BOOK REVIEW: UNRAVELLER BY FRANCES HARDINGE

23/8/2022

This is fantasy fiction at its absolute best, which is loaded with beautifully crafted sentences, deep meaningful relationships and engaging mini mysteries as the story advances to a terrific ending. Highly recommended.

Unraveller by Frances Hardinge

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Children's Books; Main Market edition (1 Sept. 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1509836977
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1509836970

A book review by Tony Jones

Living with curses becomes a way of life in Frances Hardinge’s superb
‘Unraveller,’ which is topped with lashings of charm, heart, and originality

A new Frances Hardinge novel is a major literary event and the sublime Unraveller continues her tremendous run of five truly outstanding YA novels on the bounce, dating back to 2014. Having won the Costa Prize (for The Lie Tree), the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel (Cuckoo Song) from the British Fantasy Society and nominations for prestigious prizes including the Carnegie Medal, the James Herbert Award, the YA Book Award and the Andre Norton Award, she is an absolute expert in crafting highly original dark fantastic fiction. This author is a national treasure and the uncrowned queen of intelligent teenage fantasy (although her books often straddle genres and are notoriously difficult to classify) and calling her ‘The Queen’ really does not do her talent justice. Perhaps ‘Grand Wizard of Fantasy’ or ‘High Priestess of the Dark Arts’ or something else Terry Pratchetesque, of which her latest novel has loving nods towards, is more fitting.

Over the last decade Hardinge has written a mere six novels, in the world of YA this is a minimal output, but if one is to continually create entirely believable new fantasy worlds, simply put, you cannot bang out a novel every year without the quality and creativity dipping. Her previous novel Darklight (2019) was set on the incredibly well-developed island world of Myriad and most authors (especially in the world of YA) would simply have followed that sequel set in the same nicely established world. Not Hardinge, she bucks this YA formula entirely and instead provides us with another wonderful new world, completely different from Myriad, but every bit as believable, charming and idiosyncratic. The ability to curse others lies at the heart of Unraveller and the great Terry Pratchett himself would have been proud of this creation! YA literature is drowning with unnecessary sequels and overstretched trilogies and I greatly admire the way Hardinge cheerfully does her own thing. But I am not going to lie; I would also welcome a return to the wonderful island world of Myriad!

Hardinge very rarely sets her fiction in contemporary periods or settings. She has said this means the easy avoidance of annoying mobile phones, or other technology, and has a particular fondness for the early 20th century, whilst also often avoids romance. All too frequently a love interest is thrown into a novel because it is an expected part of the YA formula and I appreciated the fact that the two main characters in Unraveller (both around fifteen) were particularly good friends and there was no need to turn it into something stronger. Their friendship ran incredibly deep and it worked beautifully well, beating at the heart of a very engaging story.

If you have ever read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels you’ll know that the librarian was an orangutang who was previously a wizard turned into an ape when a spell went wrong, however, he kind of enjoyed being an orangutang and nobody ever got round to turning him back into a human. One of the main characters in Unraveller has the ability to ‘unravel’ curses which have been inflicted upon other people, a skill which is exceedingly rare and one could imagine him fitting snugly into a Pratchett novel with the orangutang the type of curse which might materialise in Unraveller. Pratchett’s Discworld novels had an unwritten philosophy of ‘everything will be all right in the end’ and although Unraveller is dark fantasy, Hardinge adopts a similar philosophy and plays it pitch perfect as the characters go on an exciting adventure to find inner peace and harness their powers whilst solving a mystery. Hell, as Kellan and Nettle struggled they could have done with one of Pratchett’s finest creations, Granny Weatherwax, turning up to give them help and lessons in life! This book had tremendous heart and I am sure thoughtful kids aged twelve and above will enjoy tapping into its off-beat and peculiar style of magic.

As with all Hardinge novels a great concept lies at the core of Unraveller: the ability to curse. It is tricky to convey in words how this strange ability works so here is an example; siblings are cursed and are turned into two distinct types of birds, one bird without realising it kills and eats their human sibling without realising they were a much smaller bird. The surviving bird is later turned back into a person and then fully understands they have consumed their family member. How do they cope with the guilt? Tricky. That was one nasty curse! Here’s another: a man is turned into a worm which is repeatedly put on a fishing hook (by the guy who cursed him) and repeatedly gobbled up by fish before being put on the hook again. Curses are expected to last a long time and are guaranteed to be very unpleasant, long lasting and inventive.

However, early in the novel we realise that Kellen can ‘unravel’ curses, but he also has anger management issues and other problems. He travels with his best friend Nettle, who was previously cursed, turned into a bird and still communicates with her brother who has chosen to remain in bird form. Together they are recruited to investigate an organisation which is collecting life-destroying curses which takes them on a very odd journey across ‘The Wilds,’ the most dangerous and unmapped part of the country, where even telling somebody your name might give them power over you. The journey and exploits form a large part of the novel and was joyfully creative, full of quirky characters and clever nuggets which slowly and delicately revealed how this strange land and cursing ticked. Do not be put off by the YA ‘banner’ this novel has, anybody could read it and the fact that both Cuckoo Song and The Lie Tree won major adult prizes clearly illustrate the impressive range of this author.

Genuine child readers will need to read carefully to get their head around how the cursing system worked and I loved the prison where caught ‘cursers’ were sent (many by Kellen) to have them nullified. There was also a very entertaining sequence where the pair visit a ‘cursed’ village and they realise that the locals might not want the curse lifted! (They had their reasons and this was also a nod to something you might see in a Terry Pratchett novel).

The land of Raddith is a brilliantly described setting; beautiful, menacing, populated by strange creatures and full of inhabitants with real fear of the unknown and potential curses which could come unexpectedly and from anyone. It is so vividly described that children will truly be able to let their imaginations run wild in this fantastic land as they get wrapped up in the crazy exploits of Nettle and Kellen. This is fantasy fiction at its absolute best, which is loaded with beautifully crafted sentences, deep meaningful relationships and engaging mini mysteries as the story advances to a terrific ending. Highly recommended.

Tony Jones

Unraveller by Frances Hardinge

Unraveller is a spell-binding fantasy from the Costa-award winning author of The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge.

In a world where anyone can cast a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them.

Kellen does not fully understand his unique gift, but helps those who are cursed, like his friend Nettle who was trapped in the body of a bird for years. She is now Kellen's constant companion and his closest ally.

But the Unraveller carries a curse himself and, unless he and Nettle can remove it, Kellen is a danger to everything – and everyone – around him . . .

'Everyone should read Frances Hardinge. Everyone. Right now.' - Patrick Ness, author of the Chaos Walking trilogy.