The Island of Morovia is shaped like a broken heart. The humans live on one side of the island, and the alkonosts - the bird-people - live on the other. But it wasn't always this way...
Linnet wishes she could sing magic, like her father, Nightingale - and bring the two sides of her island together again. For her land has been divided by a terrible tragedy, and Linnet has been banished with her father to the deepest swamps, leaving behind her best friends, Hero and Silver.
So when her father is captured, Linnet must be brave and embark on a treacherous journey. Through alligator pools and sinking sands, she finds new friends. Yet without her singing magic, Linnet discovers something even more powerful. Something that could save her father, and heal the broken heart of her island once more...
My Thoughts
Sophie Anderson has a unique way of signposting the reader so they always know where they are, where they are going and why. To do this with a light touch, and also keep us guessing until the last page, is a rare and valuable skill. In The Thief Who Sang Storms, Sophie Anderson achieves this to perfection, taking us on a long journey, with a complex cast of characters and multiple themes with a hugely satisfactory and unexpected ending.
I loved the setting, the swamps and the bird-people, who I was constantly picturing and re-picturing as the story progressed. (To me, one of the great joys of reading is that we will all have different bird people in our heads and - at the moment - no film maker telling us how to imagine them.) I understand the novel is inspired by a Russian story called The Nightingale Robber, in which a 'monster' with partial human and bird-like features, was able to fly, lived in a nest and had a human family. When Nightingale the Robber whistles, allegedly: "all the grasses and meadows become entangled, the azure flowers lose their petals, all the dark woods bend down to the earth, and all the people there lie dead!" I am now off to read that too!
Sophie Anderson's characters are richly drawn and utterly believable. I was totally invested in Linnet, who wishes she could sing magic in a land where magic is forbidden and who has been banished, with her father, to the fabulously named Mournful Swamp. It is from here that Linnet sets off on her brave pilgrimage to take on the dictatorship, re-unite her island and rescue her father.
A heartfelt book filled with adventure and stunning storytelling from one of my all time favourite children's authors.
I cannot recommend it highly enough.