Kellen has the power to unravel. His power has two sides to it: one he can control and one he can’t. Unravelling curses is something he needs real focus for, whereas unravelling cloth happens when he isn’t focussed enough. Usually this is when he is angry and unfortunately Kellen is angry quite a lot. The danger of curses is that they grow from hate. Sometimes the hate is well-deserved and Kellen is angry at the cured. Sometimes the hate stems from cruelty and Kellen is angry at the cursers. The result is always the same; Kellen unravels the curse, the victim is cured, the curser is sent to the red hospital, and Kellen moves on.
Curses are fairly standard as far as fantasy goes, but Frances Hardinge has managed to completely reinvent them. Instead of being a purposeful and well-crafted spell or potion, these curses are ‘gifted’ to the cursers when they feel true hatred. Often the cursers have very little control over how their curses are enacted, although they tend to manifest in very personal ways. It is the strong emotion and the unpredictability of the curses that makes them so fascinating, not to mention the sheer volume and diversity of them.
However the most intriguing aspect of this book is not the curses themselves, but the cursers and their victims. The answer is not always as obvious as it seems and the divide between good and bad is constantly murky. At the start Kellen doesn’t see this aspect of his own world, instead choosing to focus on the more black and white aspects and leaving the aftermath for others to deal with. However his moral compass and sense of responsibility evolve throughout the book and a huge part of this is due to his companion, Nettle.
I found Nettle to be an even more interesting character than Kellen. Her backstory was a particularly harsh one, and one that seemed unresolved for the most part. This created an air of mystery around her character, yet I never doubted her motives for a second. Add in telepathic communication with her bird-cursed brother and Nettle makes for quite the engaging character.
On top of all this, the setting of Raddith is a mystery in itself. At the heart of it all is the Wilds, a misty marsh-wood that plays mind tricks on you and is filled with an array of strange and dangerous creatures. The differentiation between the ‘shallow wilds’ and the ‘deep wilds’ adds a complex depth to the setting and characters, as well as an enduring sense of foreboding which grew more and more the deeper they went.
Escape to the Bookshelf 