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Frances Hardinge has published many books over the years and even her least favorite books of mine are still head and shoulders above many other things I read, but sometimes the sheer level of anticipation I feel for any New Hardinge book sabotages me and when I actually get it into my hands I'm like 'well that was lovely but not perhaps as lovely as the absolute best.'
Anyway, I'm delighted to report that was not the case with Unraveller, a book which delivered me absolute gutpunches (laudatory) at a rate of approximately one a chapter.
There's a lot that's new for Hardinge in this book. For a notable start, it's the first one where she has dual protagonists: Kellen is a loud and idealistic and extremely bullheaded youth who travels around the country breaking curses, and Nettle is a quiet dampening cloud of politely reserved judgment who comes along attempting to help clean up all the things that Kellen breaks along with the curses, and both of them find the other deeply irritating and also rely on each other absolutely and also are withholding matters of deep significance from each other and/or themselves ... it's a good dynamic!
Nettle's backstory, for the record, is that she and her siblings were birds for a while until Kellen broke her curse, and for a number of extremely legitimate reasons she's not over it. Hardinge is always thematically concerned with cycles of trauma but more than any other Hardinge this is a book about various kinds of aftermath -- it has a broader plot, but it takes a while to get there, because the first approximate half is mostly an episodic exploration of the central premise, which is that sometimes someone hates someone else enough to completely ruin their life [in this case magically], and sometimes those reasons are fair and sometimes they're not, and either way fixing the immediate problem of "now you're no longer a bird" (or a [redacted] or a [redacted]) does not resolve all the lingering and underlying stress of having been a bird and the attendant related miseries.
(One of Nettle's brothers is still a gull. Sometimes he comes to hang out. He and Kellen hate each other. This delights me, because I love mess.)
Anyway, I liked the episodic parts of the book quite a bit as a way to quilt a bunch of individual stories into a nuanced picture of the whole -- more in some ways than the end although the end was of course also very good and included some of my favorite parts. At this point I can see a Hardinge villain from a mile away but I don't know that there's anything to be done about that, but on the other hand no matter how much Hardinge I read I will always be ambushed by the unexpected density of her weird and wonderful worldbuilding. There is simply always so much going on! And in this book in particular, the levels are enhanced by how much it's an in media res story, building on work that the kids have already done, people they've already met and successes and failures they've already made. There's no such thing as a finished story -- every story is in the process of being told. For that if nothing else (but there is so much else!) I think this one would have ended up as one of my favorites.
As a last point I also appreciate that Hardinge has leveled up in ancillary queer adults; the dubious lesbians in Lie Tree are of course a delight but on the other hand 'the sinister carnivorous-bog-horse-rider who has compelled the protagonists into service is being pursued across the country by his distraught abandoned ex-husband and the children find it awkward' is really charming, I think, as a plot beat; see above re: mess.
Anyway, I'm delighted to report that was not the case with Unraveller, a book which delivered me absolute gutpunches (laudatory) at a rate of approximately one a chapter.
There's a lot that's new for Hardinge in this book. For a notable start, it's the first one where she has dual protagonists: Kellen is a loud and idealistic and extremely bullheaded youth who travels around the country breaking curses, and Nettle is a quiet dampening cloud of politely reserved judgment who comes along attempting to help clean up all the things that Kellen breaks along with the curses, and both of them find the other deeply irritating and also rely on each other absolutely and also are withholding matters of deep significance from each other and/or themselves ... it's a good dynamic!
Nettle's backstory, for the record, is that she and her siblings were birds for a while until Kellen broke her curse, and for a number of extremely legitimate reasons she's not over it. Hardinge is always thematically concerned with cycles of trauma but more than any other Hardinge this is a book about various kinds of aftermath -- it has a broader plot, but it takes a while to get there, because the first approximate half is mostly an episodic exploration of the central premise, which is that sometimes someone hates someone else enough to completely ruin their life [in this case magically], and sometimes those reasons are fair and sometimes they're not, and either way fixing the immediate problem of "now you're no longer a bird" (or a [redacted] or a [redacted]) does not resolve all the lingering and underlying stress of having been a bird and the attendant related miseries.
(One of Nettle's brothers is still a gull. Sometimes he comes to hang out. He and Kellen hate each other. This delights me, because I love mess.)
Anyway, I liked the episodic parts of the book quite a bit as a way to quilt a bunch of individual stories into a nuanced picture of the whole -- more in some ways than the end although the end was of course also very good and included some of my favorite parts. At this point I can see a Hardinge villain from a mile away but I don't know that there's anything to be done about that, but on the other hand no matter how much Hardinge I read I will always be ambushed by the unexpected density of her weird and wonderful worldbuilding. There is simply always so much going on! And in this book in particular, the levels are enhanced by how much it's an in media res story, building on work that the kids have already done, people they've already met and successes and failures they've already made. There's no such thing as a finished story -- every story is in the process of being told. For that if nothing else (but there is so much else!) I think this one would have ended up as one of my favorites.
As a last point I also appreciate that Hardinge has leveled up in ancillary queer adults; the dubious lesbians in Lie Tree are of course a delight but on the other hand 'the sinister carnivorous-bog-horse-rider who has compelled the protagonists into service is being pursued across the country by his distraught abandoned ex-husband and the children find it awkward' is really charming, I think, as a plot beat; see above re: mess.
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I may have to read this book for this subplot alone.
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What more could anyone want out of a book, really?
I had not even heard that this was out; I definitely have to hunt it down now!
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Interestingly I found it a lot less stressful to read than a lot of Hardinge's have been for me on their first time through - I think not being locked to one perspective contributed to that.
(Harland was such a delight.)
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Any bets on whether Hardinges did the same?
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I did enjoy the actual episodes, I just lost sight of the forest for the trees, so I'm curious to see if I like quilt better next time around.
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I just finished Gullstruck Island for the first time and think it might be my favorite? Either that or The Lie Tree? I am interested in what your least favorite of her books are, though.
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