Riding Tycho by Jan Mark

I wasn't really expecting to enjoy Riding Tycho. I've read several of Jan Mark's books before and never really been satisfied by them. So it seems a pity that I should only come to enjoy her work after her death.

Riding Tycho and its sequel Voyager are the story of Demetria, a young girl living on an island in a world without birds and a community without freedom. The girls on High Island learn one thing: to knit, and knit everything - until they are married and take the speciality of their husband's family. The men are the ones with the control in their little backwater, and the women don't know anything better.

But the balance of the community is upset by the presence of Politikals, men with dangerous ideas sent to live on the island, well out of contact with the rest of the world - a world Demetria is not even aware of. When her family is given a politikal to host, she, against her family's will, is befriended by him - and learns of a whole universe she can scarcely fathom.

Riding Tycho belongs to a very specific genre in children's fiction, typified by novels such as Lois Lowry's The Giver, or Caroline Macdonald's The Lake at the End of the World. The young protagonist lives in a highly regimented society, where people live without choices and unknowing. The protagonist comes into contact with an 'outsider', and gains knowledge of the world outside their community, and of freedom. They must then make the decision of whether to defy their society - for better or for worse - or whether to go back to their world which whilst it may not seem satisfactory, is safe.

Demetria's hand is pushed when her politikal, a Welshman named Ianto Morgan, is taken away for the innocuous reason of having taught her to fly a kite, and Demetria is resultingly ostrasised by her community. She must decide whether she can possibly believe all Ianto has taught her, and whether or not she can stay on the island knowing it.

The outcome is a satisfying one, and leaves the path well open for the following book. Despite what is left unknown at the end of the book, Demetria's journey to freedom, both physically and mentally, is complete, and I found the book's resolution to be stronger than in what I have previously read of Jan Mark's work.

Riding Tycho fulfills its genre, but it is certainly its own story: it is set on not a furture earth, but a future colony, and the community is not one that sees itself as having improved, or keeping its members safe from the outside world - rather it has primitised. This alien land is well-built and integrated into the story, and we share Demetria's amazement at the idea of a fully evolved world, where there are creatures like 'fish covered in leaves' that fly in the sky - something ordinary enough, but Demetria's character is so believable that her wonder becomes our own.

Ianto's character is similarly charming, and he gains our sympathy as a man who has left his family so far behind that he may never see them again. His friendship with Demetria is carefully built up, and Demetria's trust does not come too quickly - only she sees through him how backwards the people of High Island are, ignorant and callous in it. But the islanders are full characters too - after all, everything they have ever known is threatened by Demetria's friendship with Ianto. We know that their actions are wrong, but we also know that they cannot act any other way.

Riding Tycho is a highly engaging book - I read it all in a rush for wanting to know how everything came out, and I started its sequel, Voyager, shortly after finishing it - and the pity is the sense at the end of that book, that there may have been a third intended. But both books are fulfilling stories on their own, and you're sure that, whatever befalls Demetria, she's strong enough to come out okay in the end.