Kathryn's Reviews > Larklight

Aptly subtitled "A Rousing Tale of Dauntless Pluck in the Farthest Reaches of Space," this is an enjoyable read for ages nine (or thereabouts) and up.
It is an adventure set in a Victorian space age, written as Jules Verne or H.G. Wells might have imagined it. The plot is exciting, the writing deft and witty, so that adults are likely to enjoy the reading experience just as much as kids. There's some fun and interesting playing with gender conventions, too, as the narrator's older sister yearns and strives to become a perfect young lady and finds her efforts in that direction consistently thwarted, to the ultimate benefit of all.

Larklight is handsomely designed and illustrated, too, with endpapers that feature a range of pseudo-Victorian advertisements for such products, events, and firms as Coalbrookdale's Phlogiston Ranges, Rossetti's Goblin Fair, and Jaggers Law Firm("THE Specialists in AETHER-CRIME, also Wills and Dowries Administered with the Utmost Discretion"). Throughout the book the attention to detail is thorough and delightful, including even the copyright page, which asserts, "The pages of this volume are impregnated with Snagsby's Patent Folio-dubbin to preserve them against the depradations of space moth and paper bats."

Here's a brief excerpt, which will convey some of Larklight's flavor without giving away much plot:

"Among my mother's books I had once discovered a volume of stories by a gentleman named Mr Poe, who lives in Her Majesty's American colonies. There was one, The Premature Burial, which gave me nightmares for weeks after I read it, and I remember thinking that there could be no fate more horrible than to be buried alive, and wondering what type of deranged and sickly mind could have invented such a tale. But as I lay there immobilised in a jar on the wrong side of the Moon with only a ravening caterpillar for company I realised that Mr Poe was actually quite a cheery, light-hearted sort of chap, and that his story had been touchingly optimistic."