Amazing. The author builds this world that is so unlike anything I've ever seen before. The amount of detail of these new societies and new races of people is what you would expect of a trilogy, not a one shot. It works though, which is the amazing part. It is my favorite type of book. A fantasy children's book that grips you while you are reading it and grips you while you are not reading. I finished it last month and I still from time to time rehash the story in my head. The hero is a side kick, there is no romance, and people die, it is a children's book, but not, it is a lot more. This is not the correct edition, but I don't feel like adding one right now. I have Gullstruck Island, not the US title "Lost Conspiracy" (because I thought that title was exceptionally poor), on Kindle. I've been recommending Diana Wynne Jones for decades, and I've always said that her books are entirely unique, unusual, requiring attention and thought from the reader. You just don't know where the story is going, and have to let go and allow yourself to be carried along. She was also good with the ambiguous ending, so in reading you never knew if it would be strictly happy or whether it would hold a touch of bitterness with the sweet. DWJ died a few years ago, which leaves those of us who loved her writing bereft of new material. Frances Hardinge is taking up the slack well. Neither of the two Hardinge books I've read have had any similarities to anything else out there, nor to each other. They are carefully plotted, well built, deep. I only wish that I'd picked up one of her books when I first considered it months ago, so I could have been reading her work all this time instead of finding it now.
Do You like book Gullstruck Island (2010)?
Wonderfully written, beautiful plot, I could read this book a million more times!!!!
—blakeshark
