The Artful

A dickens of a time

Artful: A Novel by Peter David (47North, $14.95)

The Artful by Wilbert Stanton (Curiosity Quills, $14.99).

One of the most intriguing characters—and one of the most poorly underserved by the wonderful Charles Dickens in his novel, Oliver Twist—is Jack Dawkins, otherwise known as The Artful Dodger. This happy rapscallion, when last seen in Dickens’ tale, was about to be transported to Australia as a result of his pick-pocketing ways.

Two new novels, aimed at the young adult audience but more than interesting for adult readers, take The Artful Dodger as the point of departure for something altogether new. Both succeed, to differing degrees.

In Artful: A Novel, Peter David starts by telling us how he came to write the book. While author introductions and prefaces aren’t usually worth the time to read, this one does point out the inordinate amount of time that Oliver Twist spent crying his way through his own life story—a behavior in which The Dodger would never engage.

What follows is a very creative tale of how The Dodger managed to escape being shipped off to the penal colony and instead found himself back on London’s streets, engaged in a fight for his life and the future of Empire against—wait for it—vampires.

Don’t throw up your hands in disgust quite yet, though, because this isn’t just a cheap “Artful Dodger, Vampire Hunter” ripoff book. It’s a fair-to-middling imitation of Dickens’ style, with an original take on the events of the novel and one that actually made this reader want to dip into Oliver Twist once again.

Hey, if it takes some fangs and wooden stakes to send young readers to the classics, then so be it. The truly good news is that this novel stands on its own, as does young Master Dawkins.

Meanwhile, Wilbert Stanton’s debut novel has gone all the dickens past the original to set us down in near-future New York City, where the aftermath of the Ice Virus has left inhabitants unable to handle sunlight and under quarantine. The rich live in towers, shielded from the sun and constantly “dosing” themselves with drugs to forget their troubles.

Meanwhile, the street- and underground-level citizens are suffering and in need of medicine.

Enter The Artful and Twist, a pair of steampunkish, goggle-wearing thieves who act the part of Robin Hood, stealing needed medicine from the wealthy and sharing it with the suffering. They’re in constant conflict with the Suits—the hired muscle of the upper crust—anyway, but when a botched job reunites them with their friend Smith, who has something the Suits want badly, the pair join with their gang, the Gutter Punks, to stay one step ahead of the thugs and get to the bottom of the mystery.

The Artful has a very slow start—it definitely takes awhile to start caring about the characters—but about a third of the way in, begins to make up for that. The first of a projected trilogy, Stanton offers some seriously intriguing world-building, as well as the sort of working class, post-apocalyptic heroes that young adults are all craving these days.