Unfortunately for Harklights, I read it at the end of a long selection of eco-adventures for young children and I was, perhaps, a little jaded with the genre. That doesn't change the fact that Harklights was the most disappointing by far. Like so many I've read (The Silver Arrow, The Lost Wild, The Wild Robot, to name a few), Harklights comes sumptuously packaged with golden trim. In some ways it's the refinement of this wave of admirable novels tackling environmental themes over the past decade. Yet there have always been books like this - way back to the Little Grey Men, through Watership Down and The Animals of Farthing Wood - so this new explosion is sometimes more stylistic than thematic. There's nothing wrong, in principle, with attractively presenting children's literature - whatever gets kids reading is fine by me. But the risk is style over substance. Harklights, despite being very competent and readable, doesn't really do anything new and comes across like a shadow of better books, both past and contemporary.
If you were to write a list of possible ingredients for a eco-adventure, Harklights would have most of them: a lonely child trapped in some kind of institution, a malicious adult dictator (in the timeless Roald Dahl mould), lots of characters seeing the natural world in a new way, small faerie-folk of some kind, animals to ride (preferably a stag), lots of other animals (including probably a fox), a human threat to the enviroment, a main character with a fated connection to the wild, a first person narrator with a cautious emotional outlook, stark and still black and white illustrations, a sparse and speedy narrative style with fast character development and at least one escape scene and one chase scene, a steampunk aesthetic like Bunzl's Cogheart and little people making a difference, as they have been doing so effectively since the days of Frodo. That list could describe The Last Wild as much as Harklights. At times it's a blatant copy of Tordoy's book. The tone is a little lighter and less adult, the violence a little less graphic, the threat a little more cartoony, but otherwise it's a very similar story. Harklights suffers from being a lite version of this better book, but it's not the only book it draws on. More than most, I found myself nostalgically remembering the movie, Fern Gully! Harklights draws on good source material but doesn't offer anything fresh.
That's a very harsh review because, apart from those overly familiar elements, Harklights is actually fun to read and will certainly find its audience. Wick is a spunky, likeable main character, even those some of the decisions and developments are too fast. The world of the little people isn't described well enough and it becomes hard to imagine and believe - compared to the meticulous setting of the Wild Robot and the way Brown describes the adaptation of the robot to the wild world, Tilley seems unconcerned with details and eager to rush on with the plot. The pace is not uncommon in children's literature - The Silver Arrow suffers from it, so does Cogheart, The Train to Impossible Places and Sarah Driver's Sea. I see the appeal, driving the plot forward to the big reveals, and I see the difficulty in balancing mature plot development with writing for this particular agew group. I think children's literature befits from reducing the speed of the plot, the number of characters and the amount of unnessecary flashy, action scenes. Wick is too heroic, too quickly, defeating impossible odds with barely a whimper from the massive, tree gnashing machines or the evil, shotgun wielding matron. It's a shame, because there are attractive elements to the book as well. But I heartily believe there are much better books out there doing roughly the same thing.