Friday, June 5, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review; Deeplight by Frances Hardinge



Deeplight is a 2019 young adult fantasy novel by acclaimed YA author Frances Hardinge, whose 2017 novel "A Skinful of Shadows" was one of the first nominees for the Lodestar (Hugo) Award for best SF/F YA Novel.  Deeplight is one of this year's nominees for that same award and I really liked A Skinful of Shadows, so I was really happy to see the full novel contained in this year's Hugo Packet.  Like that novel - and I suspect like a lot of Hardinge's work - this one really straddles the line between middle grade and YA, with the novel featuring zero sexual content or even romance whatsoever, but still containing more violence and grim situations than I guess you'd expect in Middle-Grade, although just barely.

And well, Deeplight is fine, but it's not up to the level of A Skinful of Shadows and it never really breaks out into the levels of really great that i hope for in award nominated works.  The story features as its central protagonist a teenage boy, whose major struggle is realizing when he's being taken advantage of by a "friend" and finding it in himself to assert his own ideas, as he gets shoved between powerful forces throughout.  It's also a story of pirates, of undersea gods and monsters, of mad science and priests - all good stuff that could've in my opinion made a really good story, but I just didn't like the protagonist enough to actually feel it got there; a feeling made more apparent by a secondary character being far more interesting than the main hero.

I'm glad I didn't DNF this so I could properly review it, and it's not a terrible nomination for this award, but there's a lot of YA from last year I'd recommend above this one.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
The Myriad, an archipelago of islands apart from the major continents in the world was once home to the Gods, beings of great power in the Undersea who would tear apart any outsiders who came to close to their homes....and would demand sacrifices from the island residents in return.  But decades ago, the Cataclysm occurred, and the gods destroyed themselves, leaving only fragments of their power on the waves.

Hark has never seen gods, and as an orphan boy in the Myriad grew up only hearing the stories...and telling them to strangers to con them out of money to survive.  But when his friend Jelt comes to Hark with a job for a pirate gang, Hark finds himself guilted into going along with Jelt's plan.  After all, Jelt saved his life once, and if Hark doesn't help, what trouble will Jelt get into?

But the job leads to disaster and Hark finds himself in a strange place he never imagined, under the custody of people way too interested in the power of Gods' past.  And then Jelt returns and Hark winds up finding a powerful piece of a god, with terrifying power which will force Hark to make hard decisions for his own life, and that of everyone in the Myriad.....
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Deeplight is a YA Fantasy novel with a setting that contains a lot of things that seem designed to appeal to me and I suspect many fantasy readers:  You have a set of islands featuring underwater gods, who were deadly deadly monsters of mystery before they mysteriously died!  You have mad scientists studying the remains of said gods, and a cult determined to resurrect them to defend the islands against outsiders!  You have a crew of basically pirates who take it as a badge of honor for someone to be sea-kissed: stricken deaf by the sea! That last part includes a really nice piece of the setting - how the islanders all learn various versions of sign language because being sea-kissed is so common, and parts that show how being stricken deaf as such can be a big handicap even in a place it's seen as a mark of honor.

Into this setting comes our hero, Hark.  Most of the story - we'll get to the small other part later - is told from Hark's third person perspective, and this story is really his story, even as it impacts many many other people.  Hark is one of an the islands' orphans, surviving due to mutual collaboration, and is an excellent storyteller, especially at enrapturing folks with such stories - even if they may not be wholly true.  He's not the greatest at direct deception, but storytelling he is gifted at - among many other things: Hark may not be educated but he's reasonably smart in terms of figuring things out and pulling things off that seem impractical or almost impossible, and in realizing when such tasks are actually impossible.

The problem for Hark is that while he's gifted in many ways is that he's utterly unable to assert himself or say "No" when it comes to many people - people in power, or people he considers as friends.  The latter mainly revolves around Jelt, who the reader will immediately recognize as a reckless fool of a friend who doesn't really care about what happens to Hark and is constantly taking advantage of Hark - who considers Jelt his best friend who once saved his life.  Hark even recognizes how Jelt abuses the nature of their friendship, but keeps finding himself unable to speak up in his own defense, and keeps finding himself getting into trouble as a result, trouble that becomes bigger and bigger as Hark and Jelt discover an object of true power, wanted by many many beings.  It's Hark's character development of growing a spine - not an utterly stiff one, and not the bravest one, but just enough of one to look his friends or powerful people in the eye and say what they do not want to hear - that forms the core of this book.  And it's done well enough, but the reader will seriously be yelling at Hark for way too long about how he's being taken advantage of, which makes it kind of frustrating to read and well....I'm kind of tired of this trope at the moment.

The problem with this book though is that while Hark is a bit tiresome in how long it takes him to develop, there exists a secondary main character who is just far far more interesting.  That character is Selphin, whom the story's perspective shifts to on a few occasions - really randomly at first, and more often as the story gets near its end  Selphin is the daughter of a pirate boss, and after a disaster at sea, wound up not only Sea-Kissed, but actually afraid of going into the waters.  That irritates her mother, who sees that fear as not something for Selphin to deal with on her own, but an illness to be fixed no matter the means despite Selphin not wanting to have her mind possibly altered in any way.  And while Selphin fights her mother on this - about the sanctity of her own mind, her fears, and choices - she's also fiercely loyal to her mother and to the family/crew that she's grown up with.  So yeah she's got her own arc somewhat, and she's a brave pirate who will do whatever it takes for those she cares about, even if that means facing her darkest fears, even if those others might not understand why she's on the surface betraying their orders.  I get that Hark's emotional journey of standing up for himself, with Selphin perhaps a bit as a subconscious model of doing that to help, is the core of this book, but by the midpoint I just wished we'd switched entirely to Selphin's perspective because she's just far more interesting and less frustrating to read.

All that adds to a plot that takes all the aspects of the setting and works in a wild ride, with some ideas clearly driven from real life - particularly about the ideas of stories, regardless of their veracity, carrying as much political power as facts and of moving on from the past.  I just wish I liked the main protagonist as much as the secondary one, which is what keeps this from being a book I really enjoyed.
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