2019 fantasy. The islands of the Myriad used to have gods: great and
implacable entities living in the sea, feared as much as worshipped.
Thirty years ago, for no obvious reason, they turned on each other,
fighting until they were all dead. But parts of their bodies make for
useful salvage…
So among the traditional activities of smuggling and scavenging
(and maybe even some legitimate fishing), there are brass-and-steel
muscle-powered submarines, used to go diving into the sea that lies
below the sea, looking for bits of dead gods to salvage. Not that Hark
has anything to do with them; he's a dockside con-artist, making money
where he can, and getting drawn into bigger schemes by his
fellow-orphan Jelt.
That relationship is one of the central points of the book, and it's
frustrating; it's immediately obvious that Jelt is no good for Hark,
but he's a competent manipulator, and it takes Hark far too long to
realise that words are just words. All right, Hark is about fifteen,
and I can't say it's implausible exactly, but it irked me.
(Particularly since he's a competent liar himself, so one would think
he'd be able to recognise one.)
But that's just one story; there's another one about the corrupting
effects of power, or perhaps it's more "watch out for who's offering
you power and what they might plan to do with you"; and another of how
people can be led into actions that they know are wrong by slow
degrees until it's too late to back out without looking silly. And
family and how it works… the action and procedural plot aren't badly
served, but as in most good fiction what's important is the people.
Another blow from outside juddered the door, and there followed a
roar of frustration.
Dr Vyne's scruples had room for improvement, but she did have a nice
line in good, solid doors. Right now, this seemed like a highly
redeeming quality.
The great thing is that these stories aren't rigidly allocated to
particular characters; nobody's here to be The Obvious Bad Guy, though
some of them are more misled than others, and Hark himself helps cause
quite a bit of the trouble that he must eventually try to stop.
All right, I found Selphin a more interesting character than Hark;
she's the youngest daughter of one of the most successful smugglers,
deafened ("sea-kissed") in a salvaging accident, and now with a fear
of the sea that rather stands in the way of her participation in the
family trade. She gets occasional bits of the narrative, though it
mostly stays with Hark, and I'd have liked to have read her book.
There are plenty of things I haven't mentioned (and Hardinge is still
being poorly-served by her publishers, who appear to want to blow the
main plot of the book in the blurb) and this book is a lovely wallow
in a rich alternate world.
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