Larklight by Philip Reeve

[meganbmoore]

This book is essentially Simon R. Green for ten-year-olds. Eleven-year-old Art Mundy and his fifteen-year-old sister, Myrtle, live with their father on Larklight, a Victorian mansion that orbits the moon. Why a Victorian mansion? Because that just happens to be the era they live in. For reasons eventually explained in the book, mankind achieved space travel in the time of Isaac Newton.

When their house is attacked by giant alien spiders, Art and Myrtle escape to the moon, where they’re eventually rescued by Jack Havock, an infamous, half-black fifteen-year-old pirate. Jack is the soul survivor of a colony whose people turned into trees, resulting in his being raised in a lab as they tried to discover why he wasn’t a tree, until he and other aliens being held there escaped and became pirates. Jack agrees to get the siblings safely to a British base, but both hormones and more aliens chasing Art and Myrtle interfere.

Reeve seems to have simply sat down, written down everything he thought was cool when he was a kid, and then paused for a few moments to consider what his sister probably wanted to read about, resulting in things like Martian secret agent knife-wielding spy girls. It is very, very much written for its target audience (10-12-year-old boys) and adopts that attitude about things, especially sisters, but is very fun. The “Oh so Victorian! See how Victorian I am?” prose can be grating at times, but works overall.

I do, though, have quibble.

Namely, the romance with Jack and Myrtle. At fifteen, I would have thought it wildly romantic. Now, I find it cute, if cliché, but problematic. Namely, the ease with which Myrtle, who is very hung up on social standards and class and is as Victorian as one can be out of pure stubbornness, seems to accept her feelings for a half-black outlaw. From Jack’s backstory, we know that racism is still around and strong, creating a stigma that should have been in her mind for her to work her way past. Granted, that could have been the parts of her diary Art thought we wouldn’t be interested in, but it was hard to buy into.

There’s also Jack’s whole “Forget saving the universe! I must go save the universe!” bit. Again, wildly romantic at fifteen, not so much now. Admittedly, I can still get into it a bit if everyone else is off to save the universe and I adore the person in peril, but usually, not so much. I mean, what will you do when the universe is a wreck? Thankfully, though, Jack doesn’t sink very deeply into that, and comes through in the “bigger picture” context in the end.

Comments

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I do like Philip Reeve. But I need to finish the Mortal Engines quartet before starting anything else.

And the save the world vs. save a loved one thing gets my goat as well. YOUR LOVED ONE IS A PART OF THE WORLD, IDIOT.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean, as a 14-year-old girl? That bit never would have entered my mind. And Jack doesn't spend too long on it, just enough for me to notice. It can work when the person isn't really a "hero" to start with and has always made it clear that the loved one will come first, but there also needs to be people who he (it's always he) knows can do the job, and where his not being there probably won't hurt things too much.

What's his other stuff like.

[shewhohashope.livejournal.com]

I've only read the Mortal Engines Quartet, and not all of that yet. It begins with a post-apocalyptic steampunkish future London racing across the dried up bed of the old North Sea chasing a smaller town. It's got Traction Cities, Municipal Darwinism, rebel aviatrixes and the inevitable anti-Tractionists, a facially deformed badass heroine out for revenge, an apprentice historian hero who os devoted to the status quo, and all manner of cool bits. I've heard people complain that it's too childish, but I liked it fine, although this was a couple of years ago (I was in my late teens?).

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Myrtle's ready acceptance was my major quibble, too. I think most likely that either Reeve or his editor or both were like, "People simply won't accept her as a sympathetic character if she's racist against black people, that's too much of a bugaboo." Which I can kind of understand, but I feel like they could have found some way or another to make it more realistic.

There is something in book 3 that may piss you off. It pissed some other people off. I thought about it, and I think the message that Reeve was trying to send was... different than how it came off, really. If I'm right about his motivations in including it, then I agree with his motivations but I think he didn't handle it very well; if I'm wrong, then wtf, is he crazy?

...that was terribly vague, wasn't it? XD; Oh well, I just thought you might want warning if you end up reading the other two books.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The funny thing is that if What's-His-Face-The-Evil-Scientist hadn't emphasized the race bit in Jack's backstory, it could probably get away with saying that there was less racism among humans.

[woodburner.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that would have been the simple solution. (But then Jack's past wouldn't have been as tragic. OH NOES.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Jack was the sole survivor of a colony whose population was turned into trees, resulting in his being kept in a lab his entire life and having to escape with the rest of the specimens to avoid being cut open.

I'm not sure one encounter with a racist added a lot to the tragic angst...