This was one of my favorite books of 2006–I read it a long time ago, but I wanted to start the blog off with a GREAT read.  Mosca Mye and her pet goose, Saracen, escape from her uncle’s mill (accidentally burning it down while doing so); she loves words and cannot stand to be trapped in her small, humorless hometown of Clough.  When Mosca meets a man named Eponymous Clent, who claims to be a poet, she and Saracen immediately join him in his journey to Mandelion, the capital city.   She ends up in a town where any unapproved books have been banned and revolutionaries hide a printing press, where schools are kept in secret since reading is supposed to be so dangerous, and where highwaymen, royalty and ordinary people all collide in a cannon battle between floating coffeehouses!  If this review sounds garbled, it’s because I had to leave so much out–there are more astonishing adventures in this book than I could possibly fit into a tiny blog post.  If you like fantasy or historical fiction, this book is for you.  (And if you’ve read this book and liked it, you might try The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garlfield next!)

 Posted by: Sarah