Carnival of the Hunted (Carnival of the Lost)
The second of the author’s Carnival series, this is the story of a group of young misfits struggling to survive against all that a gothic Victorian society can throw at them.
Sideshow ‘freaks’ Inji (half-girl, half-cat) and her brother, Sil (armadillo-boy) escape both their boss, the Fagin-like Tannikin Skinker, and the evil Hunters’ Club with the help of street-children and the enigmatic Sheba and Pyewacket. The Hunters’ Club is out to exterminate everyone whom they see as ‘different’—the unusually tall or short, the strange-looking, like Inji and Sil, and the shape-shifters, like wolf-girl Sheba, with her eyes of ‘polished amber’. But the victims are fighting back, and Sheba and ‘the witch’s imp’, Pyewacket, lead the resistance, a detective agency known as the Carnival of the Lost. The Hunters’ Club is also out to protect some of Victorian society’s most powerful figures, and the battle to obtain certain important medical records creates the final show-down. An enigmatic epilogue gives more than a hint of a thrilling sequel to follow.
This book is a witty, fast-moving tale that seeks to portray difference as positive and promote a pluralist society, done with charm and verve. And even a certain cheeky insouciance: the plot features a striking revelation about Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert. The language is simple but vivid, the action exciting, and there is plenty of humour: when told that ‘a toff’ is behind an attempted kidnapping, the riposte is ‘there’s more than one gent who speaks like that in London’. There are nice touches of Victorian slang throughout, such as ‘coves’ and ‘barkers’ [guns]. Victorian London and its street life are reproduced in convincing but not terrifying detail. Sam Usher’s double-page spread, ink-wash drawings have great impact.
Recommended for children 10–14 years of age.
