Review: Wild Boy and the Black Terror by Rob Lloyd Jones

A new sensation grips London - a poisoner who strikes without a trace, leaving victims mad with terror ... and then dead. Is there a cure for the BLACK TERROR? To find out, Wild Boy and Clarissa must catch the killer. Their hunt will lead them from the city's vilest slums to its grandest palaces, and to a darkness at the heart of its very highest society.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was honoured to be a member of Booktrust Bookbuzz selection panel for this year. One of the books that the panel decided to put on the final Bookbuzz list was Wild Boy by Rob Lloyd Jones. I have to admit that I barely managed to delight when this decision was made as Wild Boy was one of my favourite books of 2013. Our decision also seems to have been a good one if the Year 7 pupils at my school are anything to go by as it has been a popular Bookbuzz choice.

Needless to say, its sequel, Wild Boy and the Black Terror has been one of the books I was most looking forward to reading in 2014 and I am delighted to report that I was not to be disappointed at all. In fact, I might possibly have enjoyed it even more than the first book.

With the main characters of Wild Boy and Clarissa firmly established in the first book, this sequel is very much about developing them further, especially given the traumatic adventures they experienced in Wild Boy. Rob Llloyd Jones does this by throwing the unlikely pair of friends into a conspiracy that is even more vile and despicable than the one they faced in their first outing. It quickly becomes a mystery that will test their friendship to its limits, especially as all the odds seem stacked against them from the start: the majority of the Gentlemen, in whose headquarters the pair now reside, are barely tolerable of their presence, and despite their success in saving London in the previous book they are still strongly mistrusted by the city's populace. Add to this cauldron the ingredient that is Clarissa's hot-headedness and we have a recipe for disaster.

Like its predecessor, Wild Boy and the Black Terror is a fantastic, fast-paced mystery adventure story in a wonderfully realised Victorian London setting. Without the need to introduce new characters the action kicks off pretty quickly, and barely slackens off at all until the final page. There is one scene in particular, where Wild Boy and Clarissa are required to carry out a particularly daring heist, that will have readers' hearts beating faster than a Keith Moon drum solo. Wild Boy is given plenty of opportunity to use his considerable powers of observation and deduction, and the mystery will keep readers guessing all the way through as the plot is very slowly revealed, although naturally only via a number of devious twists. Fans of the macabre and gruesome will also not be disappointed, as the black terror of the book's title begins to afflict more and more people.

If you picked up Wild Boy last year then you will know that Walker published it in a wonderful hardcover edition, sans dustwrapper, and they have repeated these fantastic production values with this sequel. They are the the kind of books that could quite easily create the bibliophiles of the future. My thanks go to the fab people at Walker Books for sending me a copy to read/review (and, of course, add lovingly to my ever growing collection). Please, please tell me there are going to be more adventures for Wild Boy in the future!

Guest Post by Matt Brown (author of Compton Valance: The Time-Travelling Sandwich Bites Back)

Back at the beginning of August I posted a review of Compton Valance: The Most Powerful Boy in the Universe, the debut book by writer Matt Brown. It was definitely one of the funniest books I have read this year, and I enjoyed it so much that when a copy arrived from those lovely people at Usborne, on the very same day that my copy of David Walliams's Awful Auntie arrived, it was Matt Brown's book that I chose to read first. Seriously, if you have a child who loves funny stories and hilarious toilet humour then I urge you to get them a copy of the first book, and when they love that go and get them a copy of this second book, which is just as funny and just as full of crazy time travel adventure as its predecessor.

Naturally, when I was asked if I would be interested in hosting a guest piece from Matt on The Book Zone and did not hesitate to say "yes, please!", so it gives me great pleasure to hand you over to Matt Brown:

Prepare yourselves for a shock.  This is me when I was ten…

When I was ten I spent a lot of time thinking about where I would go if I had a time machine.  This was probably due to my love of time travel telly, books and movies. I always wondered what life will be like in the future – and lots of the Science Fiction stories I loved at this age helped me imagine what the future might look like. I think my fascination might also have something to do with the fact that I was born in the last half of the last century.  As a kid in the 1980s I always tried to picture what my life would be like in the year 2000, which at the time seemed like an impossibly long way into the future.  I thought that we’d all be eating pills for food and living with robots.

If you have read the first book in the Compton Valance series, you might have noticed some references to some of my favourite sci-fi stories. For example, Compton Valance’s horrible teacher is called Mr Strickland.  I got Strickland’s name from Back To The Future because Marty McFly’s horrible teacher is called… Mr Strickland. And you might have noticed that Compton lives in Morlock Cottage.  I got the name Morlock from HG Well’s classic time travel book, The Time Machine.  The Morlocks are a fictional species from over 800,000 years in the future.  This reference is continued in the third Compton book that I’ve just finished writing with a new character called Lola Weena.

Doctor Who was also a show that I loved as a kid (and as an adult).  I really love how this crazy, oddly-dressed British bloke travels around through space and time and into the darkest corners of the universe.  My character Samuel Nathaniel Daniels, part man-from-the-future and part civil servant, wears a tight silver suit and a tiny bowler hat perched on top of his head. This look was definitely inspired by the strange wardrobe of clothes that The Doctor wears. 

So many other sci-fi stories have inspired me and while their influence might not be as obvious as the ones I’ve mentioned, their grip on me as a writer was just as powerful.  Stories like The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, the world of Judge Dredd in the 2000AD comics, TV shows like Buck Rogers and movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey.  All of these stories and a whole load more have in some way, small and large, wheedled their way in to my Compton Valance stories.  Some were intended and others were accidental. But then that’s the wonderful thing about writing, isn’t it?  We are all magpies, collecting references wherever we go and readying them to line our story nests at a moment’s notice.

When you read the book see if you can spot the other influences that have made it in!

~~~

Matt Brown is the author of the Compton Valance series, two fantastically funny and delightfully disgusting time-travelling adventures, perfect for fans of The Wimpy Kid and David Walliams. The second book in the series, The Time-Travelling Sandwich Bites Back, is out now.

For more information and loads of fun things to do visit www.comptonvalance.com. You can also follow Matt on Twitter at @frazzleddaddy. 

Review: Iron Sky: Dread Eagle by Alex Woolf

The year is 1845. Since Napoleon's famous victory at Waterloo, France and Britain have been locked in a long and bloody war for global supremacy. This breathtaking steampunk adventure introduces an alternative 19th century of giant airships soaring through the skies above the English Channel, fantastical, steam-powered automata, aerial steam carriages, floating cities, giant mechanical birds and a new kind of secret agent. 

Enter the world of Iron Sky... In this version of reality, an ageing Napoleon is threatening a full-scale invasion of Britain. Opposing him is Sir George Jarrett, head of the Imperial British Secret Service, helped by an all-female team of aerial spies known as the Sky Sisters. The youngest of them is Lady Arabella West. As war clouds loom, airships start to disappear, and rumours spread of a mysterious terror in the skies. Arabella, with the help of her automaton sidekick, Miles, sets out to investigate.

A while ago I saw author Alex Woolf tweet a handful of images from his new book and my jaw hit the ground. There were beautifully illustrated steampunk-style schematics of the aircraft from his new book, Iron Sky: Dread Eagle, and I expressed my awe on Twitter. Shortly after Scribo Books, Dread Eagle's UK publisher, asked me if I would like a copy and without thinking for very long at all I answered with a big, fat 'Yes, please!" When the book arrived, I could not help but go straight for Mark Bergin's illustrations - the examples that accompany this review, and others, are all produced as lavish fold-outs, and are almost wasted in a book. These illustrations deserve to be framed and put on a wall for all to see. Scribo and their illustrators have done a fantastic job with the overall packaging of this book, and all of a sudden I was worried: would the story match the quality of its packaging?

The answer to this is a massive yes. It is a fast-paced steampunk adventure set in an alternate history 1845. I'd call it a classic Boys' Own style adventure story, but that would be doing a great disservice to Alex and his creations, as one of the real standout elements of this story is its main character: Lady Arabella West. Eighteen year old Arabella is one of the most experienced pilots in the all-female Sky Sisters, a part of the flying corps of the British Imperial Secret Service, and when an unconscious crewman of a missing airship washes up on Brighton Beach, she is dispatched, along with the rest of the Sky Sisters, to investigate. She soon finds herself a captive on a mysterious, cloud-surrounded sky city, the prisoner of some rather nasty villains, with only her faithful automaton Miles (Mobile Independent Logical Englishman Simulacrum) for company.

It is so good to find another action adventure story where the main character is a girl, and one who does not have to rely on a male character to get her out of trouble all of the time. In fact, it is Arabella who seems to do most of the rescuing in this story, and I would love to see more of this in Middle Grade and YA fiction. I mention both of these rather loose age categories, as I am still not entirely sure which age this is book is aimed at. The age of Arabella would normally suggest a definite YA target market, but the story reads like an action adventure story for 11+ readers. Such an older main character in a book suitable for kids as young as 11 is a pretty rare thing these days, and even after wracking my brain I can only liken it to the classic Biggles stories - an adult character in books aimed squarely at young readers. As far as content in Dread Eagle is concerned, apart from a scene where Arabella is tortured, which is not in the least bit gory or graphic, there is little that would make this inappropriate for 11 year olds. I guess this makes it a great story for adventure lovers of all ages. hell, I'm 43 and I loved it!

I'm so glad that publishers are giving us more authors writing action adventure stories with no teen angst, loads of action and really, really fun characters. The kids I chat with about books at school are so becoming so fed up with darkness in their books, to the point where many gave up on shadowing the last Carnegie Prize shortlist in despair, that it is great to have books that are just pure, enjoyable excitement from beginning to end.

Dread Eagle is the first in the Iron Sky series and I am definitely keen to read more of Lady Arabella West's adventures in the future. My thanks go the the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to read.