· Jan Mark's most recent book is Turbulence (Hodder).Fly By Night is a treasure, a book so quick-witted and lively that it seems a marvel it could be Frances Hardinge’s debut. Now it has been established beyond doubt that they are, it need not be forgotten that they can still appreciate short ones. At best Hardinge's writing puts her up there with Aiken and Leon Garfield in the recreation of an England that never was, but these writers peaked at a time when it was believed that children were not equal to the demands of long books. Every incident and description is so embellished with similes and dependent clauses that the narrative is left hanging about like a disconsolate bloke in Miss Selfridge, abandoned outside the fitting rooms while the style lingers to admire itself in the mirror.
Her scenarios are wonderfully realised, as is the cod history which is not always as hilarious as it first appears, but it is this undisciplined talent which gets in the way of the action. Hardinge is a hugely talented writer of tireless invention and vivid prose. However, the proceedings are anything but breakneck. Mosca is one of those feisty hoydens - Pullman's Lyra and Aiken's own Dido Twite come to mind - whose conversation cloaks a fierce intelligence by the deployment of demotic tics which after a while become as irritating as Tony Blair's wandering glottal stop. The scene seems set for a breakneck adventure in a demented version of 18th-century England, out of the same mould as Joan Aiken's Willoughby Chase novels.
None of the characters is what they seem, and fresh conspiracies are revealed at every turn.
Mosca, whose loyalties lie principally with herself, hitches her wagon to the star of the icily beautiful Lady Tamarind. The Stationers' Company will stop at nothing to discover it, since unauthorised print will foment unrest, while the Company of Locksmiths builds its own power base. Somewhere in the city, insurgents are said to operate an illicit printing press, disseminating seditious literature. Mosca and her companion walk into a maelstrom of plot and counter-plot, murder and espionage, involving deranged aristocrats, felons, religious maniacs, megalomanic craft guilds and floating coffee houses (these last are hotbeds of intrigue that can operate only on the river). The bulk of the population pays lip service to loyalty and little care who rules, but those who do care are fanatics. Said kingdom has been fractured since the heir died childless and the committee appointed to decide upon a successor failed to do so.
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