The Wolves of London by Mark Morris
Obsidian Heart Book One
Published by Titan Books, October 2014
ISBN: 978 178 1168660
350 pages
Review by Mark Yon
Mark is perhaps best known for his Horror books (Toady, Stitch, The Secret of Anatomy) and his Doctor Who novelisations. This will, I suspect, bring him to a new wider audience.
The Wolves of London is a dark novel that mixes up genres. It’s a book with horror overtones, naturally, but then it also rips up the rule book by delving into archaic occult arts, Frankenstein-ian steampunk and even Quantum Leap-style time travel.
From the back cover: “ Alex Locke is a reformed ex-convict, forced back into London’s criminal underworld for one more job. He agrees to steal a priceless artefact – a human heart carved from blackest obsidian – from the home of a decrepit old man. But when the burglary goes horribly wrong, Alex is plunged into the nightmarish world of the Wolves of London, a band of unearthly assassins who will stop at nothing to reclaim the heart. As he races to unlock the secrets of the mysterious object, Alex must learn to wield its dark power – or be destroyed by it.”
The book begins as a crime novel, as in the present day Alex tries to find his missing daughter, but soon exhibits some rather grisly murders before taking a turn into Quantum Leap and Hammer Horror territory. There’s even a touch of Mike Moorcock in there as Alex develops a symbiotic relationship with his enigmatic artefact in a similar manner to Elric and his demon blade.
The writing is great: knowledgeable, intelligent, thoughtful, echoing the deceptively literate poetry of the mundane in such work as that of Stephen King, albeit with a distinctly British tone, such as that of Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May detective series, as we travel around (and underground) the great city of London. Keeping the King comparison going, it’s more Dark Tower than Carrie, a pleasingly complex plot that rarely settles for the cliché.
Mark also manages to make what could be considered as ‘difficult’ characters rather likeable – Alex is an ex-convict, and therefore not really what we would see as a character to be on side with, although his circumstances seem to be more about the consequences of poorly thought out choices and being in the wrong place at the wrong time more than through any outright malice. His prisoner ‘friend’ Benny has more than a whiff of the Kray family about him, and yet we quite like him at times. The real bad guys are appropriately scary and evil, not to mention rather gruesome in their actions.
What assists this further is the fact that, rather endearingly, many of Alex’s actions are often wrong – caused by fear, by a lack of knowledge and understanding, or just a deficiency of sleep, although entirely understandable given the circumstances. It is this fragility that endears him to the reader more and won me over in the end.
It also helps that there’s a nice ensemble cast of support characters that I suspect we will discover more about as we read the series.
Generally then, I enjoyed the book a great deal. However it would be remiss of me if I didn’t point out one thing that may make or break this book for some readers, namely that although there’s a lot going on, there is little or no resolution at the end. Wolves of London does a lot of character development, foreshadowing and plot-building, without having an actual ending. It could be argued that the book ends up having done little but introduce an interesting situation and some great characters before setting up the next novel, in the manner of the Pilot episode of a TV series. The journey’s great, but I do rather suspect that some readers may want a little more reward for their efforts towards the end, or at least must be prepared to wait until the next novel appears in 2015.
Despite this, there’s enough here to make this book a great read. Recommended for those who like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere or Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May books. I’m really looking forward to the next book in the series.
Mark Yon, October 2014.
