Dodger- A Review

I am a large fan of Terry Pratchett books, and I hold him as a writer in high regard. Which is why I was very much surprised when I finished Dodger. Dodger is written very much in the same style as all of Terry Pratchett's books, and at time London heavy resembles  Ankh-Morpork in the Discworld series.

 The history that is interwoven into the book along with being from a young lads point of view, kept me turning the pages.  They had interesting real characters, such as Charles Dickens and Sweeney Todd that were a lot more fleshed out than most history  books give them credit for. While it is true that Sweeney Todd is known as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and has been immortalized in musical and somewhat romanticized for the brutal murders he committed, not a lot has been said about why he did it, and in Dodger they talk about briefly the sensationalization of it for the time and what had made him mentally unstable.

 The true beauty of this a book about a young man trying to figure out who he is and what he wants to do with his life, it also brings forth the harsh reality that there are two sides to every coin. The self realizations that are made by the main character and the quick jaunt into several of the class levels of a Victorian London is a good guide to any individual to help them come to terms with some of those life realizations that only come with time and self analysis.

I would recommend this book to any person of youth that is on that cusp of self discovery and self realization.  This is not your typical Pratchett book that tends to run the gambit of irreverent humor and wit, but is more of the sort of book that father would write for growing son or grandson to help explain the path to adulthood and how the path is never easy.