I’ve shown up, bleary-eyed and half-awake, to shepherd discussions at the Sirens Books and Breakfast sessions many times. I suppose it was only natural that eventually they would ask me to help kickstart the discussion in advance. My brief remarks on Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island, an excellent, chewy middle grade novel about anti-colonialism, indigenous resistance, capricious volcanoes and an evil dentist, are up on the Sirens website.