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Ambergate
 
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Ambergate (Paperback)

by Patricia Elliott (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Price: £5.99 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Hodder Children's Books; First Edition edition (17 Mar 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0340882468
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340882467
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 3.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 803,361 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

The Times
Murkmere: 'Fraught with fenland mist and magic, this supernatural thriller ... is compassionate and original.'

Review
'This is a beautiful, compelling novel.' (Guardian )

Murkmere: 'Fraught with fenland mist and magic, this supernatural thriller ... is compassionate and original.' (The Times )

'Compelling ... a salutary reminder to keep an eye on the children's bookshelves.' (SFX magazine )

The Ice Boy: 'A remarkable first novel ... here is a writer whom you can trust.' (Armadillo )

'Elliott is one of [the Fidler Award's] worthiest winners. This atmospheric debut novel [is] heavy on Kleenex' (The Glasgow Herald )

'The standard of writing displayed by the winners of the Fidler Award is high, and The Ice Boy is no exception.' (Writers' News )

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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Heart-in-the-mouth stuff for Scuff, 9 Jan 2006
By A Customer
Ambergate is the story of Scuff, the kitchen maid we first met in Murkmere. Scuff has no name, merely number 102 branded on her arm, and a secret she must never tell; `If I do, they will come after me - the Protector and his men.’ And come after her they do. Scuff flees on a dangerous journey through this eerie land where the divine presences are birds. The settings in the book are memorable - a sinister city, the orphans’ home, Madame Anora’s house of lassitude, and the slave market…don’t go there!
Yet Scuff does not become a victim. She finds fleeting tenderness with little Shadow, poor Gobchick, Erland, and Nate.
This exciting, atmospheric story ends in triumph as Scuff discovers her true name and who she really is.
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3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Everyone has a name...", 14 Feb 2006
By A Customer
Ambergate is Patricia Elliott’s follow-up to her Gothic fantasy novel Murkmere. Not quite a sequel in the traditional sense, this story centres on one of the minor characters in the first book and continues an exploration of the rule of the decadent Protectorate, against which the story is set. The brutish Protector lords it over an alternative nineteenth century England. This is a theocratic state, and the religion that dominates the lives of the people is based around the Table of Significance, which defines wild birds as messengers of the gods. Birds as portents, as symbols of authority, and even as truly magical beings appear throughout Ambergate. This allows the author to reference iconography as diverse as the ballet Swan Lake and the emblems of Nazi Germany/Imperial Rome, and to work both rustic folk law and elaborate political intrigue into the telling.

Constructed around a series of reflections, the central characters form and reform their attachments in various unlikely configurations; Erland and Scuff, Nate and Leah, Leah and Erland, Nate and Scuff. "Home"- familiar but dull, is set against "the journey" - frightening but liberating. The capital city serves as a kind of "anti-home", claustrophobic and oppressive and yet still fraught with danger and insecurity.

Scuff's mission in part three of the novel, when she takes on the unlikely role of potential assassin, has shades of Hamlet in the prevarication she shows when faced with honouring a vow made under duress. This theme of the reluctant hunter is itself a reflection of Corporal Chance's pursuit of Scuff, which forms a running counterpoint to the first-person narration throughout. Chance is constantly on the point of having Scuff arrested, but always fails to act decisively for reasons he cannot himself understand. To the reader, however, it is made clear that Chance sees himself in Scuff, a fellow orphan and street child, and he can no more bear to turn her in than he can ever abandon his pursuit of her. For ultimately Ambergate is a story about the search for self. As the nameless Scuff is told - “Everyone has a name...But some have to find it for themselves.”

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