If you’ve had anything to do with science fiction over the last thirty years, chances are you’ve seen or read something by Peter David. The man has written for movie and TV, dozens of original novels, thousands of comic book issues, and generally has something new coming out about once a month. My introduction to all things Peter David was though his Star Trek: The Next Generation books; Strike Zone was one of the first books that ever made me laugh out loud, and it only got better with Q-in-Law. David captured the characters better than any other writer, and the dialogue was always filled with snappy, quotable snarkiness.
In Artful, Peter David steps away from the science fiction/comic book world, and comes up with a different take on Charles Dickens’s classic, Oliver Twist. Not quite in the same vein as rewrites like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, this book follows the adventures of the secondary character Jack Dawkins, better known as the Artful Dodger, last seen being hauled off to prison for theft. After escaping from jail before he could be shipped to the penal colony in Australia, Dodger sets up a comfortable (to him) life in the slums of London, charming and thieving his way though the world until he stumbles across a plot to kidnap the princess Alexandrina – future Queen of England – thereby subjugating the British Monarchy. By vampires.
Or, as it was spelled at the time, vampyres. Yes, we know: It is difficult to accept, a strain to wrap your head around. Go and take the time to do so. Watch some television programs, or read some books in which vampyres are heroic and charming and sparkle in the daylight, and then return here and brace yourself for a return to a time that vampyres were things that went bump in the night.”
Confession time: I haven’t actually read Oliver Twist. Great Expectations, yes, plus Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, and about as much as I could stand of The Old Curiosity Shop, but not Oliver Twist. I think I would have gotten more out of Artful if I had, since quite a few characters from the original novel make an appearance in the book. You don’t need to have read the source material to enjoy the Dickensian language; Peter David obviously had a lot of fun creating the flowery prose and the rambling chapter headers (example: Chapter Two – In Which The Reader’s Patience Is Rewarded By Explaining The Seemingly Inexplicable And The Jailer Is Introduced For As Long As He Suits Our Purposes). The style goes a little nuts in the beginning of the book, but calms down a little bit further on so you can enjoy the action. The dialog, of course, remains pretty snarky.
“The boy escaped? Where is he now?”
“We do not know”
“What do you mean you do not know?”
“Well, there are times when we know where people are, yes? This would not be one of those times.”
The vampire, excuse me, Vampyre, element also could have come across as a lot sillier. These vampyres aren’t romantic at all; each one is basically an animated corpse with the soul of a spree-killer. A well-known vampyre hunter makes an appearance, but then proceeds to disappear into the background, so don’t expect any martial-arts-style slaying or elaborate steampunk(ish) weapons either. The main characters of this story are either children or the vampyres themselves, and any Slaying comes from mostly from desperately flailing around, a little bit of knowledge, and some out-and-out luck. And I always enjoy seeing an author’s interpretations of different vampyre myths, like “Inviting the Vampyre In”, “Crosses: Effective or Not” and “Should I Really Bother with Holy Water?” (Spoiler, the holy water thing works here, but I’ve never seen anyone use it quite this way.)
The age of the main characters would almost make this a Young Adult book, but it sometimes veers towards the adult side. There’s a horrific massacre at one point, and most of the deaths are gruesome, especially the vampyre deaths. Remember, the vampyres are dead bodies, actually rotting inside if their breath is any indication, and the way they’re finally “killed” determines if the body crumbles into ash, rapidly decomposes, or simply deflates while the black fluid that passes for their blood spurts out across the floor. Not for the easily disturbed, especially if you’re used to vampires going pale and a little shriveled when they’re staked, or disappearing in a cinematic puff of dust.
Mostly I felt this book was written out of Peter David’s love for the source material. He apparently came up with the concept when rereading Oliver Twist and noticing something about the character of Fagin that made him think “I wonder what if…” The unnamed narrator of the book doesn’t have much love for the character of Oliver Twist (weepy, easily pushed around, and entirely too lucky), but I enjoyed Peter David’s tone that came across as “Yeah, that’s right. Vampyres. Prove to me that Dickens didn’t know about it!” And the character of the Artful Dodger himself was extremely appealing: very tough, very hard to embarrass, determined to pitch in and help even when it was a really stupid idea, and very much the perfect gentleman. As long as, y’know, he didn’t have to be anyone respectable.