Deeplight

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea meets Frankenstein in Frances Hardinge’s latest fantasy adventure

The gods are dead. Decades ago, they turned on one another and tore each other apart. Nobody knows why. But are they really gone forever? When 15-year-old Hark finds the still-beating heart of a terrifying deity, he risks everything to keep it out of the hands of smugglers, military scientists, and a secret fanatical cult so that he can use it to save the life of his best friend, Jelt. But with the heart, Jelt gradually and eerily transforms. How long should Hark stay loyal to his friend when he’s becoming a monster—and what is Hark willing to sacrifice to save him?

Many thanks to Edelweiss and Amulet Books for a review copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. Quotes are taken from an unfinished version and may differ from the final product.

As soon as I read that the gods turned on each other and tore each other apart, I knew I had to read this book. Call it morbid curiosity. I guess I just love the idea of ultimate beings being toppled and poor measly humans having to deal with the aftermath. Whatever that says about me.

Deeplight is a dark, twisty book where nothing is quite what it seems, everyone’s a monster in their own right, and stories have power … as long as you know the right ones to tell.

The beginning started a little rocky for me, but as the story went on, I found myself entranced. Hardinge builds a dark, yet beautiful world, one that’s steeped in lore and danger and possibility. While I absolutely loved most of this book, where it really fell down for me was Jelt, and especially the relationship between Hark and Jelt. But we’ll come back to that more later.

Hardinge crafts a dark, brutal world that’s vivid and rife with adventure.

The prose isn’t flowery or overburdened with descriptions, but it does do a beautiful job of building the scene. This a book set on islands, where everything revolves around the sea and the gods that used to live there. It’s a somewhat brutal existence, filled with gangs and inequality, and if you commit a crime, you become an indentured servant (which, admittedly, is a pretty cool way of handling criminals, but not without its problems).

Make no mistakes, though, this world is dark. Perhaps not particularly gory, and not, at least on its surface, violent, but there’s this really neat, pervasive feeling of foreboding and secrets and ugly truths that just worked for me.

This book is absolutely filled with characters who could easily be considered “broken” and prove, over and over again, that they’re anything but.

This is a trope I didn’t even realize I loved, but yes, more, please. Selphin is the most obvious place this shows up, although it’s not what you expect. Yes, she’s deaf, but that’s not the part of her that’s broken, and gosh, I cannot tell you how much I loved that. No, the part of her that’s broken is that she’s terrified of the sea. Yet, that doesn’t stop her from being a total badass that does what needs to be done.

Also, Quest! I absolutely loved Quest, who’s, by all accounts, a feeble old monk destined to die any day. And yet … he’s integral to the plot in ways that I can’t get into, but rest assured, I loved him.

In this world, the deaf are celebrated, and it’s considered a badge of honor. As such, one of the lead characters is deaf, and she is absolutely fierce.

This is something near and dear to my heart, because my grandmother was hard-of-hearing, and I’ve known many deaf people. They deserve their badass characters, too, and this book really delivers. As it turns out, repeated diving and the probability of something going wrong means that many long-time divers end up losing their hearing, a denomination of people known as “sea-kissed.” They’re also completely revered.

A good portion of the dialogue in the last third of the book is in sign language, and there are several places that touch on the difficulties of not being able to hear.

The biggest thing, though, is that this just is who Selphin is, and she stresses this fact, and no one tries to change it. I thought the deaf rep in this was just so on point.

All the characters in this book live in some morally gray area … and yet, it’s so hard not to love them?

They’re all basically murderers and liars and thieves on some level, and yet … I would totally hang out with this group. Because people are complicated, and life isn’t black and white. On their surface, they seem fine, but as you learn more about them, you learn that not everyone is quite as they seem. Not even the ones you might assume were “villains”. I loved all the little twists and surprises that popped up. Getting to know the characters was truly half the fun of this book (and the adventure, of course, is the other half).

The gods are really what I came here for, and it did not disappoint. The lore is built up and doled out little by little and kept me coming back for more.

All I can really say about this is: the gods are not what you think. They certainly weren’t what I thought. Again, part of the beauty of this book is discovering things with the main character, though, and I don’t want to spoil any of that.

Needless to say, though, the gods in this are dark, creepy, and complex. They’re so mixed up in lore and legend that sometimes it’s easy to lose track of the truth of the matter, as you do. And when you do learn the truth? Phew. The ride is so worth it.

A large part of this novel relies on the relationship between Hark and Jelt, but I just wasn’t buying it.

Jelt is a jerkface. That’s just a fact. From the moment you meet him, it’s painfully obvious that this is a toxic relationship. In fact, even Hark seems to harbor some doubts about their relationship, because when he thinks about Jelt in his inner monologue, it’s often negative.

And yet … AND YET … Hark constantly reminds the reader that they’re basically brothers and have been together for years and he owes Jelt his life and Jelt is so important to him. Unfortunately, I’m not feeling any of this. I didn’t get a good sense of Jelt and Hark’s relationship or why Hark felt some indebtedness to the other boy, especially as I got further in the book and things continue going sideways.

Honestly, for me, this was basically the only negative of the book, because so much hinges on the fact that Hark would do anything to help Jelt, and I just didn’t feel that relationship, and it didn’t seem like there was really anything to make me buy into their past together and their former closeness. At one point, it even seemed like I’m supposed to feel bad for Jelt, and I just didn’t.