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Check for Availabilityout of stock. Click on the button below to search for this title in other formats.  Fly by Night
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Twelve-year-old Mosca Mye hasn't got much. Her cruel uncle keeps her locked up in his mill, and her only friend is her pet goose, Saracen, who'll bite anything that crosses his path. But she does have one small, rare thing: the ability to read. She doesn't know it yet, but in a world where books are dangerous things, this gift will change her life.
Enter Eponymous Clent, a smooth-talking con man who seems to love words nearly as much as Mosca herself. Soon Mosca and Clent are living a life of deceit and danger — discovering secret societies, following shady characters onto floating coffeehouses, and entangling themselves with crazed dukes and double-crossing racketeers. It would be exactly the kind of tale Mosca has always longed to take part in, until she learns that her one true love — words — may be the death of her. Fly by Night is astonishingly original, a grand feat of the imagination from a masterful new storyteller. Review:"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"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." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review:"A rollicking read to be savored." Bookseller (London) Review:"Mosca is a curious heroine, rather like Philip Pullman's Lyra, a fierce black-eyed street survivor whose passion, quick-wittedness and intelligence are a power for change. Fly by Night is like delving into a box of sweets with a huge array of flavours." London Times Literary Supplement Review:"A stylish historical adventure...written with an assured touch. Original and inventive descriptions which paint a vivid picture of people and events. Undoubtedly one of the finest books of the year." Publishing News Synopsis:Twelve-year-old Mosca Mye doesn't have much. Her cruel uncle keeps her locked up in his mill, and her only friend is her vicious pet goose. But she does have one small, rare thing: the ability to read. She doesn't know it yet, but this gift will change her life.
About the AuthorFrances Hardinge spent her childhood rambling around in a huge, isolated old house in Kent that "wuthered" when the wind blew and that inspired her to write strange, magical stories from an early age. She studied English at Oxford University, where she was a founding member of a writer's workshop and won a magazine short-story competition. She recently returned from a yearlong round-the-world odyssey. Fly by Night is her first novel. What Our Readers Are SayingAdd a comment for a chance to win!
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