It was fun to see Dodger turning himself into a wisp of smoke and Fagin having a magical hold over his boys.Ī new backstory is invented for Oliver who is still an orphan but now also becomes a pawn who the infamous and evil Brotherhood want to use to defeat the Knights of Nostradamus. The introduction of vampyres, zombies and werewolves does the job quite nicely!įamiliar characters are not forgotten and are cleverly interwoven into the story, including faces such as the Artful Dodger, Nancy, Bill Sykes and the wicked Fagin. I was curious to see how the author was going to reintroduce this story to a whole new audience of readers while injecting it with a modern twist. Much like the author JD Sharpe, I've always loved 'Oliver Twist' and enjoyed the story of an orphan boy whose life eventually takes a turn for the better after enduring hardship and adversity. I'm a huge admirer of Dicken's work so I was immediately intrigued about this title. Published to tie-in with the bicentenary of Charles Dickens, 'Oliver Twisted' puts a fresh spin on the Dickens classic while remaining true to the spirit of the original. 'Oliver Twisted' is one of the first offerings from Egmont's new young adult imprint Electric Monkey. I would definitely recommend this and hopefully it will encourage more people to read the original work too - I know I certainly will, and I would love to read more from Sharpe, too! I think that JD Sharpe does do justice to this book and is successful in achieving what she intended - a twist to Oliver Twist, turning it into a modern 'horror' story - something that will certainly appeal to the majority of older children and young adults today. This was easy to read and rather quick, too - so there's no excuse not to give this one a go. The book is extremely gruesome - the grotesque descriptions made me squirm several times but were very effective - I can imagine that a lot of children would love this aspect, but beware if you have a sensitive stomach! The pace of the story is very fluid and it does become quite action packed towards the end. The writing was good - there was still reference to the old english writing style right at the beginning, but for the most part, the writing was modern and very easily accessible to middle grade children upwards. These all possess the characteristics of their original personalities, but Sharpe has also expanded and added a new lease of life to them, making them react realistically to their new situations. Due to these creatures that are very popular at the moment in young adult literature, I think that this book will appeal a lot of young adult readers, especially those who enjoy the paranormal genre.Ĭharacters that appear and that you may recognise include Fagin, Dodge, Bill Sikes and Nancy. The story is well written, thanks to a good basis and good original characters.įor our main character, Oliver Twisted, a new and very gory story including zombies, vampires, werewolves and soul stealers is created. Our new story follows Oliver who is, as a lone orphan, travelling to London where he befriends Dodge and subsequently gets drawn into a world where he is used by Fagin in order to try and gain power for his evil brotherhood. From the altered name of this novel and it's very apt tagline 'Please, I want some gore', I knew that this was going to be a bit different from the original! Ashamedly, I haven't read Oliver Twist, but of course I am aware of the basic aspects of the story from other media, like most. With it's great foundation and it's modern ideas, this was a fun read. However, I was glad to see that this wasn't the original work with some new parts stuck in, but instead it was reworked and retold in a very original manner by an author who obviously loved the original characters.Īs many of you will know, it was the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens this week, and so I thought, although it's not a traditional work of his, but rather a modern reworking, I'd pick up Oliver Twisted and see how it was. I am not usually tempted by books of this type - an idea taken from a classic book, but changed by a new author, adding new ideas.
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