Stoneheart [Hardcover]

Charlie Fletcher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2006 | Series: Stoneheart

Deep in the City something has been woken, so old that people have been walking past it for centuries without giving it a second look!' When George breaks the dragon's head outside the Natural History Museum he awakes an ancient power. This prehistoric beast, sentry-still for centuries, hunts him down with a terrifying wrath. And this is just the beginning! The taints and spits -- statues with opposing natures -- are warring forces; wreaking deadly havoc on the cities landscape. The World War One gunner offers protection of sorts; and the wisdom of the Sphinx is legendary. But George and his companion Edie are trapped in a world of danger. And worse -- they are quite alone. The rest of London is oblivious to their plight. This epic adventure exposes forces long-dormant in the fabric of London. After entering its richly original and breathtaking world, the city streets and skyline will never again seem the same!

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

On a school trip to the Natural History Museum in London, a 12-year-old loner named George is banished for something he didn't do. Angry, he lashes out and breaks off a dragon's head carved onto the wall of the museum. Next thing he knows, a pterodactyl carving comes to life and begins to chase him. From Gunner, a walking, talking statue, George learns that he has entered another layer of reality, and that his arrival has started a new war between good spits (statues that are imbued with a soullike essence by their inspired makers) and evil taints (soulless carvings). With the advice of various spits, and the companionship of a girl named Edie, George seeks answers from two Sphinx statues, whose enigmatic clues lead the pair into a terrifying adventure. Creatively building on the plentiful gargoyles and other creepy stonework of its urban setting, this lengthy novel, the first in a planned trilogy, will draw capable readers for its suspenseful chase scenes, scary creatures, and highly original premise. Tixier Herald, Diana
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A fantastical, fast-paced adventure. -- Publishing News 20050318

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Hodder Childrens (October 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 034091162X
• ISBN-13: 978-0340911624
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,636,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charlie began by studying an MA in English Literature at St Andrews, Scotland. From there he went on to work for the BBC before going to the University of Southern California School of Film and Television in Los Angeles to study screenwriting. He lived and worked in America for seven more years before recently returning to live in Scotland. Charlie has written for TV, film and also done a spot of journalism now and again, before turning his hand to write Stoneheart -- his first novel for children. Charlie Fletcher lives and writes in Edinburgh with his wife, two children and a terrier called Archie.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rich and Strange, September 19, 2007

By 

K. Coombs (Utah, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stoneheart Trilogy, The: Stoneheart - Book One (Stoneheart Trilogy (Hardback)) (Hardcover)

I had gotten a little backed up on reading my latest purchases of dragon books, and I wondered whether Charlie Fletcher's screenwriting background would translate well to prose, but then I started in on Stoneheart and completely forgot to fuss. It is a VERY good book--in my opinion, Fletcher succeeds in doing what China Mieville wanted to do but didn't quite pull off with Un Lun Dun, which surely got a lot more attention than this book. That is, Fletcher turns London into a quiet fantasy nightmare, an alternate reality, for a couple of kids, George and Edie. (Neil Gaiman would be proud!)

The previous reviewer gives you a plot summary, so I won't go into that, but I will point out that Fletcher has a clean, graceful written voice, and he adds depth to his writing with well-placed metaphors, many of which are refreshingly new. Here is a snatch of description about a statue of the Minotaur: "The shoulders hunched massively below a bull's head topped by aggressively pointing horns; and so well had the sculptor shaped it, that the sound of enraged snorting seemed to lurk about it, even though it never--to the normal eye--moved or breathed at all."

Of course, one of the eerie things about this book is that to the normal eye, the statues of London are NOT coming to life and menacing (or helping) two children. The normal eye doesn't see that the Raven flying overhead isn't flying at a normal speed; instead, it is "flapping unnaturally slowly, lazily defying all laws of gravity and several of the general advisory guidelines of nature as it did so."

When the book begins, George is self-pitying and Edie is cold-hearted; their characters evolve during the course of their adventures, as if Fletcher were undoing a work of dull origami and folding it into a better shape. The other standout character is the Gunner, a statue of a World War I soldier who helps George and Edie survive. Clocker was probably my favorite of the odd, invented characters hanging about the periphery of this tale, but there were others. In general, Fletcher has turned a collection of the actual statuary around London into an astonishing assortment of personalities and monsters.

There are so many nice--and creepy--little touches here, like what the evil Walker does to passing pedestrians as he searches for George, and the Raven's penchant for making a stylish entrance, and the fact that many characters are neither one thing nor the other, but a mix of good and evil, reliability and personal agendas. I also like how Edie's magic isn't an easy or simplistically happy power for her to carry.

Fletcher doesn't settle for predictable answers in his plot, which rides a growing wave of suspense clear up to the last few pages. Then he leaves you wanting more in just the right way--not because he has to sell another book, but because you truly want to see Edie and George take their suddenly bizarre lives to the next level.

I would recommend this book for older children and teens who were comfortable with the level of intensity and darkness in the later Harry Potter books. A very satisfying read!

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliance, June 14, 2007

By 

Haley "knutty knightingale" (West of the Horizon) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stoneheart Trilogy, The: Stoneheart - Book One (Stoneheart Trilogy (Hardback)) (Hardcover)

This book was a real phenomenon for my typical bookbuying expeditions. Rarely do I ever buy a hardcover that is not part of a series I like, by an author I like, or sufficiently hyped-up for me to recognize it. STONEHEART was none of these, but the writing sample on the back and the book description made me buy it.

When George accidentally breaks off a stone dragon's head from a wall in a museum in London, he awakens a terrifying, murderous pterodacyl that chases him through London's streets and -- worst of all -- is invisible to everyone but him and, it seems, a young girl named Edie, a "glint". His life is saved by the Gunner, a statue that is somehow alive in this alternate London he's accidentally fallen into. With the Gunner and Edie he goes to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx and gets some answers, but ends up with an answer that is more riddle than what he first had to solve.

So with time ticking away George and Edie have to navigate this world, full of good statues and bad ("spits" and "taints" to make it easier) and George must sacrifice the stone dragon's head on the Heart of Stone to make this whole nightmare disappear.

But what if the Sphinx's answer was ambiguous...?

This story was, in a word (and a very British one that you're likely to see several times in this novel) brilliant. The writing, though it deteriorated slightly toward the end, was strong, descriptive, exciting, and dramatic. The characters were excellent, especially Edie and George (Edie had all the makings of a "tough-girl you learn to respect and pity because of her traumatic past" in her, but she overcame that and became an excellent character in her own right) though I would have liked a bit more on die's backstory -- her parents (particularly her father) and what had happened to her as a child.

In fact, the only complaint I have against this book is that a book this good surely deserved a better copyeditor. Time after time I would see a quotation mark misplaced or missing, and the same with punctuation. But there were no spelling mistakes as far as I could see, so it really was only those two things. And meticulous copyediting is not the author's job, so you really can't blame Mr. Fletcher for that.

Highly recommended.

I don't think I've rated a first novel this way since "Fly By Night", but...

Rating: Masterpiece

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Here be dragons, December 7, 2007

By 

Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stoneheart Trilogy, The: Stoneheart - Book One (Stoneheart Trilogy (Hardback)) (Hardcover)

If you're into Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Stroud, you'll probably like this book, which is the first part of an intended trilogy. The second book is due out in May 2008.

Though not as twisted as Gaiman, and lacking the humor of Stroud in The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Stoneheart explores some of the alternate worlds of London through the experiences of twelve year old George Chapman.

George usually keeps to himself, but during a school outing, he gets into trouble (initially) through no fault of his own. However, the trouble really begins when he vents his anger on a stone carving of a dragon on a museum wall.

Little does he know that his small act of vandalism has awakened the statues of London, and soon he's fleeing for his life from formerly inanimate gargoyles and a hungry pterodactyl, and wondering why he's the only one seeing them.

Fortunately for George, not all statues are made of the same stuff, and when one of the good guys shows up in the nick of time, he learns a little more of the predicament he's in. Along the way he meets a girl named Edie, who has been seeing stone people all her life, and together they face an alternate world of sphinxes and dragons, and spits and taints, and glints and weirdies, and things that go bump underground, and much, much worse.

The anticlimactic ending only slightly mars an otherwise enjoyable (albeit a little too long) reading experience, which is good to the penultimate chapter.

Amanda Richards, December 7, 2007