Between Worlds: Stoneheart by Charlie Fletcher

The clocker hid his watch-eye behind the blue lens again. "Eye to watch for and a watch for an eye. My mark."

George cleared his throat. "Can you tell me what's happening to me?" he asked.

"General terms? Certainly. Have found an un-London."

"Un-London?"

"Place with spits, taints, etcetera. Unseen by inhabitants of your London. But your London only one London. One of many. And what you see as London? Merely another's un-London. More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Yes, indeed. And more heavens and earths. More hells, too. Some slip. Some walk. Some fall. Between worlds, you see."

Punished unfairly for a classmate's misdeed, George steals away from his class' museum field trip, and outside the building vents his anger by slamming a small carved wall sculpture of a dragon, breaking the head off. Abruptly the teeming, benign London street scene turns malevolent.

Attacked by a gargoyle turned pterodactyl which dislodges itself from the roof and menaced by three stone lizards from a fresco, George is saved only by the inexplicable intervention of the Gunner, the strangely animated bronze statue of a World War I soldier, who describes himself as a "spit," the spit and image of humankind shaped and charged by his maker, the sculptor Jagger. True to his maker, Gunner is bound to war against the "taints," evil-hearted stone figures of animals, guardian dragons, a minotaur, and flights of gargoyles. George is also helped by an orphan runaway, Edie, who is cursed with the ability to "glint," to see all of the "Un-Londons" simultaneously. At first drawn to George simply because he has become able to see the epic struggle she has been forced to watch all her life, Edie quickly becomes his only human ally and friend.

But there are other allies, "spits" with knowledge, power, and some magic of their own--the Gunner, whose vintage weapons can temporarily atomize the "taints," "Dictionary," a benevolent statue of lexicographer Samuel Johnson, who decodes the twisted riddling answers of the Sphinx and sends George and Edie to locate the "Black Friar" who will guide them to the Stone Heart of London and freedom from the bonds of Un-London. With knowledge of the way to his own redemption and the key to amending his fate literally in his hands, George approaches the Stone as his last seconds tick away, but at the last moment he turns back to Edie and chooses to continue the struggle with her.

Charlie Fletcher's screenwriter's background shows up strongly in the fast-moving, cinematographic style of his writing, with surprise attacks, chase scenes, and phantasmal monsters around every corner, at the windows, in dark tunnels and alleys, and even under the gray, slimy waters of the Thames. Indeed, if the novel has a fault, it is the dominance of episode over plot movement, in which pursuit and battles go on and on for hundreds of pages with little advancement toward the exposition of a clear overarching theme behind it all.

But, oh, those characters and their dialogue--they are pitch perfect. This strange combination of video game quick cuts and Dickensian characters is riveting. In fact, the best parts of the novel are when Fletcher's inventive "spits" hold forth on their world--Clocker, Gunner, the Fusillier, Dictionary, and the Friar, each with his own distinctive voice, all so finely drawn that they step off the page of print as ably as they step off their plinths and into the mainstream of the book.

Many authors shape alternate worlds of fantasy and reality, but Fletcher shapes a multi-layered world, a setting like an archaeological dig, with layers of time and magical realism that shift and reset themselves from scene to scene. It's a daring and preposterous premise which Fletcher mostly carries off with aplomb.

As to his theme, however, Fletcher is less agile. In Stoneheart Trilogy, Book One, The: Stoneheart (The Stoneheart Trilogy) there is a loosely linked strand of conflict between good and evil, between the dutiful "spits" who must abide by their "makers" commands, and the soulless "taints" who mindlessly war against them, but for most of the book George's struggle is primarily to survive and return to his safe, boring existence in everyday London. But this novel is but the first of a trilogy; the second book, Stoneheart Trilogy, Book Two, The: Ironhand (The Stoneheart Trilogy) gives us a more mature George, one who has consciously chosen to play the hero's role in whatever Un-London he is forced to fight. There, perhaps, the nature of George's quest will become clear. St. George and the Dragon? Perhaps.