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Enjoyable. Lyrical writing in the vein of Valente and Kingfisher. I've been wanting to return to Hardinge for some time, and I thought this could work with the island setting and ocean adventures. Alas; it remains a 'meh' for me, largely for the young orphan lead, Hark, who is struggling with found family connections and victims of extreme emotional manipulation.

“You did have time to tell me!�� Hark began, but already he knew it was pointless to argue. If Hark stuck to his guns, really stuck to them, that would lead nowhere good."

Undoubtedly my own experiences with emotional manipulators contributed to my dissatisfaction with the overtness of the messaging. But that seems to be Hardinge's thing with young adult books--or is that just young adult books in general? She's also very heavy-handed with her commentary on storytelling. As a reader, I'm generally on board with these kind of meta commentaries, but, wow, too much:

"The gods belonged to the world of stories now, and you could tell stories any way you liked."

"Since all of this was a story to tell his friends later, a tragedy was as good as a triumph. Better, perhaps. Stories were ruthless creatures and sometimes fattened themselves on bloody happenings."

Wait, you mean stories are his framework for interpreting the world?

"He dealt with it by telling himself a story. He watched himself as if he’d already done it, already survived, and was telling the tale of his adventure to an agog and adoring audience in a tavern afterward."

Whew, good thing you spelled it out. Are you sure, though?

“You like stories, don’t you?�� she asked. “Everyone says that the gods used to breathe fear, but I think you breathe stories. Unless you’re telling them, or hearing them, you wither up and die. So I’ll tell you a story."

The sad thing is that I believe the idea of our stories informing how we interact with the world. I just didn't need it said quite so many times. I imagine my impatient younger self would have felt the same. I started to skim over it to get to the more "swashbuckling" (the blurb's words, not mine) events. However, Hark has trouble with that whole integrity thing. While it opens with a simple tourist con, it continues in bigger and bigger ways: 

"In a sense, this was a long con, too, the longest con he had ever played. But the strange thing was, sometimes he caught himself enjoying his daily work. He liked being good at it. In fact, he had even allowed himself to like some of the priests. Just a little."

Eventually, I tired of this antihero child. While I knew eventually there'd be a redemption thread, it leaned too hard into repetitive messaging about power and control. There was the occasional lovely bit, but really, it just didn't impact me. I miss the whimsical touch she had in Fly Trap and Fly by Night.