Don’t Go To Work The World Is Ending by Paul Dalton (book review)
When a new writer comes on the scene, the problem always is to make the reading public pick it up for a closer look. For some, reviews are useful but not everyone reads or has easy access to them. Before a blurb is looked at, it is often the cover or the title that might draw the potential buyer. In this case, the cover is not particularly exciting or illuminating. The title, ‘Don’t Go To Work The World Is Ending’, though, is eye-catching.
The trouble starts for Jack, a physics teacher on his half-term break, decides to go out for a Chinese meal. He gets unexpected bonus in a dumpling. He doesn’t have time to find out what it is but shoves it in a napkin and into his pocket. On the way back home, he is chased and attacked but is rescued by a woman who happened to be dining in the same restaurant. She is Muriel and a witch. They are chased by an elf in a paisley suit. Jack isn’t sure what he has got himself into or, if he believes Muriel, when she tells him that goblins, witches and elves are fairly abundant in London. She takes him to meet her employers, the Laurels, Denise and Nigel, who live on a shed on an allotment. It seems that the object Jack found in his food was a dragon scale and intended for someone else. The implication is that someone has found the dragon it belonged to.
The partial explanation comes when Jack is introduced to Suze. She is a ghost in that she has unfinished business and can’t die until it is done, in her case categorising every cake and pastry that has ever and will exist. She explains that when she was a girl, in 1666, the fire of London was started by a dragon which she supposes fell into the Thames. In the intervening centuries, it has likely been built over and is now buried under London. The fact that Jack got a dragon scale by accident suggests that it has been found.
Theo, coincidently, is a biology teacher at the same school as Jack and they don’t like each other. Theo is recruited by Mimi, head of the consortium that has actually found the dragon. Its flesh has strange properties which she wants him to find a way of enhancing. She also employs the Paisley Elf, who is hunting Jack to retrieve the dragon scale.
To the mix, add Nisha. She is an artist and Muriel’s partner and works at the restaurant where Jack got the scale. One faction wants to use the dragon for nefarious purposes, the other thinks it should be prevented from waking.
There are a lot of eccentric characters in this novel, many of whom seem to be there for comic effect, because this is basically a farce. Jack is chased all over London, much of the time bewildered by his new perspective on the hidden side of what he once thought was simple. This is the kind of story that if translated into an animation would be enjoyed by many on a cold, wet afternoon. For me, it got a bit too silly in places.
Pauline Morgan
October 2025
(pub: Indie Novella, London, 2025. 312 page paperback. Price: £10.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-1-7384421-7-1)
check out websites: www.indienovella.co.uk and www.indienovella.co.uk/product-page/don-t-go-to-work-paul-dalton