WILD BOY

Wild Boy’s head-to-toe fur has garnered him scorn and abuse from commoners, but his extraordinary intellectual gifts eventually win him a future with a powerful, elite group called the Gentlemen.

Wild Boy has been featured in a freak show for three years, having willingly left his deplorable orphanage/workhouse at age 8. The cockney patterns that litter his speech belie powers of observation and deduction that rival those of Sherlock Holmes; not surprisingly, the story’s setting is the smoke-shrouded, industrial London of 1841. When Wild Boy is about to be hanged by the unseemly circus crew for a murder he did not commit, teen acrobat Clarissa helps him escape. Together, they follow clues through sewers and back alleys, learning about an extraordinary electrical device linked to the murder: “The machine what changes you.” At one point, Wild Boy considers using the machine to de-freak himself, but far more narration is devoted to action-packed episodes than to self-reflection. Amusing accounts of his reasoning skills contrast with depictions of violence, gore and depravity. This semihistorical novel is long on steampunk imagery—“the metal brain trembled and buzzed”—and short on characterization.

Classism lurks beneath the surface of this fantastical adventure story that misses a good many opportunities to plumb the depths