A review by christophertd
Fly Trap by Frances Hardinge

5.0

I have just finished Fly Trap (Twilight Robbery in the UK) and it was every bit as good as Fly By Night. Very impressive. Despite a seemingly light tone, peppered with hilarious scenes and wonderful names, the story has bite. The idea that people are destined to be good or bad depending on the hour of their birth is obviously absurd, but played neatly so that it makes sense. And is a perfectly good allegory for the silly categorisations that we are fond of using to include or exclude people. It works here because it wasn't a topic for preaching, it was just there and you (and the characters) made of it what you wanted. The adversaries were smart too, not just cardboard cut out villains. Their actions made sense and they responded sensibly to changes in their circumstances according to their motivations and needs. In that sense the story seemed larger than Mosca, Eponymous and Saracen. Which is as it should be.