“I have lived long enough to see the death of wonders. It is a quite dark and exceedingly clever mystery set on the murky edge between history and fantasy in the post-Darwin's Origin of the Species 19th century straight-laced Victorian England, touching upon the question of women's role in society, gender roles and expectations, the selective opportunities and blatant disregard and discrimination so absurd as to seem almost fantastical and yet so painfully historically real and true, and the conflict between the new ideas of evolution and the established societal faith-based paradigms which left many feeling that the ground had been yanked from under their feet. "I want to be a bad example." 'The Lie Tree' is a fascinating book. Her books may be inexplicably classified under an umbrella of 'children's literature', but they have managed to keep me enthralled and in all honesty are no more solely children's books than any of the classics with the sub-adult characters (think your Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield and Scout Finch, for instance). They have it all - the spark, the snark, the depth, the skill and everything else that makes me smile happily when I go to reread them for the third time in a year. She is one of those writers that make me want to happily give the shout-outs to their books from the rooftops and endlessly blab about them to anyone who would listen.
Frances Hardinge is one of my most treasured literary finds of the past few years.
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