Stoneheart (review)

In a moment of pent-up rage, twelve-year-old George smashes the head off a dragon carving on the side of the Natural History Museum in London; suddenly, his previous frustrations seem nothing compared to the fear of watching a stone pterodactyl hiss to life and label George as its target. The next twenty-four hours are a nightmare for George as he tries to make sense of his new world, an un-London wherein carvings come to life with alarming regularity. The only other person who can see what he sees is a twelve-year-old girl named Edie, who also happens to be a glint (a person who can read the pain of the past) and who is possibly more trouble than she's worth. Nevertheless, the two team up in order to right George's wrong while vicious taints (statues filled with an empty hunger) pursue them relentlessly and mostly friendly spits (statues endowed with a bit of their human creator) save their lives more than once. Fletcher entrances readers with his fantastic premise and memorable cast of inanimate statues come to life, including the heroic Gunner (a soldier from a World War I memorial), verbose Dictionary (a statue of eighteenth-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson), and a pair of enigmatic sphinxes; he creates an especially haunting villain in the creepy and cursed Walker, a man forced to pace endlessly until he can make his own amends to the stone. For readers looking for an intense sprint through an atmospheric, otherworldly London fantasy, George and Edie are key pair to follow.