Dodger
Ratings46
Average rating3.9
It started out very slow for me but I eventually loved the historical fantasy of Dodger's adventures and the humorous and clever story. I particularly enjoyed Stephen Briggs' various accents for each character, as he made them all specific and unique.
Fabulously fun twist on Victorian England from the creative Terry Pratchett. The main character is lively and colorful and surrounded by an entire cast of fascination.
The historical facts are not exactly on point, but they are close enough to keep things interesting and astute readers in their toes.
I would recommend this to anyone over the age of 12 who likes fantasy, humorous novels, and historical fiction.
This is a rather charming fantasy about life in early-Victorian London, in which the young Dodger of the title comes from the humblest of beginnings and goes up in the world.
The scenario is all based on quite interesting factual research and there's no magic in it, but I call it a fantasy because Terry Pratchett is a softie, and various characters in this book, including the hero, are too full of human goodness to be credible. You have to suspend disbelief in that respect.
The book is vaguely similar to his past City Watch books, set in the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork; but this one has a new scenario and a new set of characters.
Cautiously recommended if you're attracted by the idea of a book with a grittily realistic scenario populated by characters that would seem more at home in a fairytale. And yes, of course there is a happy ending.
I didn't finish this book. I didn't find it that interesting and choose half way through to put it aside.
Remember The Artful Dodger from Dickens' Oliver Twist? Here he is in Pratchett's delightful story of a teenage boy living in the back streets and underground sewer tunnels of Elizabethan London. After an eventful day where be becomes a hero he meets a journalist named Charles Dickens. And the plot thickens.
This book has Pratchett's characteristic sense of fun and the absurd but far from Discworld.
It was slow to start, then fun, and then tapered off for the campy ending that you don't mind because The Queen is in it :)
DNF - Approximately page 71 (audiobook)
Why?
It pains me to admit this, but I have no interest in ever finishing this. I have had at least some fun with all of Pratchett's Discworld books that I've read - though especially the ones about Death and the Night Watch. This book, however, has nothing that I enjoyed in it.
The typical Pratchett humor is woefully missing. Dodger himself is a Gary Stu of epic proportions and the plot thread through these first chapters was barely the thinnest thread. At first I liked the narration - and it is true that the narrator did the various voices well, the genders and the social classes - but he also sounds a little too dry.