You will find out who you are when your choices test you. In the end, we are what we do and what we allow to be done.’ Hark is a troubled young orphan being constantly led astray by his best buddy, Jelt. They're living in a world where the gods are dead and pieces of them can still be found in the ocean. These pieces can be used for technological advancement - or sold to the highest bidder. Naturally, one particular piece might just be lurking, waiting to get Hark into an ocean of trouble ... Reviewed by Ella (17), who is profoundly deaf and wears cochlear implants. Ella helped author Frances Hardinge write about deafness in Deeplight.

The world building in this story is incredible. It's limited to the Myriad, and while there is talk of 'the continents', they don't feature in this book. This is all about Hark's tiny world and it is full of the most amazing details. It's an interesting blend of science and mythology - I want to say magic but it doesn't feel like the right word here. It's more like ... the science in this world is just really different to the science of our world. These gods were real things and their makeup has provided advanced technology to those who have scavenged parts and experimented with them. It provides a lot to ponder. 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 worlds she creates are so unique, so truly different, so vibrant, so well fleshed-out that most other writers would have set as many stories as possible in such a place - but Hardinge instead with every story tirelessly creates a completely new and completely *alive* universe, with its own rules and settings and fabric, and none of those are repetitive, and all are a bit strange and beautiful at the same time. 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. Hardinge is at her prime with this kind of world and writing; its fantasy in the best way. There is a fleshed out world which is dark and intriguing, the premise of the recent history of this world has set up a perfect culture to explore whilst reading - an archipelago called Myriad once terrorised by these gods from the depths of the waters around them who mysteriously perished after the cataclysm. Since then, an entire economy has been built (in an almost steam punk fashion) around the procuring and utilising of their remains also knows as godware. 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. stars. “No stories were complete anyway. They were all really just parts of a bigger tale that could only be told by many different voices, and seen through many different eyes. There was always more of the story to learn.”

Though I mentioned some of the subtext at work in this book, what sustains the narrative and concludes it so beautifully is the fact that this tale is all about stories. Our hero, Hark, makes his living, and often saves his own life, by telling them. Stories are everything. They can assuage a god or calm a friend. Politicians can use them to spread lies and malarkey or unbelievable truths on a wide scale. Left untold they can eat away inside of you until you’ve curdled and changed. It’s a true mark of personal growth then when, near the end, Hark comes to understand that sometimes it’s even more important for him to listen to the stories of others than to tell them. The very last scene involves a storyteller making the choice to listen to others before they toss their own tales out there for others to hear. We make sense of our lives through storytelling. For this reason alone, people like Frances Hardinge (and, let us be truthful, there is no one out there like Frances Hardinge) are amongst our most valuable. Whenever I have a chance to get my hands on a new book of hers it’s only because I want one thing: to be told a story I’ve never heard before. Deeplight fulfills that wish and a lot more besides. My sole regret is that I only get to read it for the first time once. 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.Whilst I've rated Deeplight 4* reads, I'd probably recommend it as highly as I do many of my 5* reads. It's got some beautiful, aquatic world-building and Hark's developmental journey, as he discovers the bounds of friendship, is masterfully handled. As usual, Hardinge's characters are morally ambiguous and their relationships are dysfunctional but relatable. At the start, Hark's only friend is an older boy named Jelt who has saved his life several times...but also endangered it on many others, as much as Hark tries to tell himself differently. The changing dynamics of that relationship and Hark's new, more mature friendships with others are part of a strange coming of age for a street smart boy who has neither been trusting nor trustworthy up to now. 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. Deeplight is another fantastic work of fantasy with a helping of body horror by the talented Frances Hardinge. This time the setting is a nation made up of a scattering of islands in a sea that used to be home to gods; beautiful, terrible, and hypnotic, yet ultimately destructive. Now the old gods are gone, but not forgotten. This is the newest fantasy adventure by this author and the 4th of hers that I've read. It's also instantly one of my favorites.