Deeplight

Product Information

Russell Williams, Imogen (30 October 2019). "Deeplight by Frances Hardinge review – a rich and strange island adventure". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 October 2019 . Retrieved 18 September 2021. This is a story of a young man struggling with his best friend and trying to survive in a cutthroat world where he is not valued. A blessing in disguise occurs when he is arrested and sentenced to 3 years of indentured servitude on a different island from his own. There he learns more about the gods and manages to get entangled with his friend again. Shenanigans ensue. I admit I didn't absolutely LOVE this book until we were getting to the big action near the end, but between that and the final resolution, I was VERY satisfied. It pushed all my buttons. Deeplight was without a doubt one of my favourite books of 2019. This is the kind of book that made me fall in love with fantasy in the first place: magical, unforeseeable, one of a kind, entirely addictive. A vast economy exists dredging these depths for godware (remnants of the lost gods) and those that can't afford a submarine dive. The result is a sub-culture of sea-kissed - individuals who have either partially or fully lost their hearing due to accidents underwater or long-exposure to high pressures. Their presence was a treat and I hope that other authors include deaf characters in future.

Hark and Jelt had been orphaned by the same bitter winter, and this had somehow grafted them together. Sometimes Hark felt they were more than friends – or less than friends – their destinies conjoined against their wills.' The truth about the gods, about what Jelt is turning into, how the world really worked and works ... hard to accept for Hark and yet necessary if he wants to save his best friend.Deeplight is a gorgeous tale about gods who just won’t stay dead. Set on the islands of the Myriad, small-time criminal Hark finds himself tangled in myth and reality as he learns more than he’d like about the underwater gods who destroyed themselves many years ago. In the Myriad, there’s a thriving economy born of ‘godware’ trades found on deep sea dives. The world building is one of a kind. It's one of those places that you would love to explore but would not want to live there at the same time. It's a place filled to the brim with stories. The characters are drawn just as well. What I really appreciate is that the author included deaf representation. She was approached by a reader one day who asked her whether she would consider writing about deaf characters. Not only did Frances Hardinge proceed to do so, she also worked closely with the said fan and her community to ensure an accurate deaf representation and she ended up dedicating the book to the girl. And that, my friends, is how to be a decent ally.

Berry, Michael (5 May 2020). "Deeplight - Book Review". Common Sense Media. Archived from the original on 22 April 2021 . Retrieved 18 September 2021. Wow, look how well my brain works after all this science and sea. Sorry. I need some time to dry out.These were boxes of memories he had not allowed himself to open for many years. Now at last he did, and found their colours still fresh. He was looking at them one last time as he gave them away. But not everyone is glad to be free from the brutal rule, or rather terror, of the Gods. “He had always lived in a godless world, and yet… everyone he knew had grown up with a lurking pride in their island’s ‘patron’ god. Their remembered might was yours, somehow. Even their horrific nature had a majesty that you could borrow. You got into drunken arguments with folks from other islands about whose god could have beaten the other in a straight fight.” After all, people tend to look for their identity, their pride, the entire meaning of life in the strangest places. The stories have tremendous power over us, shaping our desires and wants and directing our lives down paths that may be strange and dangerous. “I had hoped that younger generations would grow up without our craven god-fever, but I still see traces of it everywhere – even in you. There is an eagerness, a poisonous nostalgia. No, throughout the Myriad, people would fall on to their faces and give in to their ancient superstitious terror.”

I have so much love for this book that I cannot express it properly and I urge you to read it. It's beautiful inside and out. Whilst initially the archipelagic setting reminded me of that in A Wizard of Earthsea, it soon emerged that they were very different. For one, Hardinge's story is set almost as much above the waves as below, with vast sea creatures with the power of gods and a breathable deep-sea layer fashioned from fear made manifest. But even bits of the dead gods have power and value, and when Hark comes across a strange, pulsing, perforated object on the ocean floor, he doesn't realize what consequences it will have for him and his friends, for Myriad and its dead gods. This is one of the best YA novels I’ve read in a long time, and will most likely secure a place in my top ten books of the year, and here’s why: Hardinge fleshes out fully a cast of characters for whom the bonds of family and friendship are a source of both strength and devastation, laid bare and tested to their limit.

What I might've been left missing still was maybe some added 'edginess' somewhere - in the story, the dialogue, or with certain enhanced character dimensionalities? Not quite sure.

The elite divers are the ‘sea-kissed’, who have lost their hearing to the depths. One such sea-kissed smuggler is called Selphin. She’s my favourite character. Selphin doesn’t have time for foolishness, especially not the main character’s creepy godware business. I love how blunt, stubborn and fiery she is. Besides being a cool, complex character, she’s also an authentic representation of deafness. She communicates through sign and speech, as do almost all the Myriddians. The sign for ‘jellyfish’ in their sign language is the same sign they use for an insult meaning ‘spineless’. The absolute highlight for me, however, was the journey that Hark takes, over just a few months, from child to adult. He learns some hard lessons about what friendship really means and just how far it should and should not take you. In some ways, the explicit way in which Hardinge presents these lessons, not to mention the age of the main characters, had me (like many it seems) assuming that this was a middle-grade book that was also suitable for adults. On further thought and discussion with others, I've changed my mind. Hark's relationship with Jelt is far from simple: they grew up together and were forced to rely on each other to survive, and yet, now that circumstances have changed, this dependence has become dysfunctional. The nuances of this situation, and the true difficulty of escaping it, would fly high over an 11-year-olds head, and probably a 16-year-olds too. I thought Hardinge handled the the situation and its pacing extremely well. Hark makes slow but steady progress in his journey towards self-discovery and self-respect. At first, I shouted at him to abandon the bully, but, as with all these things it's easier said than done, particularly for the individual required to do the doing. And also as usual, while not embracing grimdark or lingering over violence, Hardinge refuses to sugarcoat messy, morally ambivalent reality and the way that growing up helps you to see just how messy things are.This is my first Hardinge’s book and definetly will not be the last one, the story is so unique and the the characters are fun and loveable, the worldbuilding is incredible.. it’s all around everything I love in fantasy book even tho there is no romance here (I think this one is categorized as children / middle grade genre book) The Myriad, island chain once home to oceanic gods, is now home to a people left bereft by the Catalclysm - a week of terror where the gods rose from the depths and tore each other apart. These weren't abstract gods, either, these were nightmares of the deep and all too real and present in the lives of those living on the islands. That kind of thing leaves a hole in the lives of the people who once lived in feat of them.