Review: Rewired by Alex Keller

Mandrake von Guggenstein has escaped!

Snatched on the day of his execution by a nightmare creature called Grilsgarter, the Terror of Beacon is loose again. The clock is ticking. Can brothers Ludwig and Hephaestus find him before their world is plunged into darkness again?

I really loved Alex Keller's Haywired when I read it last August, my only criticism of that twisted steampunk fairy tale being that it was just too damn short! Unfortunately the sequel, Re:wired, is just as short as its predecessor, but yet again that is the only negative thing I can say about this story. I loved it from beginning to end, and it was yet another read-in-a-single-sitting book from this author. 

I really enjoy steampunk stories, although I know some people now believe it to be past its peak as far as originality is concerned, but this is a comment that certainly cannot be levied at Alex Keller. Re:wired picks up where the previous book left off in that it is laced with a gloriously dark humour, its characters are fantastically imagined and the story is yet another riproaring old-school adventure story full of hideous, evil villains and brave and daring (thought slightly flawed) heroes. I think if steampunk had been around back at the time when the Ealing Studios were at their peak then this is the kind of story they would have had a great deal of fun with, starring the likes of Alec Guinness and Alistair Sim.

The story kicks off several months after the events of Haywired, with Mandrake von Guggenstein about to be executed for the crimes he committed against the people of Pallenway. Fortunately for Mandrake he is 'rescued' literally from the gallows by a machine/creature that could only have been born in the deepest, darkest corner of the author's imagination, the only clue to its origin being the departing cry of Mandrake: "Grilsgarter?" So begins a desperate search by the heroes of Haywired, desperate to find and recapture the evil despot, although this time young Ludwig is to be left behind as his grandmother deems it too dangerous for him this time. Yes, you guessed it, there is no way that Ludwig is going to go along with this, and so he manages to smuggle himself on board the good shop Kamaria, where he spends the voyage keeping his head down as a deck hand, and thus ends up risking life and limb again.

As with Haywired, this sequel is again very much about the characters and the story. We do find out a little more about the world in which they live, but this element of the book is most definitely not the driving force of the story. With only 170 pages to play with, lengthy descriptive passages about the world would obviously mean less story, and so Alex Keller rightly focuses his attentions on his characters. We are introduced to several new faces, but more importantly for me personally, we get to find out a lot more about The Captain, one of my favourite characters from Haywired. Unfortunately, to say any more would sadly create spoilers for those of you who have not yet read the first book in the series.

The ending of Haywired seemed somewhat rushed, and I am happy to say that this book is brought to a conclusion in a far more satisfying manner, although yet again another 30 or so pages would have allowed the author to lengthen some of the more important scenes in the story. In addition, although the story does not technically end on a cliffhanger, we are left with a small handful of questions that need answering, and this reader definitely wants more.

My thanks go to the generous people at Mogzilla for sending me a copy of Re:wired to review.

Roald Dahl Day 2010

Today is Roald Dahl Day. Mr Dahl was such a huge influence in my early reading years that I felt I had to write some kind of post in tribute to the man who is arguably one of the greatest British children's writers of all time. There are so many reason why I love his books: his use (and creation of) words and language; the subversive nature of his stories; his vast array of colourful characters that have prety much entered our everyday language; and best of all, the delight I derived (and still do) from reading his books.

My favourite Roald Dahl book is, and always will be, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is one of the first books I can remember reading all by myself, and the name Willy Wonka is recognised pretty much worldwide, just as he was in the book, and his Oompa-Loompas have become a regular sight at England cricket matches around the world as a popular fancy dress choice for members of the Barmy Army. I also love the fact that it is the other children in this story that are the villains, as compared to many of his books where it was the adults who were the characters we loved to hate. A close second for me is The BFG. I don't think it is a coincidence that my two favourites out of all of his books had Roald Dahl at his most inventive as far as words were concerned, and I know I am not alone in thinking this. Just a couple of days ago a Twitter friend told me that she was inspired by one word alone: Whipplescrumptiousfudgemallowdelight! 

I am a book lover not a book writer so I worried that my little tribute would not be good enough to do justice to the great man, and so I emailed a few people who I felt would be able to put their thoughts about Roald Dahl and what he means to them into writing much better than I could. Thank you to all of the authors who replied with their own tributes to Roald Dahl:

Alan Gibbons (author of the Hell's Underground series)

I had a lovely email from a young woman called Sarah. I taught her when she was seven. She has just graduated as a doctor in the USA. She reminisced about the story times I devoted to Fantastic Mr Fox and The Magic Finger, Danny the Champion of the World and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I worked my way through most of his novels at the end of the day and there was never a murmur from the kids on the mat. It made me realise how the great man's story telling magic made teaching easy. His mischief and invention illuminated the children's life. One of the greatest Human Beans....ever.

Tamsyn Murray (author of My So-Called Afterlife and My So-Called Haunting)

It's hard to choose one favourite Roald Dahl book but my daughter and I really enjoyed reading his memoir - Going Solo. His real-life tales of Africa are every bit as thrilling as his wildest work of fiction and he cheated death on a number of occasions. The book includes a supporting cast of colourful characters and deadly snakes (usually colourful deadly snakes, in fact). If you ever find yourself face to face with a Green Mamba - run!

Andrew Newbound (author of Demon Strike)

Mysteriously, I didn't read an awful lot of Roald Dahl books when I was younger; not sure why???

The ones I did read (James & the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate factory/Great Glass Elevator), I enjoyed. But the one that had the most profound effect on me was Danny, Champion of the World.

I borrowed it from the mobile library one wet and windy half term and devoured it in a day or two. I cherished its massive hardback form; it was such a HUGE book in my small hands, and turning the pages was like reading a old ledger.

The story inside those pages was so simple, yet so powerful that it's still with me today. I liked the way Roald captured the relationship between a Dad and his lad, and wrapped it up in such an engaging, amusing and yet uncomplicated tale.

I loved it, and I guess that's why I love to see my own children, and others too, reading Roald Dahl books today. His special kind of literary magic lives on!

Barry Hutchison (author of Mr Mumbles and Raggy Maggie in the Invisible Fiends series)

Roald Dahl made me a writer. When I was 8, my primary school class did a project on him, a look at "The Man Behind the Books" sort of thing, and that was the first time I realised that books were written by actual real people, and didn't just sort of magically appear in libraries when no-one was looking. I learned a lot about Roald Dahl that day, but I also learned something about myself: I wanted the same job as he had. I wanted to be the man behind some books. Twenty-four years later, I've finally succeeded. Were it not for Roald Dahl, I don't know if I would have.

M.G.Harris (author of The Joshua Files series)

Pretty much the perfect combination of things to appeal to little me - playful language, sadness and loss, grotesque baddies, blissfully edible worlds like James's peach and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. But the story that really struck me was 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar', the first adult book I read, aged 11.

J.D. Irwin (author of Edwin Spencer - Mission Improbable)

I came to Roald Dahl late. I didn’t really ‘get’ reading until I was ten or eleven, then C S Lewis’s Narnia series showed me what I’d been missing. So by the time I picked up my first Dahl book I was a teenager – and it was the one that has been my favourite ever since: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In a way it was a good thing that I wasn’t eight years-old when I first read ‘Charlie’; I remember feeling the contrast of emotions – sadness at the plight of poor Charlie Bucket and his loving family, glee at the comeuppance of vile Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregarde – very strongly, which I don’t think would’ve happened before I was ten. Family relationships were portrayed so brilliantly – how I longed to jump onto the Buckets’ only bed and give each of Charlie’s grandparents a huge hug!

Roald Dahl was a master story-teller, and I’m sure no author has influenced modern-day children’s writing more.   

Alex Keller (author of Haywired)

I read a great deal of Dahl's children's books when I was younger. Despite his more notorious public and private life, Dahl was undeniably a phenomenal writer. I remember falling in love with the dark, strange stories he created. Below is a couple of the things that really struck a cord with me when I was younger.

Names:

Roald Dahl is fantastic at coming up with great names of his characters. In The BFG for example, the names of the evil giants such as “Childchewer”, “Bloodbottler” and “Fleshlumpeater” brilliantly conjure up their ogrish images. The names are simple, but their directness is quite unnerving! Chewing children sounds horrible and painful (if you are a child reading the book); Bloodbottler, for me, creates an image of the giant draining the blood from children in a cold, industrial way; and Fleshlumpeater I imagine would shovel meat into his mouth from wherever he found it, including any human beans that got to near. When I was maybe seven or eight, I think I might have had nightmares because of these names!

Terrible fates:

Dahl's books are also littered with children who suffer terrible fates. Dahl never seemed to hold back when writing about some very gruesome and blood-curdling situations. In The Witches for example, you hear about the witches placing terrible curses on children such as turning them to stone or having them trapped inside a painting for the rest of their lives. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I remember reading about Augustus Gloop being sucked up in the river of chocolate and Violet Beauregarde being turned into a giant blueberry and then “juiced”. The way Dahl would write about these fates was truly chilling, and if memory serves, you don't learn the fate of the bad children. They may not have even survived Wonka's factory!

Considering the age of the audience of Dahl's books, having these events within them seemed very brave. Yet it was the nastiness of these fates that made the books so brilliant: just because you were a child, you could still perish; you were not safe. This was horrifying and completely enthralling at the same time and made the books classics.

~~~

You can see why I asked some professionals now can't you. Thank you so much to Alan, Tamsyn, Andrew, Barry, M.G., Julie and Alex for taking the time to share your thoughts with us. Have a great Roald Dahl Day (I'm going to read The BFG tonight).

Review: Haywired by Alex Keller

In the quiet village of Little Wainesford, Ludwig Von Guggenstein is about to have his unusual existence turned inside out. When he and his father are blamed for a fatal accident during the harvest, a monstrous family secret is revealed. Soon Ludwig will begin to uncover diabolical plans that span countries and generations while ghoulish machines hunt him down. He must fight for survival, in a world gone haywire.


There has been something of a back lash against steampunk in recent months, with some critics stating that it has already 'last year's thing'. Even the legend that is Philip Reeve has joined in by writing on his blog that steampunk is dead. It is certainly a bandwagon that many an aspiring author has attempted to jump on over the last few years, and I would imagine that for every excellent steampunk story published there have also been several poorer books released into the world. I personally love a good steampunk story, and I am currently waiting excitedly for the release of Scott Westerfeld's Behemoth, the sequel to his excellent Leviathan, and also The Society of Dread, Glenn Dakin's follow-up to the first book in his Candle Man series, both of which had many elements that the book-reading public now associate with the steampunk genre. I therefore did not hesitate to say yes when Mogzilla contacted me asking if I would like a copy of Alex Keller's debut Haywired. In fact, the cover itself was enough to garner a positive reaction to their proposal - illustrator Rachel de Ste. Croix has done a fantastic job on it (and for those of you for whom book cover design is important you can read more about the design process here at Rachel's blog).

Haywired is very different to the steampunk books I have read so far. The publishers are calling it a steampunk fairytale, and I cannot come up with a better phrase to describe it, as that is exactly how it reads. The fairytale feel to the story is there from the very first page and at times it is as if the Brothers Grimm were alive and well and writing for a steampunk loving audience. Like many fairytales it is also relatively short, weighing in at a slim 170 pages, but even so it still manages to pack quite a punch. Of course, most adults know that the Grimm fairy tales were exactly that - grim. In their original form they were often full of pretty nasty stuff, involving nasty and bloody endings for characters both good and bad, and they were certainly not the sweet and sanitised stories that we came to supposedly know well thanks to the Disney machine. Haywired is like this as well - the story is deliciously dark in places, people die and often in particularly nasty ways, and the main villain of the story would fit better in an adult horror fantasy story than in a Disney animated film, so much so that Mogzilla are marketing this book at the 11+ age group, despite it being significantly shorter than many of the books that are released for this age group.

The main character of the story is Ludwig von Guggenstein, son of Mandrake von Guggenstein, a kind of mad professor style inventor to most, but not in the eyes of his trusting son. Ludwig loves nothing more than working with his father on his various inventions, all of which seem to him to have great value in improving the lives of the local community in which they live. However, a series of unfortunate events lead to Ludwig making a discovery about his family that first of all makes him confused, then totally overjoyed, before suddenly turning his world upside down, at which point he finds himself running away from home, not sure whether he should be fearing for his life. Unlike many steampunk stories Haywired is not set in alternate London, New York or any other recognisable Earth country; instead, Alex Keller has opted to create his own world, although being a relatively short book the world itself takes something of a back seat.

The ensuing adventures of Ludwig and his companion (about whom I will say no more for fear of creating a spoiler) see them encountering a variety of colourful characters, both good and evil, and at times Ludwig is unsure about who to trust as the motivations of these characters are generally difficult for him to work out. However, he finds himself swept along by the now life-threatening events that become unavoidable for him, especially when he finds himself the hunted prey of his father's most sinister creations, the HELOTs (Heuristic Engine with Learning and Obedience Tailoring). Again, it is difficult to describe these without giving away too much of the story; suffice to say there is more than a little of the Baron von Frankenstein in Mandrake von Guggenstein.

As I said, Haywired is relatively short, and as such it faces the same criticism as I levied at David Gatward's debut The Dead. It really could do with an extra thirty or so pages as the climactic scene where Ludwig must finally confront his father was far too short (a mere four pages) and the book ended too suddenly for my liking, and I felt that his father's actions at the end were unrealistic given the preceding events. If this was a movie I think viewers at an early test screening would express displeasure, and the ending would be reshot to improve it. It is a shame that I was left feeling a little cheated after what had been a thoroughly enjoyable read up to that point.

This criticism aside this is still a hugely enjoyable addition to the ever growing list of steampunk type stories for young readers (and despite his misgivings about the steampunk genre I have even seen Philip Reeve mention on Twitter that he was enjoying reading it). A sequel, entitled Rewired, is planned to be released in the spring of 2011 and am looking forward to seeing what happens to Ludwig and his companions in the next instalment. Haywired is due to be published on 1st September.