An aspiring natural scientist, she is an unlikely heroine in a world where girls are “not supposed to be hungry” for food or knowledge. I want a protagonist who picks Destiny's pocket, or finds loopholes in an unwinnable game."įaith, the 14-year-old protagonist of the prizewinning The Lie Tree, certainly falls into this category. I am not a fan of Chosen Ones, or individuals who are given everything they need by Destiny. In an interview with Children's Books Ireland's Inis magazine in 2014, she noted, "I have always had a love of tricksters and characters who find ways to live outside the usual rules. Hardinge has been making waves in children’s YA fiction since her first novel, Fly By Night, was published in 2005 (also Macmillan) it won the prestigious Branford Boase Award for debuts and set the tone for her subsequent fantasy-adventure novels: imperfect protagonists, compellingly-drawn settings and smart, witty, elegant prose. Ness's praise for the book – "Brilliant: dark, thrilling, utterly original" – appears on the front cover, but even without this boost the book would have been well received. "It does sort of feel like the world's just discovered your secret, doesn't it?" young adult author Patrick Ness tweeted this morning in relation to his fellow YA author, Frances Hardinge, winning the Costa Book of the Year award last night with her seventh novel, The Lie Tree (Macmillan, 2015).
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