Review
While reading
Fly Trap (also known as
Twilight Robbery in the UK), the sequel to
Fly By Night, I was struck by how fantasy, in all its many forms and for any given age group, just might be the most fun one can have as a reader. Who can ever forget their first reading of
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or
The Children of the Amulet? Portals to other worlds, strange creatures, and odd twists of time are such lovely flights of imagination in which not everything has to make sense. There is always the delicious thrill of evil lurking, and always a hero or heroine equal to overcoming that evil.
So while
Fly Trap is intended for readers age 11-13, I recommend it to any reader who is still willing to be transported into another world. Mosca Mye is a fabulous heroine, equal to Harry Potter or Philip Pullman's Lyra Belacqua, and yet is...
Beyond the Book
As soon as I got to know Mosca, the main character in
Fly Trap, I felt sure that author Frances Hardinge was a unique and unusual person whom I would like to know better.
After a bit of research, I learned that she grew up in Kent, in the South of England, "in a huge, isolated old house in a small, strange village," and began writing stories about magic when she was very young.
Hardinge studied at Oxford University and helped form a writers' group there.
She is the author of four books:
Fly By Night (2005),
Well Witched (2007),
The Lost Conspiracy (2009), and
FlyTrap (2011),
and she has published numerous short stories, including "Behind the Mirror" and "Halfway House." She does not go out without a...
