And the setting is detailed and complex enough to inspire many sequels. Along with an infusion of high-camp fantasy, Hardinge firmly plants in the novel the heroine's serious love of reading, which informs nearly everything Mosca does ("I'd been hoarding words for years," she says in an introspective moment, "buying them from peddlers and carving them secretly into bits of bark so I wouldn't forget them"). Those who would silence Truth's voice are more destructive by far," a teacher reads aloud). And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. She is recruited as a spy by the fanatical Mabwick Toke, leader of the Guild of Stationers, who fears. A born liar, Mosca lives by her wits in a world of highwaymen and smugglers, dangerously insane rulers in ludicrous wigs, secret agents and radical plotters. Mosca and Clent find themselves embroiled in intrigue between the guilds, an entry point to a sly bit of allegory involving a secret printing press and "dangerous" pamphleteers ("Truth is dangerous. With a delightful swindler named Eponymous Clent, she heads for the city of Mandelion. Their journey unfolds against a wickedly complex political backdrop, a fragmented civilization largely run by guilds of locksmiths, boatmen and printers (the only ones allowed to decide which books will survive). Plucky Mosca rescues the con man-called Eponymous Clent-from the town stocks, accidentally burning down her uncle's mill in the process. In a broken-down medieval kingdom where reading is forbidden, 12-year-old Mosca Mye is drawn to a traveling con artist who "brought phrases as vivid and strange as spices, and he smiled as he spoke, as if tasting them." Hardinge's stylish way with prose gives her sprawling debut fantasy a literate yet often silly tone that calls to mind Monty Python.
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