This week's novel is A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge. I liked The Lie Tree (also by Hardinge) so much that I added a bunch of her other books to my to-read list. Although it didn't hit me as hard as The Lie Tree, I was not disappointed.
The underground city of Caverna is ruled by the thousand-year-old Steward who spends his life seeking out marvels that will make his aging and numb soul feel again. So Caverna is filled with magnificent craftsmen who make magical perfume and wine and animals, all in an effort to please the Steward. Neverfell, the cheese master's apprentice, appeared in the cheese master's caves at the age of five. Since then, she has not been allowed to leave his tunnels and she has had to wear a mask whenever anyone visits or deliveries are made. When one day, she breaks the rules and sneaks out of the cheese tunnels, she gets swept up into a complicated chess game of duplicitous courtiers, the cold-hearted Steward, and a deranged master thief, all because everything she feels shows on her face--something unheard of in Caverna.
The world building here is pretty fun. They live in a huge cave system, lit by little plants like Venus fly traps. Whenever someone is in the area, they feed off the carbon dioxide, producing oxygen and light. There's a whole branch of society who are cartographers, who map the cave systems so the city can expand and so people can know if they can dig through walls without collapse or hitting a cave full of noxious gas. But cartographers are all crazy, to the point where everyone else sets timers, only allowing themselves to listen to the cartographer for five minutes before they go crazy themselves and want to take up cartography. There's magic cheese that give visions of the future and wine that makes people forget very specific memories.
And then there are the Faces. Everyone uses their face kind of like a mask. The lowest echelons of society only know about four Faces, which are all "listening subserviently" or "politely interested." They don't have Faces for grief or anger. The courtiers can learn hundreds of Faces, which they pay facesmiths small fortunes to learn, but even then, they sometimes run into situations or feel emotions for which they don't have a Face. Everyone puts on Faces as they see fit, so there's no trusting anyone by their winning smile or gentle eyes. Neverfell trusts everyone because she doesn't know better and it gets her into loads of trouble. There's also the fact that she's never learned to fake an expression at all and everything she's feeling shows on her face, so she's used as a pawn who everyone knows can't lie.
Add to this the memory wiping wine and there's no telling who's telling the truth or who believes the thing they're saying.
But the big surprise of this book was that things just kept happening. Neverfell gets a whirlwind tour of all the nooks and crannies of Caverna because she keeps getting shuffled around. She gets kidnapped and arrested and bought and given jobs and rescued, so the reader gets a broad view of this society. Its hard to expect what will happen next. "Okay, so she's here in this new place, so she's going to spend a few chapters learning to adapt to this situ--oh wait, now she's somewhere else." I was sure the plot of the book was going to be about her melting the Steward's heart with her wide-eyed enjoyment of novelty, him putting the people trying to use her in their place, and then the city in general becoming a nicer place to live as he became more benevolent, but no. That cuts off abruptly about half way through and becomes something different.
Everyone has a plan, and there are plans within plans that rely on other people doing their own plans. At one point it turns out that everything so far had been one guys plan, and I had to lie down and go back through it and think, "Wait, really? How on earth would you plan that? Why would he plan that? What's going on?"
It's not boring. And even though it doesn't have a plot that's easily traced or explained, everything I was presented with was cool. And even though the plot keeps jumping tracks, that puts Neverfell's character arc, which is a steady, gradual build, into sharper focus.
***
Next Week: Strange Practice, Dr. Helsing MD has a practice for vampires, by Vivian Shaw.
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