Frances Hardinge: A Skinful of Shadows
Apr. 11th, 2018 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaFrances Hardinge’s A Skinful of Shadows is a YA historical fantasy, set in England during beginning if the civil war. Makepeace Lightfoot, the central character, is a young girl, not yet 13, when the novel begins. Makepeace is not exactly an ordinary girl. Her dreams are haunted by ghosts, who she feels trying to burrow into her mind. After the death of her mother in a riot, she learns that she is the illegitimate child of Sit Peter Fellmott, now dead as well, the scion of a family with a history of occultism possessed of the ability to absorb the ghosts of the dead. Her mother’s family being unwilling to keep her, she us sent to the Fellmott estate of Grizehayes, where she becomes a kitchen servant.
Nit long after arriving at Grizehayes, Makepeace realises that she has already absorbed a ghost, that of a tormented dancing bear that had been haunting the marshes near her former home. It’s not easy, keeping the bear’s instincts from overwhelming her own feelings and actions, but she knows that she must keep her secret from the family patriarch, Obadiah, in whom she senses something dark and threatening.
When Makepeace finally is confronted with the full secret of the Fellmotts, and their intentions for her, she makes a desperate bid for escape, beginning a journey that takes her from the court-in-exile of King Charles at Oxford to the heart of the Parliamentarian forces, seeking a way to free herself -and her half-brother James, already a victim of the Fellmott legacy - forever. Along the way, she chooses to absorb several ghosts - mostly out of necessity, hoping their knowledge or skills will help her, but partly, too from pity, offering them a ‘second chance.’
Hardinge’s narrative is distinctly critical of the excesses of the aristocracy of Charles’s era, but at the same time does not soften the harshness of the Puritan vision of the correct, Christian society. Her sympathies - and Makepeace’s - lie with the common people who suffer from war no matter what side they may favour, who mostly just want to be left alone.
Makepeace is a character that grows on one, as she learns from her experiences and grows strong enough to defeat her enemies, find ways of using her strange power for some good, and build a life for herself, her brother, and the community of souls within her.
This is the first of Hardinge’s novels I’ve read, but the enjoyment I gained in reading this one makes me think that I ought to explore her other books.
Nit long after arriving at Grizehayes, Makepeace realises that she has already absorbed a ghost, that of a tormented dancing bear that had been haunting the marshes near her former home. It’s not easy, keeping the bear’s instincts from overwhelming her own feelings and actions, but she knows that she must keep her secret from the family patriarch, Obadiah, in whom she senses something dark and threatening.
When Makepeace finally is confronted with the full secret of the Fellmotts, and their intentions for her, she makes a desperate bid for escape, beginning a journey that takes her from the court-in-exile of King Charles at Oxford to the heart of the Parliamentarian forces, seeking a way to free herself -and her half-brother James, already a victim of the Fellmott legacy - forever. Along the way, she chooses to absorb several ghosts - mostly out of necessity, hoping their knowledge or skills will help her, but partly, too from pity, offering them a ‘second chance.’
Hardinge’s narrative is distinctly critical of the excesses of the aristocracy of Charles’s era, but at the same time does not soften the harshness of the Puritan vision of the correct, Christian society. Her sympathies - and Makepeace’s - lie with the common people who suffer from war no matter what side they may favour, who mostly just want to be left alone.
Makepeace is a character that grows on one, as she learns from her experiences and grows strong enough to defeat her enemies, find ways of using her strange power for some good, and build a life for herself, her brother, and the community of souls within her.
This is the first of Hardinge’s novels I’ve read, but the enjoyment I gained in reading this one makes me think that I ought to explore her other books.