Title:

Unraveller

Author:

Frances Hardinge

Category:

Fantasy / Science Fiction

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

April 14, 2024

nraveller is the sixth book by Hardinge that I have read, and I have enjoyed them all: The Lie Tree, A Face Like Glass, Fly By Night, Fly Trap, and Gullstruck Island. Why haven't I read everything else that she has written? I surely ought to! I need to find a copy of Deep Light, A Skin Full of Shadows and Cuckoo Song and add them to my ever growing stack of Books To Be Read. Hardinge stories are classified as Young Adult - they feature young people as protagonists, her books are devoid of profanity and sexual situations and extreme violence. Hardinge has a great imagination, with each tale she dreams up a clever world with some sort of unique difference from how our world works. In Unraveller, the people of the world can be cursed by someone angry at you. For example, an evil stepmother might turn her four step children into birds.

Mysterious creatures that look like palm-sized spiders are called Little Brothers. They live in a magical area called The Wilds, where it is dangerous for any human to tread. The Little Brothers give humans the ability to curse someone - the curse egg will grow in your mind until think of a diabolical way to harm your perceived enemy and exact a crude justice. Once the curse is issued, it cannot be undone.

When Kellen was a young boy, he snuck one night into a merchant's store room and started unravelling the cloth there. Kellen's family were weavers, but the merchant had some sort of mechanized loom that wove cloth faster. Kellen felt it was justice to set the cloth merchant back a bit. To his surprise, a big furry Little Brother soon joined him in the store room, and together they enjoyed a frenzy of vandalism, unwinding cloth. Until they got caught. The Little Brother died in their attempted escape, but before perishing, it bit Kellen.

Kellen discovered he possessed an incredible new ability - he could undo curses. This is an astonishing and valuable ability! Unfortunately, young Kellen is a bit of hothead, too often saying exactly what he thinks and antagonizing people.

Traveling with Kellen is a girl named Nettle. She had once turned into a heron by a curse, but now Kellen unraveled the curse and restored her back to human form. Nettle is more diplomatic than Kellen, and often smooths over rough situations. Nettle herself is a bit odd, perhaps the time she spent as a heron has changed her in some way. Once a curse is unraveled, Kellen thinks that the matter is resolved and he moves on, but it turns out that there can be long term ramifications to both curser and cursee.

Hardinge does a wonderful job with this strange magical world and Kellen's adventures in it. There are fearsome monsters from the Wilds, inhuman creatures. There are nice-seeming people who are not Kellen's allies, and there are sinister-seeming characters who are not Kellen's enemies. A scary one-eyed horseman, riding a dreaded Marshhorse, summons Kellen to come serve his master, but Kellen and Nettle manage to give the man the slip with some desperate maneuvers. But Gall has a lot of abilities, can the Marsh horseman be eluded forever? Kellen's ability to reverse a curse is desired by a lot of people; is some powerful figure attempting to capture him and use his abilities for their own nefarious ends?

I enjoy Hardinge's stories because they don't have characters who are secret royalty, born with hidden superpowers. I like that her characters don't have magic relics that alone can stop an evil overlord. Her protagonists are not guaranteed success by a prophecy that always comes true. I like that Hardinge's magical worlds are unique and well thought out. The characters are not perfect, but they are likeable despite their flaws, and generally they have good intentions behind whatever they are trying to accomplish. Each story seems unique and original (though I wish Hardinge would write one more tale featuring Mosca Mye and the con-man Eponymous Clent from Fly By Night.) I hope to read Deep Light next.