About the Author

Frances Hardinge spent a large part of her childhood in a huge old house that inspired her to write strange stories from an early age. She read English at Oxford University, then got a job at a software company. However, a few years later a persistent friend finally managed to bully Frances into sending a few chapters of Fly By Night, her first children's novel, to a publisher. Macmillan made her an immediate offer. The book went on to publish to huge critical acclaim and win the Branford Boase First Novel Award. She has since written many highly acclaimed children's novels including, Fly By Night's sequel, Twilight Robbery, as well as the Carnegie shortlisted Cuckoo Song and the Costa Book of the Year winner, The Lie Tree.

Reviews

"A wonderful and wondrous novel. Frances Hardinge has joined the company of writers whose books I will always seek out and read."-Garth Nix"A rollicking read to be savored." -- Bookseller (London)

"A rich and intensive tale. One to keep an eye on." -- Publishing News

"A rollicking read to be savored." -- Bookseller (London)

"Incredibly well written." -- Seattle Times

"Intricate plotting, well-developed and fascinating characters, delicious humor, and exquisite worldcraft envelop readers fully into this richly imagined world." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)

"Intricate plotting, well-developed and fascinating characters, delicious humor, and exquisite worldcraft envelop readers fully into this richly imagined world." -- Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books (starred review)
"Incredibly well written." -- Seattle Times
"A rich and intensive tale. One to keep an eye on." -- Publishing News
"A rollicking read to be savored." -- Bookseller (London)
"A wonderful and wondrous novel. Frances Hardinge has joined the company of writers whose books I will always seek out and read."-Garth Nix"A rollicking read to be savored." -- Bookseller (London)

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. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.