Riding Tycho

The apparently ordinary island world of this novel is revealed as increasingly strange and (with some fine plot shocks) outlandish: Demetria is schooled to knit along with all females on the island and believe in a gender divide where men hit women and can swim while women must drown. The cold and strange spareness of their life is felt in carefully imagined detail, with barely a drop of human kindness to ease the way and it takes the introduction of a Political, billeted in the family shed, to provide a different perspective. He is outraged by the withholding of knowledge (how can she not know stories?) and the distortions of truth, while wryly noting the aptness of Demetria’s brute of a brother gathering the local fish called ‘pillocks’. The fine anger of the Political lights the spark in Demetria to slowly question the awfulness of her conditions but she still distrusts him until he proves to her that things can fly. Her wonder at the flight of a kite is woven into a wonderfully imagined scene that changes her life, cutting her off from any human contact and forcing her to learn her own strength and flee. The Political, Ianto Morgan, is a splendid creation (please let him be there in the sequel), with a depth of humanity to unlock the frozen seas of this hostile world. I want to read that promised sequel, now.