Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge
Genre – Fantasy
My Rating – 4/5
There is a strange tribe of people who have bejeweled teeth. They speak a silent language sometimes. They read thoughts. They have secrets hidden inside them and they have to go to terrifying lengths to keep those secrets.
Then there are people who can send their senses away from their bodies to look and search things. They are powerful and dangerous. And they know a few secrets too.
There are tattooed revengers and blood-thirsty bounty hunters painted with their victims’ ashes.
There are volcanoes that speak. They are crazy and they hold stories of their own. They don’t welcome trespassers and they only have a dialog when they choose.
There are 200 yrs of legends swarming the Gullstruck Island and lately the island has been starving.
Two little sisters are running for their life. One is the last of her kind and the other, the younger one, is the “invisible”. (For some reason the second sister kept reminding me of Arya Stark of ASOIAF)
This was my first Frances Hardinge and I cannot thank Tanu enough for introducing me to her. The alternate world created by Hardinge is fascinating, alluring, full of conspiracies and fierce love. The language is lyrical and words string themselves together to form colorful and haunting music. The names of the characters are vivid and sing-song’ish and the tribes pull you into their own.
It took me about 100 pages to get the rhythm of it and then there was no looking back. The start was especially a little tough because one has to get used to the fantastical speaking, angry volcanoes and names and languages but once you get the flow, you are in for a treat. Your imagination will stretch to its wildest extents and you’d come out enlivened and refreshed.
It is amazing how Hardinge managed to complete the story in one book without making it cluttered and confusing. There were so many facets. I kept fearing that I’d be left hanging by the end because, well, how does one put in place all this? And yet everything did fall in its place giving me a very satisfactory closure.
“Well, this is the way the world is. Let us make the best of the things and set about surviving here, shall we?”
“Who am I? The shell-stealing Lace girl, the attendant of Lady Arilou, Mother Govrie’s other daughter, the thing of dust, the victim, the revenger, the diplomat, the crowd-witch, the killer, the rescuer, the pirate?
I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the word shall be.”
Tell me, have you read Frances Hardinge? How did you find her? I loved her. For sure.
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