Flood and Fang
by Marcus Sedgwick

Release Date: 12th Mar 2009
Publisher: Orion
ISBN: 978 1 8425 5692 4
RRP: £7.99

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First in the new 'Raven Mysteries'...

It is an unlikely coincidence that Sedgwick chose to name his narrator ‘Edgar’, given that the voice of this children’s book is that of a Raven. And perhaps, the author deemed it fitting that the Raven whose voice of doom is cawed throughout Flood and Fang is named after the illustrious author of an equally doom and gloom poem; that said, Flood and Fang is not all gloom – for there is a certain levity to the dire straits that the Overhand family find themselves in. A peculiar joviality despite the incalculably inhumane explosions of bullfrogs, the gorging on maid servants and the impending drowning of all the inhabitants of the Overhand Castle.

Flood and Fang, then, is an abominable adventure of the dark and gothic kind that makes light of the vagaries of human nature. Edgar being the only voice of reason within an array of self-centred, obscenely stupid and rather unpalatable bunch of characters: first, there is Lord Overhand – conventional mad scientist, but without the wherewithal to understand anything remotely resembling science. Then there is Lady Overhand (Minty), whose preoccupation with sponge cakes and indeed cake tins themselves is outlandish and somewhat irritatingly comical. Solstice is their only daughter, a young woman blessed with a limited intelligence, which immediately makes her the most likeable of the entire family. Finally, there is Culweed, a stumpy dull-witted boy whose main interests include food, eating and his pet monkey – ‘Fellah’. Fellah is a particularly awful pet with the manners of a hyperactive child who has not taken his Ritalin.

The tale itself is told with extraordinary wit and razor sharp repartee; Edgar is a comical genius (if it were possible for Ravens to be comical or geniuses) – somehow making the ridiculous and preposterous into one big laugh after the other. Flood and Fang has a dark humour element, certainly; its human characters stripped of any saving graces, absolutely, and perhaps that is what makes this story so ticklish. One cannot help but quietly chortle, when one knows one should not and by doing so magically reproduces that mischievous twinkle in your eye that you last had when you put a snail in your younger sister’s lunchbox. This will be a series I watch with morbid fascination.

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