RogerBW's Blog

2023 fantasy novelette. On the island of Merlank, the ferryman has to take the dead away to where they can end their existences, or they'll hang around and haunt. Milo is one of the Ferryman's sons, and since noticing the dead can cause you to join them, his curious nature makes him unfit for the job. Until the lord's daughter dies… Illustrated by Emily Gravett.

There's very little to this book in terms of word count; it's about a tenth of the length of Unraveller, and the events flow in sequence over the course of one long night rather than being readily divisible into incidents. But it is still Hardinge, and still excellent.

One slight dislocation is that Milo already knows how this world works, so he has to be brought to recall it so as to inform the reader. (Another way of doing this might be to introduce a stranger to the island, but it sounds as though that's not a thing that happens much.) But even this never hinders the pace of the story, as events escalate and Milo finds himself the only person in a position to do the necessary thing.

Stories about Charon, or other ferrymen of the dead, tend to be stories about trying to cheat them, and why it fails. This is more of a story about why it's a really bad idea not to do things properly. There is a reason for this ritual, a machinery of the universe, and even learned magicians from outside Merlank may not be proof against the hazards if they don't follow the correct procedures.