Jacquelyn Hagen

This is a cracker of a story. There is a strong Dickensian feel to its presentation, a sort of nineteenth-century four-squareness of character and action, and of its prose, too, which has a well-judged light humour that never falters, and is never over-done. There is a very definite A Christmas Carol something even about the first line: ‘Had Mr. Bash known this was the night he was going to die, he would have stayed at home.’ It is a richly realised world, cleanly told and well-sustained.

The plot is complex but crisply revealed. An orphan, called, among other things, Inkwell Featherfield, picks the wrong pocket and ends up first in the hands of the police, and then, in need of money, running an errand for a journalist. He finds himself pursued by Spektors, of which he has never heard, and is rescued by the notorious Colonists, who are hunted by every right-thinking citizen. (In Ink’s world, this is a bit like being pursued by Black Shuck, and rescued by the Tonton Macoute). He is forcibly brought to the Colonists’ world, a flying island carrying their village, and he has no means to escape. Once there, though, he begins to discover that not everything he has believed is necessarily true, that there is a multitude of sides to every story, and that his favourite motto—trust no-one—is becoming a matter of life and death.

There are a couple of niggles. Inkwell clearly has a backstory, and clearly it is to remain for the time being a mystery. But the lack of information about him means that some of his reticences, including his refusal to trust anyone, do not appear to be grounded in anything in particular. The result is that there can be an unevenness about the effects his early life have had on him, so sometimes it seems forced, as though it is there to serve the plot. Similarly, there are one or two points that feel just too coincidental, that he would be in a particular place, just at the right time to find a particular thing. But they are relatively small points, and they do not spoil either the pace of the adventure nor the fluidity and charm of the storytelling.… (altro)