Gullstruck Island

This is the first Frances Hardinge book I've read, and I gather it's a good one to start with. Already I'm in awe of her virtuosic world-building, her vivid characters and setting, and her brilliantly imaginative story-telling. Gullstruck Island opens with a description of the 'Lost,' just the first of many rich ideas: the Lost are gifted but vulnerable members of the community who have the ability to detach their senses from their bodies and travel at will -- what we used to call astral travelling, though I haven't heard anyone talk about that for a long time. The Lost are vital for communicating news, forecasting weather and spotting distant dangers, and when they are all mysteriously killed in the space of one night, the whole island is bereft. The only surviving Lost seems to be quiet Hathin's sister Arilou, and the secret they never mention is that Arilou may not be a Lost after all...

There are wonderful layers of subtext in Gullstruck Island, about race and colonisation, but couched in a fantasy setting that echoes without exactly replicating real world history. 'The Lace' are an oppressed minority with their own culture and dialect, and it's the ancient stories of the Lace that end up pointing the way to everyone's salvation from the conspiracy that threatens the island.

It was quite shocking to read the last portion of the novel, which involves a volcanic eruption with a flood of mud, rock and steam rolling inexorably down the channel of a valley -- exactly like the horrific events in Nepal recently. Though Gullstruck was published fifteen years ago, it felt eerily and horribly contemporary, and impossible to read without recalling the terrifying images from that part of the world.