In the Shallow Wilds, you kept your doors shut after dark, to stop strangeness getting in. In the Deep Wilds, you offered the strangeness shelter and dinner, to stop it getting annoyed. [loc. 3634]
In Raddith, spidery creatures known as the Little Brothers bestow 'curse-eggs' upon those who feel wronged, granting the ability to curse those who've wronged them. Kellen has the unusual gift of unravelling curses. With his friend Nettle -- who was once cursed herself, and still exhibits lingering side-effects -- Kellen makes a living by ridding people of their curses: but there are rumours that some of the cursers (imprisoned, for life, in the Red Hospital) have broken free and are coming after Kellen.
Unraveller is a thoughtful and sometimes challenging exploration of the ways in which righteous anger can crystallise into hatred, which 'eats you up and makes everything worse'. To be cursed is to be objectified: to be someone to whom things happen, rather than someone with any agency. Those who house curse-eggs have been given the power to 'hold ... persecutors to account': but does that gift have to be acted on? ('just because somebody feels wronged, that doesn’t mean they are'.)
Though this is marketed / labelled as 'young adult', and has teenaged protagonists, it's layered and twisty enough to satisfy more jaded readers. There are some fascinating secondary characters: I was especially fond of Gall, who has made a pact with a fearsome marsh horse ('eating from a nosebag with a disturbingly loud crunching noise. The ground around the horse was scattered with small feathers') and whose moral alignment is only gradually revealed. The story of Nettle's brothers, its roots familiar from folktales, was incredibly poignant: some things can't be healed.
I did feel the pacing was uneven, and some secondary characters weren't sufficiently fleshed out to bear the weight of their eventual plot-relevance. Also, I didn't especially take to Kellen. But Hardinge's prose, and the strangeness of Raddith -- its marshes, its isolated villages and its cities -- kept me enjoying and engaged with this novel.
Fulfils the ‘Published by Macmillan’ rubric of the 52 books in 2023 challenge.
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