“A fantastical, fast-paced adventure.”

 

NO MAJOR SPOILERS

George is 13, fatherless, may as well be motherless, lost, alone and lonely.. Yet he leads a perfectly normal life.. Until..

He’s on a school trip at The Natural History Museum in London, trying desperately not to be noticed and failing abysmally… Blamed for something he did not do he’s sent to an empty room to await the rest of the class and his teachers wrath. George isn’t planning on waiting and leaves the museum.. In a fit of temper he punches a stone dragon head carved into the wall of the museum and to his horror it breaks off..

Hearing a scraping sound above him, he is amazed to see a stone fresco, alive, seriously unhappy and seemingly intent on repaying the beheading of the stone dragon.

It becomes apparent that there isn’t just one London, there are many layers of Londons and George has fallen through into a new reality, one where statues live, one where there are laws, laws which George has just broken.

The book explodes into a frantic race across London to put right what George made wrong, learning of the Spits and the Taints, Good and Bad, The Weirded and The Servants of The Stone.. Makers and Glints and all manner of strange things that exist alongside us, just out of sight and definitely out of mind..

George’s quest brings him into contact with The Gunner, a bronze WW1 statue who will do anything to help him, Edie, a Glint, a girl with the power to ‘see’ the past of a stone and amazed to realise there is another who sees her world with all the horrors it contains, The Raven, Memory who is beyond ancient and forgets nothing, The enigmatic Sphynxes and The Walker, a slave to the Stone and who will do anything to free himself.

The language in this book is exquisite, the writing flows beautifully and the characters are so believable you find yourself hoping for and hating them as you get to know them.

Stoneheart is the first in a Trilogy, Iron Hand and Silver Tongue completing the tale. I read all three in under a week and was bereft when I finished the last one.

 

Reviewed by:

Shan Williams

Added 5th April 2015

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Shan Williams