Reviews

Read this one for school. So in general, it wasn’t bad. The idea itself definitely isn‘t bad, talking about the homelessness and all. But it didn’t really went into depth.. the characters, their backgrounds. With an extra 100-200 pages, making the book more detailed and leaving less open questions there, it would be better. Short read, if it wasn’t for school, I wouldn’t have read it. :)

librariesofemily's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

“I`m invisible see? One of the invisible people”, this is one of the descriptions that Link, the protagonist in Robert Swindells young adult thriller “Stone Cold”, uses for himself. The thriller tells the story of Link who is 16-years-old and homeless. It portrays his struggles after becoming homeless and trying to survive on the streets of London with no experience on beggung or surviving harsh winters without a proper shelter. The author uses this idea of a missing shelter, to cleverly tie in the perspective of a person with a very different view of homelessness. In “Stone Cold” each chapter told by Link is followed up by a chapter written by from the antagonist Shelters perspective. Shelter is a middle aged man, who recently had to leave the army and uses his experience to make London a “better” place, to free it from homeless people, especially homeless youth as he views them as worthless.
Robert Swindells manages to create a story, where these two storylines continue to intertwine closer and closer as the novel goes on.
The story has a wide range of characters, who accompany Link for shorter or longer periods of time. While some of the characters, for example Link or Ginger, a friend he quickly finds on the streets of London are well thought out, others seem quite one dimensional. A few examples I want to point out here are Shelter, who is only portrayed as the “Big bad evil guy”, and Gail, whom we know little to nothing about, even though she plays an important role in the novel. In general most characters seem to be either totally on the good or the bad side, leading to them feeling unauthentic and one dimensional.
“Stone Cold” touches on multiple themes. The two biggest ones are homelessness and the struggles, which shape the everyday life of a homeless person, as well as themes of growing up. These play a role, as the majority of characters are teenagers or young adults.
The general atmosphere of the story is heavily influenced by by the two major themes. The tone often seems to be stuck somewhere between dark and more serious and light hearted. These tendencies are especially prominent towards the end of the novel and in my opinion do more harm than good, making the novel seem incoherent.
One of my favourite parts of the novel, was the structure used by the author. By splitting the story into two drastically different parts Robert Swindells manages to create suspense and many small cliffhangers throughout the whole novel. He also uses other narrative techniques, like a different style of language for each narrator, humour and foreshadowing, creating a stylistically interesting book.
A major dislike of mine was the way the story treated the already mentioned themes. I believe, the author wanted the book o portray to many different experiences at the same time. This leads to shortcomings in every portrayed theme. I believe, that a sole focus on the theme of homelessness would have left more room for deeper exploration of the struggles shown in “Stone Cold”. Especially the topic of prostitution and struggles of homeless girls, which are shortly mentioned in a part told by shelter would have deserved more attention and consideration. I believe this would have enriched the book more, then the love story at the end of the thriller, which seems out of character for Link and unnecessary.
All in all, I wouldn`t recommend reading Robert Swindells “Stone Cold”, as I found the characters underwhelming and one dimensional, as well as the plot partially incoherent and the dealing with the theme of homelessness unfit, especially towards the end of the story.

Content Warnings