Author: Justin Richards
Publisher: Faber and Faber (UK)/ Bloomsbury (US)
Justin Richards is perhaps best known to Fractal Matter readers as one of the main writers and the creative consultant on the BBC Doctor Who range of novels. This is his latest original novel for children and it returns to an era similar to his first 9th Doctor novel, The Clockwork Man.
It’s Victorian London and mysterious goings on are afoot with the dead walking and an attack on the British Museum. George Archer becomes involved in these events and with the peculiar Department of Unclassified Artefacts, which investigates the bizarre and unexplained, at the British Museum. The book opens with the sublime first line: Four days after his own funeral, “Albert Wilkes came home to tea”. With an opener like that you cannot help but be intrigued just a little. Richards lets the pace slacken a little at times, but he does manage to refuel it along the way with some great images such as a dinner party inside an unfinished dinosaur statue. He obviously loves this era and it does show. The story itself involves dinosaurs, zombies and some macabre experiments.
The biggest problem with the book is the number of characters. You have Eddie (the pickpocket), George (the hero figure/inventor), Elizabeth (the actress) and Sir William (the exposition guy). Realistically Sir William contributes nothing to the action of the story and would have been better left more on the sidelines rather than being yet another person to have involved. Another problem is that it takes three different reasons for the heroes to finally spot who the villain is even though he almost did everything but wear a big sign that proclaimed his villainy. This may be in part due to the target audience of children, but I think it would be blatantly obvious even to most kids so it makes the heroes, George in particular, look fairly stupid.
Having read the book I could not really tell you why it is called The Death Collector. The title seems at odds with the story and the feel of the book. It certainly suggests a much darker book than it really is.
The novel certainly seems to be set up for a sequel and I hope that next time around our heroes are smarter and that we experience more of the Department of Unclassified Artefacts, which is a lovely concept, and one that is intriguing enough to lead me to read the next book in this series if one should appear.
Thanks to Faber and Faber for the review copy.
Released March 20 in the UK and May 16 in the US.
Mark Peyton – has a MA in History and Research from the University of Hull specialising in the Hundred Years War. In a complete departure from that he now runs communications and membership for a UK based Trade Union as well as being a part time writer/journalist.
He is a founding member of Millarworld acting as a moderator and as an editor for Fractal Matter.