In an attempt to help a fellow Englishman accused of murder, he found the secret hiding place of the plant but was unable to save his countryman. She discovers that, years ago while traveling through China Erasmus encountered rumors of a very rare plant specimen. She steals her father's papers - his scientific notebooks, his letters, his financial records, and begins reading through them. When her father is found dead and her seemingly frivolous, beautiful mother Myrtle schemes with Miles to make his death look like an accident and not a suicide, which would leave his family destitute, Faith decides to take matters into her own hands. But neither, it seemed, were other ladies.'įaith respects and reveres her father, constantly hoping that her interest and intellect in the sciences will win her his attention, but seed of knowledge takes root in her and begins to grow. As the main character observes near the end of the novel, 'Faith had always told herself that she was not like other ladies.

And, as I slowly came to realize over the course of the book, The Lie Tree is also a book about women and especially the challenge of being a woman in the 19th century and the various ways that women met with these challenges. Hardinge's newest book, and Costa Winner, The Lie Tree, is every bit as magnificently written as Fly By Night but it is also a much more personal, poignant story that is more pointedly philosophical and political.

Everything about Fly By Night amazed and continues to amaze me, from the setting to the characters and their intricately Dickensian names to the mysterious political and religious intrigue driving the plot. Hardinge created a complex world ruled by religion and literacy in the absence of an effective monarch, all set in an alternate history universe.

Fly By Nightwas the first book by Hardinge that I read and I knew immediately that I was reading something truly special.

The lie tree series in order