5 & 6- Something Is Killing the Children Vol 8, House of Slaughter Alabaster- James Tynion IV et al

 

A double bill of the most recent entries in these two continuing series.

Last time we saw Erica Slaughter she'd been severely compromised in her abilities as a monster slayer.  i was kind of hoping for a continuation of that storyline.  Instead this volume is 5 standalone issues that flash back to events prior to the beginning of the series.

The first two felt very similar in content, but then Tynion started to make clever variations on the theme.  The issue set in a therapist's office is probably the best individual issue of the entire run.

The artwork continues to be uninspiring except for occasional full page panels. It all finishes with Erica heading off on the first mission we met her on.

I seriously question the review on the back of one of these that states SIKTC reinvented the comic.  As good as it is, it ahs never quite stopped feeling like a companion piece to Buffy with an entirely amoral watcher's council.

Which brings me neatly to...  

This is the weakest artwork so far in the HoS run.

The story this time involves a white mask called Bait- a young boy whose arms were ripped off by the monster that killed his family. 

However, he's still able to kick these giant creatures to death.  Of all the unlikely twists this series might have taken, the fact that a skinny boy with missing arms can apparently take on the same monsters that the heavily armed Erica struggles with (I managed not to use the 'armless joke! yippee) has to be the most extreme.

They do call him Bait I suppose, so his fighting ability is as much of a surprise to the House of Slaughter as it is to the reader.

We learn yet more about the inner workings of the House and how rotten it is at its core. The ending is particularly downbeat.  That's a good thing IMHO. I'm not having a dig. 

These were a very good way to kill an hour or so.  I don't find them groundbreaking in the slightest but they are solidly entertaining and haven't lost my interest yet.

Number 4- Bunny- Mona Awad

 

I could just put the phrase "What the actual fuck did I read?" and that would be an accurate summation of this book. It was certainly one of the most common phrases that went through my mind while I was reading it. 

Samantha Mackie is a student in an exclusive writing school.  In her regular workshop session she is teamed up with "the Bunnies", a group of 4 rich young women who do everything together and call each other Bunny.

Sam's hatred for these vapid self obsessed women knows no bounds.  But when she receives an invite to a Bunny social she finds herself going, against the advice of her best (only) friend Ava.

She soon finds herself completely embraced by th Bunny way of being, and that's where things turn from an older version of Mean Girls into something a lot darker. 

The first time I said "What the actual fuck" would have been around chapter 12 (they're short chapters)  and it was almost a continuous refrain from that point onwards.

The book has a hallucinatory feel that it never loses.  I found myself constantly questioning how much of what was described was actually happening. The writing is top notch.  Awad can write a great sentence with more layers than you could possibly suspect.  I suspect this is one of those books that would read entirely differently second time around once in full possession of the facts.

t's a quick and easy read despite the nearly 400 pages and has layers inside its layers. It's shocking and gruesome in places and utterly surreal throughout. I really enjoyed it and will be checking out her other books in due course. 

Number 3- Little Monsters- Lemire & Nguyen

 

Jeff Lemire really does love his weird apocalypses. 

In this mini series, the brilliant team behind the Ascender./Descender series have reunited for another fantastical vision of the distant future.

This time it's set on earth a few centuries from now. A group of child vampires have been waiting in an unnamed city, living off vermin and passing small animals for three hundred years since something happened that has seen the city deserted of human life ever since.

When a nomadic group of humans wander within range, things change.  The dynamic in the group shifts and their comfortable but boring existence will never bee the same again.

Lemire's writing and characters are up to the usual high standard, and one character death really did evoke a strong emotional reaction from me.

The artwork is absolutely top notch.  This time around, it's mostly greyscale, but with some colours thrown in, particularly red for blood.

After finishing this (a week ago) the first thing I did was order the second and final volume.

If you're a Lemire fan, you can't go wrong with this one.  If you're not a Lemire fan yet, this is as good a place as any to start. You won't regret it.

Number 2- The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt

 

This time last year I was on book number 9.  This year my word count is almost certainly up, but book count is down by 7.

The first thing to say about this is it's long. It's easily one of the three longest books I've read since I started this blog however many years ago it was. It feels like the longest though by a clear distance and has taken me 3 weeks to complete.

Theo Decker is 13 when he's caught up in an explosion in a museum in New York. Two results from the explosion are the death of his mother and his theft of a priceless small painting called the Goldfinch.

This theft underpins much of his existence from then on, eventually entangling him with a  European crime ring and risking his life.

His childhood is spent shuttling between friends and the remains of his family. The rich friends who take him in immediately after the explosion introduce him to  a life of riches and privilege, a life he's forced to leave behind when his deadbeat dad whisks him across the country.

I finished this yesterday and it hasn't quite settled in yet. It is certainly well written and held my interest effortlessly while I had this house brick of a book  But, when I put it down, I struggled to motivate myself to pick it up again on occasion for reasons I can't quite work out.  

Tartt created some compelling characters.  The supporting cast mostly felt very real and sympathetic- Hobie in particular feels like a real person. One offstage death quite upset me so Tartt was doing her job right. The character of Theo is less convincing though.  He undergoes a few character reversals when needed to progress the plot. He also does very little of his own volition to move the plot along. Most of the major events and resolutions to his many problems come through the supporting characters' actions rather than anything Theo does for himself.

There are odd threads from the start of the book left hanging. The dying man in the museum who is responsible for him taking the picture asks him to warn Hobie about something- but this is never followed up on.  Hobie tells Theo about a pair of con artists in great detail (including physical description), but then fails to recognise the one he described in a long one to one conversation.  

Tarrtt's prose is occasionally gorgeous.  She's undoubtedly a very talented writer, but I don't think I loved this book. It's a very good book indeed. Some of the insights she gives into art and the human condition are spot on but there are flaws as I've mentioned above. I'm definitely glad I read it, and will certainly be checking out others from her back catalogue.  All in all, a bit of a curates egg. The other two very long books I've read since I started this were pageturners and I read them in under 2 weeks.  I can't say this ever had that type of energy.

Number 1- Cold Snap- Lindy Ryan

 

This time last year I was writing up bonk number 5. This year it's only number 1. I did finish it more than a week ago to be fair.  But book 2 is an absolute housebrick  that's going to take another week at least at the pace I've managed so far.

On to the important detail though.  I bought this as an impulse buy when I found myself in the city centre with 2 hours to kill and no book. It seemed appropriate for the weather at the time.

Christine Sinclaire was widowed two weeks before Christmas when her husband slipped while fitting lights to the roof. She takes her 15 year old son Billy and their pet cat to the remote cabin that she'd planned with her husband for Christmas. It's a way to avoid reality for a few days over the festive period, and to get away from all the concerned neighbours.

Billy is not happy with the arrangements. He is coping with his father's death almost as well as Christine is dealing with it.

They find they have more than grief and blame to contend with at the cabin.  A creature is stalking the frozen woods. A creature with horns and hooves like a moose, hut that seems to stand on two legs.  A creature that calls to Christine with her husband's voice. Events move from tragic to scary in short order.

This is a beautifully written examination of the impact of guilt, blame and grief on a family. It''s also a pretty scary creature feature.  Christine's response to her husband's death feels genuinely heartbreaking.  She constantly relives his last moments. The author's use of repetition with this is masterfully done. The half descriptions of the creature, so we're never quite certain what this thing is, are equally well done.

The final couple of chapters really get the pulse pounding. There is some proper nightmare fuel present here. Lindy Ryan builds a cloying and oppressive atmosphere. These are two very realistically damaged humans under threat. 

I would certainly recommend this.  An excellent start to the year's reading.

2025 book number 0.5- The Deep- Nick Cutter

 

I started this on 30th December but only finished on 5th of this month so to solve issues on numbering for the year, it's a half. 

I read The Troop a couple of years back and it pretty much set the bar for body horror in literature for me.  This is my second outing into his world of horror.

A pandemic is sweeping the world.  Called the 'gets, it's like dementia on steroids. in it's end stages, people forget everything including how to eat and breathe and just die.

In an attempt to find a cure a team of scientists are working 8 miles below the surface of the Pacific, trying to harness a miraculous new substance they call Ambrosia.

Dr Luke Nelson is a vet. His brother is one of the scientists in the deep sea lab. When all contact s lost with the lab shortly after his brother sends a message asking to see him, Luke takes the perilous trip to the bottom of the ocean. He will soon come to regret that decision.

Things have gone very wrong indeed in the Trieste lab. In the darkest and deepest part of the ocean, something is emerging that is more terrifying than any disease.

Cutter manages to create the most cloying atmosphere of claustrophobia I think I've seen in a book. The sense of dread is palpable.

It's nowhere near as gruesome as The Troop but it is a lot more atmospheric. You can almost feel the walls pressing in and smell the stale air. 

 The Troop was a great ensemble piece, where this one sticks to Luke's POV almost continuously throughout. Luke is a good character and well drawn but I did find myself wanting the POV from  some of the other characters.  This only happened briefly in a section where he reads the diaries of one of the scientists.

This is an impressively bleak novel. Hope is a hard thing to come by eight miles under the sea facing a Lovecraftian entity. The body horror, when it comes, is effectively gruesome and mainly concerning the lab specimens so if that's a trigger, maybe avoid this. 

One of the blurbs on my copy says how this book gives you a reason to be scared of the dark, and I have to say I agree with that statement.

Overall this was a good end/start to the year's reading.

2024 picks of the year

 This (last year) has been a good year for reading for me.  I've completed 107 books and got a good start on number 108. I've read a good mix of genres and have really enjoyed the vast majority. There were 4 that I managed to finish despite hating (they were shortish) and my first DNF since I started the blog.  All my full reviews are a simple scroll away.

In the order that I read them, my top 10 for the year are

A very short but satisfying tale of supernatural detectives.  A great start to the year

Another novella, this one told from the point of view of a mountain lion living above LA. I love that weirdness like this is now available in mainstream book shops.

Paul Auster's final novel is as good as anything else he's written.  A beautiful and moving character study.

Adam Nevill's All the Fiends of Hell is one of the two most terrifying reads of the year.  Possibly the scariest book he's written to date, with some truly hair-raising set pieces

I expected to hate this but loved it.  A gorgeously told story of Shakespeare's son's death.

The other one of the most terrifying books I read this year.  It had me jumping at shadows looking for Other Mommy.

This one is genuinely disturbing. Great writing and needs to be experienced to be believed.

Based on the true story of a medical hoax where a woman was allegedly giving birth to rabbits.  This is an odd one, brilliantly told.  The eponymous Mary might be the most mistreated character I've read about all year. 

Cthulu, mysterious corporations, black magic detectives in the big city.  This book has it all.  One of the most mind-bending things I've read in years.

Finally, this one- a crime story without cops. Brilliantly written.  It turned my internal narrator into the cast of Father Ted. A multi-layered story of small town secrets in Ireland.

So there we have it, the 10 best books I read last year.

The DNF was Almost White by Simon Thirsk. The worst book I finished by an absolute country mile was The Breast by Philip Roth.  How that guy has a career in literature is an absolute mystery to me if that is typical of his work.

Number 107- House of Slaughter vol 3- The Butcher's Return- Tynion et al

Jake Boucher the Butcher is back to wreak havoc on the various monster houses. 

Last seen in volume 1 of the HoS spin off, he's been off grid, saving children and trying to keep them safe from the houses.  Of course, it can't last forever and his old house, the House of Butchers, picks up one of his young proteges.

The scene is set for a violent clash of ideologies.

The script by Brombal is very good indeed, building the mythos of the houses and the interrelationships nicely. The artwork is the best to date.

This series is highly recommended.

Numbers 103 a,b and c- Ghost stories for Christmas- Galley beggar pocket books

 

These were my Christmas day read (I said I was playing catch up). They arrived in early November but were far too pretty to open, so I waited till Christmas day to unwrap them  and the books were just as pretty inside the packaging.

They're all famous enough that I probably don't need to describe the stories (although they're all very slight in terms of plot and I'd end up giving more spoilers than I normally like to give). These are traditional tales of hauntings and premonition. They're all told in very a formal, and arguably quite dated, style. I certainly didn't get chills down my spine from any of them.

However groundbreaking or scary they were at the time, they feel quite cliched and predictable now. That's not to say that they're not worth reading, they certainly are. The stories have hung around for a reason.

The packaging and binding of the books is absolutely top notch and these are perfect stocking fillers for next year if you know someone who loves their old school ghost stories.

I know it's a me problem that I didn't find them more than mildly creepy. 

Number 103- All My Precious Madness- Mark Bowles

 

Quick bit of housekeeping, need to post the last few books from last year. Starting with this-

From that minimalist cover, regular readers of this blog will know this  is a Galley Beggar Press book.

This is Bowles's first novel and I have to say he knows how to string a sentence together.  Whether he knows how to plot a novel is up for question.

In this book, the narrator rails against modern society and all the ills he perceives.  We follow him back and forward through his life in a series of flashbacks and digressions. He becomes more and more annoyed by a particular man he sees as being the symbol of all that's wrong until he snaps and takes violent action.

It's frequently very funny and he does make some valid points. But it is a bit rambly and didn't always hold my interest. 

The final section was certainly the most compulsive in the book.

It's beautifully written, as are all GBP books, but this one didn't completely hit the mark for me. 

6/10 - less ramble, more plot please.

Number 102- Mr Sandman- SJI Holliday

 A quick cheat read and a very good one at that.

Sophie is bored of her safe and predictable boyfriend Matthew. When she meets the eponymous Mr Sandman, a Haitian priest, on a boring day out at the beach that Matthew has arranged, she makes a wish for him to be less boring.

As is par for the course in these stories, be careful what you wish for is very quickly an appropriate piece of advice (albeit delivered far too late).

This is a fast moving and entertaining novella with good pacing, nicely drawn characters and an amusing sense of natural justice. The ending is very darkly funny.  

Holliday's prose is uncluttered and easy to read, and her imagination is nice and twisted.

I had great fun in the 82 pages of this novella, and I think most sensible people will too.

Number 101- House of Slaughter Scarlet- Tynion et al

 

A new miniseries set in the house of Slaughter, and some of the best artwork so far.

We learn more about the running of the House as one of the Scarlet masks, normally a backroom worker, is sent out on a mission.

The artwork has been changed up again, and is again a vast improvement on the art in the original series.

All nicely done and a good way to kill 45 minutes or so.

Number 100- The Institute- Stephen King

I realised I'd gotten 100 books into the year and hadn't read a King, so I had to fix that.

This has been on my shelves since it came out so I know I'm very late to the party in reading this one.

The story opens with an ex-city cop Tim Jamieson choosing randomly to take a payment to leave an overbooked  plane and travel by rail up the country. he stops and settles in a small town in the arse end of nowhere in South Carolina, getting a job with the local police force.

Meanwhile, across the country, a genius boy, Luke Ellis, is kidnapped in the middle of the night and his family murdered.

He wakes to find himself in The Institute of the title. His intellect is not his only gift.  His other gift is the reason he's been chosen. There are half a dozen similarly gifted children here in the front half of the Institute. The staff perform cruel experiments on the children for reasons that become horrifyingly clear as the book moves on.

When a new child joins with extraordinary telepathic powers, the scene is set for a situation the management of the Institute had never predicted.  

When Tim's and Luke's paths cross, the shit really hits the fan. The last 200 pages of this are amongst the most action packed sequences I think King has ever written.

I'm not one of these people who thinks King has never written a bad book, but his hit rate is incredibly high.  I  think this is easily another hit. Tim and his fellow captives in the Institute are some of his most sympathetic and mistreated protagonists to date.  The staff at the institute are more complex than just bad guys doing bad things. They genuinely believe they're doing good for the world and if they can get their sadistic tendencies out once in a while, that's just gravy.

The story moves at a cracking pace for  King novel. I found it difficult to put this book down in the closing stages. And all in King's traditional, easy reading style.

He really is one of the great storytellers and this is one more example of why

Number 99- BRZRKR - Keaunu Reeves et al

 

Second time this year I've read this story. The first time was in the China Mieville novel a few months ago.

This is volume 1 of the comic that started it all off.

I wondered how closely China had followed the storyline, and it turns out so far that it's very close indeed. there are a couple of plotlines that haven't appeared yet, but it's very early day days.

instead of the stylised flashback chapters, we have B talking to a therapist and his memories coming to the fore.

Instead of Mieville's luscious prose, we have some efficiently violent artwork. it all looks good, the story is easier to follow than in the novel (how much of that is familiarity with the story, I'm not sure) and it's a satisfying read.

I'm still not sure if Keanu writing about an immortal warrior and killing machine that happens to look like an idealised version of himself is a sign of hubris or not, but it's entertainng enough I will be picking up the follow on issues.

Number 98- Orbital- Samantha Harvey

 Another Booker winner.  This was the book group read for this month. 

It's very short.  It follows one day in the life of a group of 6 astronauts in a space station, watching the Earth below as they orbit it several times in a day.

It doesn't really have any plot or story.  It's literally just a day in the life of these astronauts.  Nothing they do is different to any other day. 

They're asked to take pictures of a developing weather system on the planet below them.  that's about as much plot as this book contains.

The prose is gorgeous, verging on the poetic. The monotony of living in a space station is captured brilliantly without ever feeling monotonous.  You could possibly argue that there is some repetitive content in this book, but only in the same way that Beethoven's 5th could be considered repetitive.  It's variations on the theme, which sound similar but just different enough to keep the interest. In the case of  any direct repetition, it doesn't sound wrong, it's because its the right thing to do at that point and it all sounds beautiful anyway. 

I actually thought of that particular comparison a couple of pages before that tune was specifically referenced as one of the pieces of music included on Voyager for alien species to potentially enjoy at some point. The direct reference makes it quite an appropriate analogy IMHO.

It's meandering and plotless and filled with philosophical musings.  But thanks to the prose, it's never actually boring. Don't expect action packed sci-fi where the brave astronauts solve all our problems and relax into the mood of the writing and this book becomes a relaxing spa bath of a read. 

There are warnings about the way we're treating the planet, and the super-tornado they witness is explained as a result of global warming, but it never feels like the writer is preaching to the reader. 

Harvey has a remarkable ear for language and a similar skill at transcribing it to the page.  Whether she can write a story or not, I'm not sure. But this is a book you experience rather than read. If you'd told me before I read this that I would like a meditation on infinity, man's place inside it and the impact we're having on our environment as much as I enjoyed this, I'd have laughed at you. A true triumph, in the best possible sense of the word, of style over content (although that said, she does make the content rather thought provoking and interesting in any case).

As per my previous comments about Booker winners, this is not necessarily an easy read. You have to let the mood of the writing take you, then it will take you to orbit if you let it.

Number 97- Kala- Colin Walsh

 

I was a bit nervous about this book.  The plot did not sound overly promising.  Small town, teen friend group, one of them disappears, friend group blown apart. Years later, all of them back in the town and things start happening again, yada yada yada.

So far so tropey, verging into cliche.

Once I started reading it, all my worries were wiped away.  This is one of the top three books I've read this year. 

The plot is not as simple as summarised above. Obviously, most stories do rise above the tropes if they're competently written.  this isn't just competently written though.  there were times reading this that I had to stop and read a paragraph again, not because I didn't understand it, but because it was so well phrased i needed to read it again.

This is just gorgeously written.

A group of 6 childhood friends are blown apart when the eponymous Kala disappears without trace. Life in the town of Kinlough continues as always. Fifteen years pass.

Joe has returned to Kinlough to open a nightclub.  He's a successful music artist and famous in his own right but still has issues with confidence.

Helen has been living in Canada and returns to the town for her sister's wedding. She's had moderate success as a journalist and has exposed a few major controversies in the last decade.  She might not be doing as well as she lets on. but she knows how to investigate when things are wrong. So she thinks.

Mush has never left the town. he still runs the local café with his mother. His face is horrifically scarred for reasons we don't find out till very late on.

Soon after Joe arrives back in town. human remains are found in a building site in the woods on the outskirts of town. Events start to build which draw the three of them together again.  The town's ugly secrets will soon be laid bare.

What makes this book stand out is the prose, the characterisation and the unexpected twists and turns of the narrative. Colin Walsh is an absolute genius when it comes to foreshadowing. the hints dropped through the narrative are so enticing it's almost impossible to put this book down. What caused Mush's scars?  What happened to Kala? Has there been another unexplained disappearance?

This is a crime novel without a policeman at the heart of it.  These are beautifully drawn characters. each chapter is told from the perspective of either Joe, Helen or Mush. Their voices are so distinct you can tell in a couple of lines which character is the focus of any randomly chosen page. Joe's narration is a great example of second person writing.  two books in a row that nailed it....

The tension Walsh builds is remarkable. The treatment of the new disappearance is absolutely perfectly handled. the savvy reader knows something has happened a long time before the  characters catch on and the delay in taking action feels so real and adds to the atmosphere.

I always worry when the build up is so good, is the writer going to blow it all in the final act, but he doesn't.  He lands this ending absolutely perfectly. It's one of the most perfect endings.  None of the characters suddenly develop miraculous fighting prowess to deal with any violence that occurs and it all feels totally real.  The secrets the town is hiding are suitable nasty and there's a reveal that I'm still kicking myself that I missed.

I can not find any issues with this book. The rhythm of the prose (especially for Mush) reset my inner narrator to the cast of Father Ted. That's a good thing by they way. And this is a debut novel! How does someone come straight out of the posts with something this good?

I've no idea what the answer to that is. But you all need to buy this book, or borrow it from a legal source, and read it.  You won't be disappointed.

Number 96- Damnatio- SP Somtow

 

And the story of Sporus and Nero continues. 

This epic trilogy now has something in common with Hitch-Hiker's guide to the Galaxy in that there will be at least 4 parts to it.

Somtow has been unable to complete the series this year as promised for reasons explained in the foreword, but he has given us this volume which covers Nero's time in Greece with Sporus as his Empress at his side to be going along with until the conclusion next year. 

It's an eye opening trip around the Hellenic isles and the signs are growing that Nero's days are numbered. 

This is a fascinating insight into one of the most famous of the insane Caesars of Rome. In this volume he orders the Olympic games to be held in his honour while he's in Greece, just so that he can compete. 

The phrase "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" has never been truer.

The research that has gone into this series is evident but never weighs the story down. It just makes it more compelling.

By this point it's impossible to feel anything but sympathy for poor Sporus. He might be free and an Empress, and therefore a Goddess since Nero proclaimed himself a god, but he's more trapped and enslaved than he was a a slave boy.

From the overarching narrative technique- he is telling his story to the make up girl as he waits to be executed publicly in the Coliseum- we know he is almost certainly doomed, but I'm hoping so much that something might save him. I can only wait for the next volume to find out. 

Number 95 - The seven Moons of Maali Almeida - Shehan Karunatilaka

 

This was the Booker Prize wimer in 22.  Winning that particular prize is not necessarily a guarantee of a good read, and is never a guarantee of an easy read (in my experience).

This book is no exception to part two of that statement. This is written in second person (you did this, you did that) in a freewheeling, almost stream of consciousness style that did not always make it easy to realise what was going on.  Add to that a complex plot involving lots of characters and groups, and lots of Sri Lankan politics from the 80s and 90s, and the potential is there for something totally unreadable.

However this was actually a very good read and well worth the effort. I kind of remembered something about the politics of the book from news reports when I was growing up which made some of the book easier to follow.

Maali Alneida is a photographer.  He's just been murdered prior to the story beginning. Bu who, or what organisation is not going to be revealed quickly. Neither is the why. The list of people with reason to kill him seems to grow with every page.

Despite being dead, Maali has his own problems still.  In the afterlife he has seven moons to sort himself out and try to communicate with those he left behind on the mortal plane. Can he guide his friends and loved ones to the photos he left behind which could change the face of the country? If he doesn't go through the light inside of the seven moons, he could find himself stranded "in between" and prey to demons and worse creatures that roam the afterlife.

This was a challenge to read but well worth it. The second person narration grew on me despite the weirdness of a whole novel in this narrative voice.  It's quite possibly the best complete story I've read in this voice.

The story winds personal struggles and loves with the politics and factions in a horribly violent section of human history. This is gruesome enough to satisfy the horror fan in me. Maali is not a likable character, but he's certainly compelling. there is a reason that so many people have so many good reasons to want him dead. This book also has one of the finest pieces of misdirection I've seen in the final chapters. The solutions to the questions are convincing and totally satisfying.

I'm very glad I read this. It was a worthy winner of the award. It weaved actual events and attacks into the storyline seamlessly enough that the fantastical events become so much more viable. It's a nightmare vision of what might come after, but there is a glimmer of hope present.

If you like a challenging but worthwhile read, this is a very good option.

Numbers 92, 93 & 94- Snow Angels, Black Beth, The Breast

 

Snow Angels- Jeff Lemire & Jock

Yet another post apoc from Jeff Lemire. This time we’re in a frozen wasteland with an apparently never ending trench built into the snow. A village full of people live there with three rules to obey-

1- The Trench Provides

2- You must never Leave the Trench

3- The Trench is endless

When they return from a hunting trip to celebrate Milliken’s 12th birthday, a violent tragedy has struck the village and the perpetrator- the allegedly mythical Snowman is still there. Milliken, her dad, and younger sister, Mae Mae have to run for their lives.

This is up to Lemire’s usual standards, tense, exciting and an intriguing set up. The artwork from Jock is pretty good too with some gorgeous double page spreads and nice character work, especially since, given the setting, our characters are all dressed like they live at the North Pole. To keep them looking recognisable is a talent by itself.

Highly recommended.

Black Beth- From the pages of Scream

Not so recommended. The most interesting part of this is the introduction explaining how the original story found its way into a Scream annual a couple of years after the comic died a death.

The original story itself is beyond cliched nonsense and the artwork is not great. It’s really not surprising that it was discovered in a random drawer in the publisher’s and no one would claim responsibility for writing it.

The continuations written by Alex Worley who wrote the introduction are actually worse on all counts. Lucky this was cheap.

The Breast- Philip Roth

Well the interwebzes well and truly lied to me about this one. In more ways than one. When I was looking to see if there was any context for it, a google search advised that this story was the source of the “Breasted boobily down the stairs” quote. It isn’t. That quote is just a misandrist straw man pisstake- written by a woman. That’s all the context that quote actually needs.

The interwebzes also suggested that this was a book that might be worth reading. It isn’t. It makes Black Beth read like a masterpiece.

The story is a rip from Kafka. Professor David Kepesh wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant breast rather than a monstrous insect. Whereas the Kafka story has something to say that’s worth saying, this doesn’t. Whereas the Kafka is well written and makes the reader feel for sorry for poor Gregor Samsa’s plight, this is pretentiously overwritten and just makes the reader (this one at least) irritated with the central character and a bit grossed out (not in a good way). The fact that he fantasises about naked preteen girls in the last few pages was a particularly unwanted image. 

The only good point is that the transformation is described as being particularly painful. Kepesh deserved it.  I can think of very few literary characters I have despised more. I don't think he's supposed to be hated though. I think Roth wants us to sympathise with his plight.

There is a potential in the idea. It could have been a surreal comic look at existence. Instead, it was 70 pages of a guy wondering how to masturbate without hands. It was tedious in the extreme and if it had been any longer than 70 pages, I would probably not have bothered finishing it.

If you want a really good variation on the Kafka, try The Cockroach by Ian McEwan- which reverses the roles and a cockroach wakes up to find it's an MP... That's a brilliant take on it.

My first, and certainly last, book by Philip Roth.

Number 91- The Feast of All Souls- Simon Bestwick

 

Regular readers of this blog will know I hold Mr Bestwick in high esteem. His books normally guarantee a good creepy read, and this is no exception.

After the tragic loss of her daughter in an accident leads to the end of her marriage, Alice moves back up North to her hometown of Salford to start over again. She buys an old hose in the borough of Crawbeck (a thinly disguised version of an area close to where I live).

Unfortunately, the site her new home inhabits was once home to Arodius Thorne, an industrialist and occultist who was not the most pleasant chap you could hope to meet. Thanks to his activities, there are ghostly children and other presences which all seek to hurt Alice for their own reasons.

Along with John, an ex-boyfriend who reluctantly comes to her aid, she faces a fight for her life and her sanity.

Meanwhile, in a parallel timeline, we hear the story of a woman who fell under the spell of Arodius and learned to regret it.

This is mostly written in Bestwick’s usual gritty and compulsive style. The 19th century sections are convincing enough in the language and provide extra texture and shade to the prose.

Alice’s reaction to the escalating events seems reasonable. She doubts her own sanity rather than abandoning her entire belief in the rational overnight. All the characters are nicely drawn . Thorne is a remarkably nasty villain, and our good guys are sufficiently complex and 3d characters that we can relate appropriately. I felt truly sorry for Alice when we finally learned the reason for the break up of her marriage.

The location is described well enough that I recognised the location despite the name change. When the explanations started coming in, I found myself looking to see if there were any actual urban myths of this type around the area. It felt so convincing. Sadly, it seems that the entire thing is Simon’s invention.

As usual with Simon's work there is a lot of substance behind the story. There are some flashes of black humour present too.  The scene with the local vicar was a particularly dark comic highlight. He juggles several timelines with consummate ease.

Simon Bestwick is one of the unsung talents on the British horror scene and more people need to be reading his books. You really can’t go wrong folks.