra in The Golden Compass with Mitt in Drowned Ammett. Definitely going to put this one at the top of my "to be read after finishing classes" list.

[bookelfe]

Excellent! My plan is working. >:D (I love it so much when authors realize that their adolescent characters don't have to be nice to be awesome.)