Frances Hardinge

"Originally published in hardcover by Macmillan Publishers Limited, United Kingdom, in 2019"--Copyright page.

Deeplight

'One of our finest storytellers,' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent From Frances Hardinge, the Costa Award-winning author of The Lie Tree comes Deeplight. The gods of the Myriad were as real as the coastlines and currents, and as merciless as the winds and whirlpools. Now the gods are dead, but their remains are stirring beneath the waves . . . On the streets of the Island of Lady's Crave live 14-year-old urchins Hark and his best friend Jelt. They are scavengers: diving for relics of the gods, desperate for anything they can sell. But there is something dangerous in the deep waters of the undersea, calling to someone brave enough to retrieve it. When the waves try to claim Jelt, Hark will do anything to save him. Even if it means compromising not just who Jelt is, but what he is . . .

Beatrice

I read Frances Hardinge's The Lie Tree a few years ago and I absolutely loved it, so I was really excited to read Deeplight. Also, can we just take a moment to admire its GORGEOUS cover?

Deeplight is an extremely original book, and the author's world-building is top notch. The islands' history and lore are explained in detail, and the people's complex relationship with their now-extinct gods is explored without it ever feeling like a (fictional) history lesson. It does, however, really take its time with this and I ended up finding the slow pace of the first half rather challenging. I struggled a bit to push through it, and the second half more than compensated for it, but it could easily put some people off.

I really enjoyed seeing the characters evolve throughout the book, although I was more than a little frustrated with them most of the time. Hark was definitely one of the most infuriating characters I've seen in a long time, as he keeps making the same mistakes over and over again. He is completely beholden to his best friend Jelt, who supposedly looks after Hark but is rather obviously manipulating and coercing him the entire time. This extremely toxic friendship is the focus of most of the book and, while it does make sense that Hark would be the last one to realise what is glaringly obvious to literally everyone else in the book and out, I was quickly bored by this dynamic. 

After pushing through a slow start and an annoying main character, we are rewarded with a wonderful second half and some brilliant supporting characters, all of which more than made up for this book's flaws. I would have liked to see some more of the gods, but what we did get was enough to keep me reading.

Overall, this was a very original and unique fantasy. It's a slow burn with a very slow start and depicts a toxic relationship which could be triggering to some, but once the pace picked up it was definitely worth the initial struggle.

For this and more reviews, visit Book for Thought.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way.

'One of our finest storytellers,' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent The gods were as real as the coastlines and currents, and as merciless as the winds and whirlpools. For centuries the gods of the Undersea ruled the islands of the Myriad through awe and terror: they were very real, and very dangerous. Sacrifices were hurled into the waters to appease them, and every boat was painted with pleading eyes to entreat their mercy. They were served, feared and adored. Then, thirty years ago, the gods rose up in madness and tore each other apart. Now, none remain. The islands have recovered and the people have patched their battered ships and moved on. On one of these islands live Hark and his best friend Jelt. To them, the gods are nothing but a collection of valuable scraps to be scavenged from the ocean and sold. But now something is pulsing beneath the waves, calling to someone brave enough to retrieve it.

Did not keep my attention, had to force myself to finish.

Isabella Rebecki

Sade A

🖤

  
    "I think I've got a lot better at choosing friends"
  

Young adult books have the tendency to make me roll my eyes so far backwards and scoff at everything the author writes. It's a tiring thing being on the hating side of a genre. Who wants to rant about books continuously? Not me. Ignoring them is so much healthier. So maybe i miss gems like this because I'd probably have to sift through a ton of less than quality books to find this & I'm obviously too lazy for that. 
So I'm thankful for people who come through with recommendations.
I can't remember exactly who recommended this book to me on here, but whoever it was, thank you so much. I would not have read this book otherwise.

🖤🖤

  
    "Loyalty is not a virtue in its own right. Its worth depends on where it is spent"
  


All well and good if you weren't Hark. Hark has one person and one person alone to depend on. His 'brother' & best friend Jelt. Loyalty might not be a virtue in it's own right for most people, but In the Myriad and for Hark especially, loyalty to Jelt is a virtue on its own.

What starts as a good deed turns into an especially tumultuous journey for Hark.

🖤🖤🖤
Deeplight starts slow and for a time my frustration with Hark was overwhelming but the best books never give you characters' that are easy to root for anyways. The best books have flawed beings', that struggle to make sense of their life and stumble this way and that, their stories are rarely clean and the end is not without some regret.

Deeplight is your choices have consequences. Deeplight is protecting family and home from themselves if necessary. Deeplight is knowing friends' can make or break you.

😊 Might be getting overly sentimental now, but all in all Frances Hardinge has written a truly marvelous book.
 
🌟🌟🌟🌟.5 Undersea Stars

Jillian Clare

This book was breathtaking. Though the world building was incredible and complex, it did take me a little bit to become immersed in the story. Once I was, though? Game over! I finished this book in just two sittings. The mythology and lore of this world was so unique, and the relationships and characters have stuck with me long after finishing this book. After reading Deeplight, Frances Hardinge will definitely be an author I come back to!

One of our finest storytellers,' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex SerpentThis macabre YA adventure, with a touch of Lovecraftian steampunk, features underwater exploration, monsters of the deep, relic-based technology and questions of loyalty. The gods are dead. About fifty years ago they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why.In an alternative world, fifty years after the death of the gods, a fifteen-year-old boy, Hark, finds the still beating heart of a terrifying deity and uses it to try to save his best friend. Hark risks everything to keep the heart out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists and secret fanatical cults, to try to use it to sustain the life of his best friend, who is gradually and eerily transforming. But how long should someone stay loyal to a friend who is himself becoming a monster?

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Frances Hardinge has the enviable ability to write wonderful books for children that I feel are even more enjoyable for adults. The world she has created in Deeplight is wonderfully original, which is quite unusual for the genre, particularly when aimed at younger readers. It lives, fully in the imagination. Her imagined world is Myriad, dominated by islands and sea, by pirates and valuable and elusive "godware", the last remnants of ancient and brutal gods. Hark is our 14-year-old hero, an orphan who survives by his wits and becomes enmeshed in a complex world of smuggling and danger when his friend Jelt's scheme goes badly wrong. Hardinge's two main characters may be young but they are fully realised and have personalities and relationships as complicated as any adult's. When Jelt reappears in Hark's life with a much more dangerous plan to get rich Hark must consider what friendship really means and what he is prepared to sacrifice for it.

Hardinge's writing is rich, complex and full of that necessary darkness that makes the very best YA (and adult) fiction. She can create a whole sensory world with a single metaphor and she uses this to full advantage. It's a story both beautiful and unsettling, probing ideas of humanity and divinity and the spaces in between. It's full of philosophy and feeling to off-set the tension of a superbly-crafted and gripping plot.

sara louise

"maybe there isn't a right thing to do. maybe there's just lots of wrong answers, and you have to pick one you can bear — something that doesn't break who you are."

this was so good. deeplight is about friendships (the bad and the good), sea gods and monsters but mostly, it's about stories. the portrayal of hark and jelt's dysfunctional relationship felt real, and every time hark was pushed "back into his place", i felt it as if it were me taking the blows. hardinge has crafted this masterfully, everything is connected and there are no loose threads by the end. while it did take me a little while to get into it, once i did there was no going back. 

ps i have to mention that i loved selphin's character in particular, and the way she played a huge role without even being present for half of the story. i also adored seeing a community of deaf people and the usage of sign language in a fantasy setting, and all of the hardships that may come with it.

Anna Leigh

The more I think of this book the more I think that it's actually brilliant. I feel like a 4 is a good rating for me personally. I was initially considering rating this a 3.75 but as I said, the more I think about this, the more good points I'm remembering from the reading experience and I've come to the conclusion that I actually really enjoyed this book! 

I absolutely loved the Sea-kissed aspect. I have never read a book where deafness is represented so much and it made this book feel truly special and unique. I think Frances Hardinge did an amazing job creating this world full of fascinating mythology and I'm definitely going to try pick up more of her books!

A thing that makes or breaks a book for me is the ending, and i really liked the way this story was concluded! I thought it was wrapped up really well and I'm pretty satisfied with how things settled. 

The one small downside to this was that I felt like there wasn't really a main plot. I feel like it was just a continuation of occurring events. However, It did keep me intrigued throughout the book and I think towards the end it did get quite thrilling. I also wish we could've seen more from Selphin's perspective but oh well :(

Overall, I would definitely reccomend to those who love mythology and want a whimsical, thrilling read.

Pam Sartain

My review:🌟🌟🌟🌟

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge is set in a world where the gods ruled the seas.  They were in the form of giant sea creatures, and could cause death and chaos when they wanted!  Sacrifices were made, priests advised what to do, and then one day thirty years ago, all of the gods killed each other, and no one knows why.

Now, there are bits of god to be found in the bottom of the sea, valuable to some, and dangerous to collect.  Hark is always dragged into ill-advised things by his best friend, Jelt, and tonight will be no exception.

This is a fantasy novel, with a rich back story.  I enjoyed the story unfolding, and learning more about Hawk, Jelt, and the gods.  

 Deeplight  was published on 31st October 2019 and is available from  Amazon ,  Waterstones  and  Bookshop.org .

You can follow Frances Hardinge on  Twitter  and her  website .

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, and so my thanks to NetGalley and to  Pan Macmillan .

Ben Nathan

An excellent addition to the Lodestar nominees this year. Wonderfully deep world (pun intended), characters that felt real, and stakes that mattered. I want more of this world.

Karen Harding

Deeplight follows the story of Hark and Jelt as they navigate their way through life as scavengers on the island of Lady’s Crave. What begins as a smuggling job gone wrong, leads Hark on an unwanted path to face the great and terrible shadows of the undersea. A whisper of darkness has begun to resurface, taking Jelt in its hold, and changing him into something fearfully unrecognisable. Hark has only one option to save his friend, and it will take the heart of the entire island to succeed. The only problem is, when you’re a smuggler, no one cares about your story.

It is easy to see why this book won the Costa Book Award, as Frances Hardinge has outrageous world building skills, and did her homework so well that within five minutes of reading I was already yelling at a character for being a total butthead. As problematic as their relationship was, I never once felt that Hark and Jelt were not real, living, breathing people, dashing about the island and getting into scrapes left, right and centre. I wanted to give Jelt a piece of my mind about a hundred times for the abusive mind tricks he uses on Hark, and the way Hark just accepts everything made me suspect that Hark was telling us grandiose stories via a fourth wall. To the point that the disclaimer at the start of the book could easily have fallen from Hark’s mouth, rather than the author’s.

When all is said and done, you feel like you have known the characters in this tale for years, and are now looking back on this world as if you were a part of the story all along, perhaps as a veteran member of an old scavenger crew, just waiting for the chance to share your small part of the great history of the island, and the deep, dark monsters of the undersea.

Deeplight

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