Tamzin Merchant’s The Hatmakers
The bravery of three young children and an actor with his confidence on the floor isn’t the team you’d expect to save London, England, from a war with France.
The makers are at the beck and call of the throne for as long as anybody can remember; the hat, glove, boot, watch, cloak and cane. All six worked together in the Greathall, but that changed when the cane makers used menacing items to make their accessories deadly, meaning more people wanted to buy them. Because of this, they broke the rules of making and were forbidden to make again. The master ended up in the Tower of London (executed), while the remaining family were sent to the workhouse. Since then, the makers haven’t been the same.
Cordelia has been known as the littlest hatmaker for most of her life, although she’s never actually made a hat and won’t be able to until she’s sixteen – she’s only eleven. No matter how much she begs her Aunt and Uncle, Cordelia can’t seem to get her big break until her father goes missing on a shipwreck upon returning from a mission to collect hatmaking materials. Everyone around fears the worst; Cordelia has pure hope that pushes her to track her father down, but whilst trying, she discovers a thief among the makers, and everyone but her family and a few friends believes it’s her.
Now she has to prove her innocence to help the King and Princess to have any chance to get to her father. Someone is out to start a war, though and is prepared to have all the makers wrongly arrested and even more people killed simply for greed and money. The question is will Cordelia remember the words her father told her before he left.
“Keep wildness in your wits and magic in your fingertips.”
I have said before that I don’t have a good relationship with the fantasy genre, but I was hooked on the mystery elements of this plot, and I certainly want to read the book.
#fantasy #TamzinMerchant #TheHatmakers