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Hereditary rule, little gods, and the power of the printed word in a world very much like early 18th century England, only not. But this is really the story of a fatherless girl and her Horrible Goose as they spy, steal, and blackmail their way through a world still recovering from, or possibly on the edge of, civil war.

I got a bit bogged down in the middle where there were too many guys (gender specific) that I didn't care about having problems that I also didn't care about, but Hardinge's wonderful descriptive writing carried me through. She is so good at writing, you guys (gender neutral), and this has some especially brilliant descriptions of water and the various sounds it makes:

There was no escaping the sound of water. It had many voices. The clearest sounded like someone shaking glass beads in a sieve. The waterfall spray beat the leaves with a noise like paper children applauding. From the ravines rose a sound like the chuckle of granite-throated goblins.

And that's just the beginning. Every time she describes water, it's doing something different, a combination of words you've never before seen put in that order, but after a moment's thought it's obviously perfect. Her character work is excellent, too, though the POV of this book could best be described as "distant third person omniscient," and not really in a good way.

Contains: child harm, probably; animal harm; "gypsies" for some reason.