Oh, what a strange and wondrous book it was!
After a way, it’s a departure from the previous works of Hardinge, at least from those I’ve read so far, such as Cuckoo Song, A Skinful of Shadows, or The Lie Tree. This time, the author doesn’t write of England’s not so glorious past, of class and of social constraints. She writes of a world on its own, hauntingly evocating LeGuin’s Earth-Sea.
The themes of class and social relations are there, as usual at Hardinge’s, but hidden. Hark, the protagonist, is a poor orphan sold into a slavery-contract because of not-really-a-crime. The governor of his island is rather cynical. The chief of a local gang is a woman ruthless and protective in turn. So there are a lot of grey shades here, but in the face of the fictious setting, the parallells and social comments aren’t as meta and as obvious as in other books of Hardinge.
The message of the book is strong, nevertheless. It’s about fear and power, about those two being entwined together. It’s about renouncing the both. And as usual, there are no easy answers. In this novel, poor kids aren’t innocent. Reserved researchers aren’t as cynical as they appear. And priets serving cruel sea gods are ruthless, but not in the way one expects. It’s all difficult, and there are numerous layers to Hardinge’s metaphors, as much as there are many layers to her world, both beautiful and terryfying. It’s all so complex and haunting that it feels wrong, to give any spoilers.
Deeplight isn’t entirely like LeGuin’s Earth-Sea. There is the atmosphere of it—scattered islands, the culture centered around sea, naming patterns which leave a feeling of being something original, on its own. There is also the trope of priests serving something terryfying, and of strange temple rites. We’ve seen it in The Tombs of Atua, haven’t we?
But there are elements Hardinge added on her own, and they only enrich her setting.
It’s hard to tell, for example, on what level of technology her archipelago is, and whether we should measure that level by our standards at all. There are ancient temples and rites there, and most of people live rather poor, but there is also the whole submarine technology. And, honestly, those paradoxes don’t bother me at all. Frances Hardinge knows how to use contradictions. And thus her world is only more fascinating.
It’s a departure from those works of her I know, but it’s an unknown ground worth of exploring.
Left Hand of Fiction 