Deeplight

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Hark and Jelt had been orphaned by the same bitter winter, and this had somehow grafted them together. Sometimes Hark felt they were more than friends – or less than friends – their destinies conjoined against their wills.' The governor probably wasn't a good man. It would probably be better to have a ruler who didn't sell people or bend his own laws. For the moment, however, this man was perhaps just the best of the wrong answers available.

Deeplight". Booklist. 1 March 2020. Archived from the original on 16 September 2021 . Retrieved 17 September 2021. The absolute highlight for me, however, was the journey that Hark takes, over just a few months, from child to adult. He learns some hard lessons about what friendship really means and just how far it should and should not take you. In some ways, the explicit way in which Hardinge presents these lessons, not to mention the age of the main characters, had me (like many it seems) assuming that this was a middle-grade book that was also suitable for adults. On further thought and discussion with others, I've changed my mind. Hark's relationship with Jelt is far from simple: they grew up together and were forced to rely on each other to survive, and yet, now that circumstances have changed, this dependence has become dysfunctional. The nuances of this situation, and the true difficulty of escaping it, would fly high over an 11-year-olds head, and probably a 16-year-olds too. The story weaves and unfolds in ways that you both expect but are surprised by, and the language used to deliver this is delicious, a feast for the senses. It evokes the setting perfectly, it casts the story in a darkness that suits the world, and it delivers prose that is flavourful but not too drenched in empty metaphor. Hark is a troubled young orphan being constantly led astray by his best buddy, Jelt. They're living in a world where the gods are dead and pieces of them can still be found in the ocean. These pieces can be used for technological advancement - or sold to the highest bidder. Naturally, one particular piece might just be lurking, waiting to get Hark into an ocean of trouble ...What happens when the teachers and families of deaf children are given intensive support and training? The world building is one of a kind. It's one of those places that you would love to explore but would not want to live there at the same time. It's a place filled to the brim with stories. The characters are drawn just as well. What I really appreciate is that the author included deaf representation. She was approached by a reader one day who asked her whether she would consider writing about deaf characters. Not only did Frances Hardinge proceed to do so, she also worked closely with the said fan and her community to ensure an accurate deaf representation and she ended up dedicating the book to the girl. And that, my friends, is how to be a decent ally. So, setting and story are fantastic - characters too, as through Hark we meet a range of people. There's an exceptional portrayal of a truly toxic friendship - they're hard to do right and I thought Frances Hardinge handled it beautifully. There's some parts of the book that revolve around deafness and a deaf character that were really well-done too; then I found the author's note at the end and learned this book was actually inspired by a young woman who wrote to the author asking if she'd ever include a deaf character in a book; Ms Hardinge pondered and found herself with a storyline; and then invited the reader to serve as a consultant on writing that aspect of the book. So it makes sense on why it was right, but I also thought that was just a really cool inspiration for the book. However, 14-year-old Hark has more to fear from people than from the sea. Hark and Jelt have been friends, close as brothers, working together to survive on the islands. Jelt however keeps demanding more and more from Hark, and to see Hark slowly become more certain of himself and his unhealthy bond with Jelt is very admirable and brave.

Though I mentioned some of the subtext at work in this book, what sustains the narrative and concludes it so beautifully is the fact that this tale is all about stories. Our hero, Hark, makes his living, and often saves his own life, by telling them. Stories are everything. They can assuage a god or calm a friend. Politicians can use them to spread lies and malarkey or unbelievable truths on a wide scale. Left untold they can eat away inside of you until you’ve curdled and changed. It’s a true mark of personal growth then when, near the end, Hark comes to understand that sometimes it’s even more important for him to listen to the stories of others than to tell them. The very last scene involves a storyteller making the choice to listen to others before they toss their own tales out there for others to hear. We make sense of our lives through storytelling. For this reason alone, people like Frances Hardinge (and, let us be truthful, there is no one out there like Frances Hardinge) are amongst our most valuable. Whenever I have a chance to get my hands on a new book of hers it’s only because I want one thing: to be told a story I’ve never heard before. Deeplight fulfills that wish and a lot more besides. My sole regret is that I only get to read it for the first time once.Deeplight is part adventure story with deep sea diving and sneaking around, plus a mad scientist and the very weirdest submersible I've ever come across (operated by producing notes at the precise resonant frequency of godglass) : There’s a moment in the movie Barcelona where two friends are talking and one asks, “What do you call what’s above the subtext?” “The text.” “OK, that’s right, but they never talk about that.” With a Hardinge novel, the subtext is always present but usually it’s a lot more fun to talk about the text. In each book, that subtext crops up to varying degrees of subtlety. In the case of Deeplight, I thought Hardinge played her hand with great care. So much so, that I fear too many people will miss what it is she’s doing here. Within this story is a pretty clear-cut examination of the relationship between fear and xenophobia. The gods, we learn, literally lived on fear. Fear, you see, always works its way into the sea, and it was there that it grew the gods and made them strong. When the gods died, a lot of that fear died as well. That, in turn, means that the people who live on the continent are less afraid to travel to the islands and this makes a lot of the islanders (particularly one specific group) worried. To their mind, it would be better to deal with a monster that was local and homegrown (and likely to eat you) than someone strange with different religions and beliefs. Better to die at the hand of the familiar than live, and maybe come to accept, the unfamiliar. Not that Hardinge makes any of this sound as clunky and obvious as I’m putting it here. She’ll just pepper it lightly throughout the book where you might notice it or might not. In one scene Hark speaks dismissively of a continental’s religion and the person with whom he is speaking lays out just how ignorant he is about the differences between different continentals. If you care, it’s there. Hardinge’s intricately textured world, peopled by smugglers, fanatics and priests, is filled with absorbing detail stars. “No stories were complete anyway. They were all really just parts of a bigger tale that could only be told by many different voices, and seen through many different eyes. There was always more of the story to learn.”