Larklight
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| Author | Philip Reeve |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | David Wyatt |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Larklight Trilogy |
| Genre | Steampunk |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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Publication date
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October 2006 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 412 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 255773817 |
| Followed by | Starcross |
Larklight, or the Revenge of the White Spiders! or to Saturn's Rings and Back! is a young adult novel by author Philip Reeve. Illustrated by David Wyatt, it is the first book in the Larklight Trilogy.
Larklight is a space opera set in an alternate Victorian era, in which mankind has been exploring the solar system for at least a century, and wherein most of the planets are inhabitable. Protagonist Art Mumby narrates an attack on the British Empire and the solar system at large by an ancient, arachnid-like extraterrestrial race, against which he and his family play a central role, aided by the pirate Jack Havock and his crew.
The story begins at Larklight, a house that orbits Earth's moon, where the Mumbys receive a visitor from the Royal Xenological Society, a Mr. Webster, who is revealed to be an extraterrestrial resembling an enormous white spider. Art and his sister Myrtle escape; but their father is captured and held prisoner.
Art and Myrtle leave in an escape pod and crash-land on the Moon, where they are encased with predatory larvae of the Potter Moth and freed by pirate Jack Havock and his crew. Art is shocked to find that Jack is only fifteen years old, and that he is the only human in his crew, while Myrtle is distressed at being in the company of a pirate and demands that Jack take them to the moon's British residence, Fort George. En route aboard the pirates' ship Sophronia, a ship of the British Navy comes alongside and orders Jack to surrender or have his ship destroyed.
Jack distracts the officers by pretending to hold Art and Myrtle hostage, giving Ssillissa, the ship's alchemist, time to activate the ship's engines and fly the Sophronia to safety. They conceal themselves on Venus, Jack Havock's old home, where Jack tells Art and Myrtle that the colonists there, including his parents and brother, were changed into trees by a sudden pollination. The white spiders take Myrtle to the Martian home of industrialist Sir Waverly Rain, whose factories cover Phobos and Deimos. She escapes with a Martian maid named Ulla and her husband, Richard, with whom she learns that Sir Waverly Rain had been captured by the spiders and replaced with a spider-controlled automaton; believing the spiders might manufacture something much more sinister, they race to London.
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