Deeplight
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
One of our finest storytellers,' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
This macabre YA adventure, with a touch of Lovecraftian steampunk, features underwater exploration, monsters of the deep, relic-based technology and questions of loyalty.
The gods are dead. About fifty years ago they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why.
In an alternative world, fifty years after the death of the gods, a fifteen-year-old boy, Hark, finds the still beating heart of a terrifying deity and uses it to try to save his best friend. Hark risks everything to keep the heart out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists and secret fanatical cults, to try to use it to sustain the life of his best friend, who is gradually and eerily transforming. But how long should someone stay loyal to a friend who is himself becoming a monster?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For centuries, denizens of the Myriad archipelago "served, feared, and adored" the magical, monsterlike gods that routinely rose from the Undersea and terrorized them. Then, 30 years before this book's beginning, the gods inexplicably slaughtered each other, leaving behind only fragments. A chunk of "godware" can now fetch a fortune, provided its lingering power is sufficiently strange. On the island of Lady's Crave, storyteller Hark, 14 and orphaned, survives by swindling godware-hunting prospects until his dodgy best friend, Jelt, involves him in a dangerous heist. Hark gets caught and becomes indentured to Dr. Magdala Vyne, a godware expert who promises Hark a better life if he cuts ties with his past. Jelt won't let go, however, and bullies Hark into joining a perilous expedition during which Jelt nearly drowns. Hark finds a bit of pulsing godware that resurrects him, but the discovery proves more curse than blessing. Equal parts dazzling fantasy, swashbuckling adventure, and tender coming-of-age tale, this ambitious standalone from Hardinge (A Skinful of Shadows) cautions against xenophobia, zealotry, and greed while using boldly drawn characters to illustrate storytelling's power and fear's role in faith. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Quite good
A very good book overall. There’s a great sense of tension. I could go on and on about how much I liked it. My biggest complaint isn’t even about the core narrative. The author rather unsubtly tries to include the message that fear always leads people to make bad decisions and it twists everything it touches. That’s obviously not true. Fear isn’t necessarily irrational or overpowering. It’s part of any sane human mind, because it’s rooted in an awareness of your own limitations. The author also conflates fear with superstition, which is again false. But this doesn’t affect the actual story.