Gullstruck Island
by Frances Hardinge
Frances Hardinge's début novel, Fly-by-Night caused quite a stir. It was an energetically rococo flight of fancy about a little girl called Mosca and her goose companion set in an unnamed version of our world in the eighteenth century. The second, Verdigris Deep, had a contemporary British setting - grubby rather than gritty - but with old magic lurking round the abandoned supermarket trolleys.
With Gullstruck Island, Hardinge is firmly back on fantasy territory, if one can say that of such treacherous ground, but with a third setting and new characters. It's her best yet and the first to show that she is developing control over her own imaginative and linguistic brio. That said it will be a hard read for her junior audience. At nearly 500 pages, it is a baggy sort of story, with the usual crammed-fulness associated with this writer. I'll attempt to summarise a pretty freewheeling plot:
Gullstruck is an island alone in a vast ocean and full of volcanoes. It is populated by several tribes and begins in the country of the Lace, who scratch a living as pearl-divers down on its western coast. But any tribe might contain one of the Lost, a rare kind of sport who have the ability to travel away from their bodies. The Lost are treated with great respect by the islanders as prophets and seers.
The Lost of the Lace tribe is Arilou and she is looked after by her younger sister Hathin, who is totally inconspicuous. Only Hathin knows that Arilou's incomprehensible babbling is just that; it is up to Hathin to interpret her vacant sister's words as important prophecies. Now an Inspector of Lost is coming to visit the Lace. Hathin fears discovery and the Inspector is found dead.
Any reader who can get past the elaborate opening set-up will discover a world full of yet more original characters, such as the terrifying blue-stained Ashwalker who hunts murderers and wears rags dyed with the ash of his victims' bones. The conclusion, for anyone who has managed to keep the majority of plot threads in mind, is very satisfying, leaving no loose ends.
This book owes a lot to Hardinge's year spent travelling, as the acknowledgments show: New Zealand, Antigua, Guatamala and Cambodia all feature.
In spite of its definite qualities as a tour-de-force, it is likely that her fans will be glad the next book is to be a sequel to Fly-by-Night.