Lindsay's Reviews > A Skinful of Shadows

If authors have golden periods during their careers than surely Frances Hardinge is in one now. Cuckoo Song and The Lie Tree were both brilliant dark fantasy stories with younger protagonists and this continues in that vein.

Makepeace and her mother live in a puritan village in England just prior to the English Civil War. From a young age Makepeace is trained to protect herself in a very strange way: her mother has her sleep in the village graveyard overnight to force her to learn to defend herself against the ghosts that she senses there. The ability that makes her able to see ghosts also makes her the perfect target for possession by them, something that she finds out all about when a traumatic event leaves her possessed by the spirit of a beast. But the beast may be all that can save her when she encounters her father's family, many of whom also have the gift.

Like in the The Lie Tree Hardinge brings this historical period to intricate life, but not without keeping the story suspenseful as Makepeace's family are revealed in their full horrific detail. Her journey is an interesting one for YA in that the issue is not so much about defining her identity, but the much more basic one of whether she is entitled to an identity separate from that of her family at all.

One of the things I love about all this author's stories is the way they end, with the protagonists at the beginning of even more adventures, ones which I'd love to read more of. No sequels as yet for any of them, but I can easily imagine where they'd go.