Each person is named for the objects sacred to the Beloved of the hour under which they were born, so that our heroine, born during the time of Goodman Palpittatle, to whom flies are sacred (or maybe he protects people from flies), but in any case, Mosca is named for a fly and everyone makes negative assumptions about her character based on her name. Religious upheaval has left people worshipping a colorful array of saint-like people called the Beloved – several assigned to each day of the year. (The author’s note at the end says that the world is very loosely based on 17 th century England, with a lot of disregard for actual history and some for the laws of physics.) Every city and town supports a different claimant to the crown of the land, but in reality, the country is controlled by powerful rival guilds, including the Stationers who control everything that’s printed and have decided that reading is too dangerous for the masses, and the Locksmiths, who exact a criminal price from anyone unwilling to pay for their locks. Mosca Mye (probably aged 11 or 12) is an orphan in a world that’s falling apart. Instead, I picked up the earliest of her books that was on the shelf at my library.įly by Night by Frances Hardinge.

Unfortunately, this one book of hers isn’t available in print in the U.S., and I haven’t yet been desperate enough to have it shipped from the UK, there being so many good books I haven’t read around me already. Many of my friends – most especially Brandy at Random Musings of a Bibliophile – have raved about Frances Hardinge’s novel A Face Like Glass.

Fly trap by frances hardinge