Wednesday 20 August 2008

You may remember me...

...raving on about Stoneheart and Iron Hand by Charlie Fletcher over on my old blog.

Well the third book, Silvertongue is technically not published yet, but my ordered copy turned up at work last week.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

It was brilliant.

It pulled all the threads together in the nicest way, even if one particular one came completely out of the blue (but I adore it, it was a perfect conclusion).

It has made me even more want NEED to go wandering around London to find the statues that are such a huge part of the story.

Now as I said in the other post:
I've managed to find some photos of a couple of them, The Sphinx and The Royal Artillery Memorial, but I want to see all of them. I want to see the Grid Man, the clock where they hide, the statue of Icarus and the lair of the Minotaur
I've managed to track down the Minotaur in his lair, find the Icarus in his cage and see the Last Knight of the Cnihtengild all in one place, this nice pdf of a City of London leaflet (which is a bit of a bugger to load).

I've also discovered (via Google Book Search) an amazing book called Public Sculpture of the City of London (Public Sculpture of Britain Volume Seven) (link goes to the Icarus page), which I am absolutely going to have to get from the library!

New "characters" from Silvertongue include the Queen of America (part of the Albert Memorial), Hodge, and Bulldog; Plus the Knight of Wood and an unnamed but helpful character holding a quill who George finds in Southwark Cathedral after being sent there by Richard the Lionheart.

So when I go to London I shall be trekking from Hyde Park down to Southwark (and beyond as there's a statue named as The Bosun and Jack Tar that's even further downstream) in my quest to find them all.

I'd better wear some sensible shoes.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi. I'm a librarian in Belfast and am using these books to encourage teenagers to read. I'm doing up a guide to the books and think they're great. I've found most of the statues on the web, and some interesting facts about certain characters. Can't find the salamanders, though, or any mention of clocker. Will kepp going - and hope to see the films before too long. Best wishes and happy reading. John

Anonymous said...

Hi Kate, Thanks for the links to the photos of the statues from Charlie Fletcher's fantastic books. That brochure also contained photos of "the Hare and Bell" and the "Rush hour" spits that tried to help the Queen of Time. Thanks again.
Jacqui

Anonymous said...

For some reason, it wasn't until I was two-thirds of the way thru Silvertongue (while meticulously googling for images of statues and locations of landmarks to create my own custom Google Map) that I stumbled upon this definitive article:

Andelys Wood, ‘The Stones of London: Public Art in Charlie Fletcher’s Stoneheart Trilogy’, The Literary London Journal, Volume 9 Number 2 (September 2011). Online at http://www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/september2011/wood.html.