At long last, the fourth book in Somtow's remarkable trilogy about the real life slave boy who became Empress of Rome under Emperor Nero (quite literally).
Marc's books wot I read
Thorough, unbiased, mostly spoiler free reviews of the books I happen to read. Strangely popular in Czechia on Tuesdays...
Friday, 18 July 2025
Number 41- Memoriae- SP Somtow
Saturday, 5 July 2025
Number 40- BRZRKR vol 2- Keanu Reeves et al
More of Keanu Reeves imagining himself as an eternal assassin with more blood lust than the entire Mongol hordes.
The artwork is pretty damned good and suits the megaviolence of the story.
Everything I said about volume one still applies here. From reading China Mieville's novelisation of this series, I have a good idea where it's headed and I'm looking forward to continuing.
Number 39- A Song for Quiet- Cassandra Khaw
This is the follow up to Hammers On Bone which I read last year and greatly enjoyed.
This one is even better.
Deacon James is a blues musician travelling across America in search of gigs. He also has something inside him that could be very dangerous indeed. He produces music that can change the world around him and not for the better, music that produces visions of empty and melting faces, gaping mouths and grasping tendrils rising from the pits of some hell dimension.
He's being followed by an apparent madman called Jim Persons- who we the reader will recognise as the narrator of Hammers and Bone.
Will Jim be able to help Deacon and maybe even save the world as we know it?
The way Khaw writes about his music is almost physical. I could almost hear the discordant melodies Deacon was playing. His visions were equally evocative and nightmarish.
I raced through this book in one day, partly because it's short, but mainly because Khaw's prose grabs you by the throat and rags you at breakneck pace through to the end of the story. This is almost a flawless novella. I am in the process of gathering all her back catalogue into my collection, and enjoying every minute of it. I might give Nothing but Blackened Teeth a reread to see if I enjoy it more now I'm more used to Khaw's writing style.
Number 38- Miss Benson's Beetle- Rachel Joyce
Talk about a change of pace. From the dark gritty historical horror of Otessa Moshfegh, to the whimsical ramblings of Rachel Joyce
Number 37- McGlue - Otessa Moshfegh
Tuesday, 24 June 2025
Number 36- Cat Lover- Dan Spencer
Also it sounded more than a little intriguing. From the blurb, a woman living alone with her cat suddenly brings a man into the house. The cat is not happy and plans to get rid of the intruder.
From the book itself, the spirit of a dead ex boyfriend sort of possesses the cat but doesn't have complete control. He does indeed want to get rid of the new man in his woman's life, but, being a cat, can't actually do much about it.
This is an interesting book. The concept is novel and the prose is just off kilter enough to still be readable and weird at the same time.
There are some odd narrative choices. The switch to first person in the cat chapters in the third act was jarring and made very little sense till nearly the end.
I'm not 100% sure I liked it. I kind of did, but it didn't quite deliver on the promise of the plot description. It took itself entirely seriously whilst I was expecting some type of black comedy.
I did like the prose. Clarity was not always the strong point though. Once again in this book I found myself rereading passages, but mainly to try to work out what had just happened this time around. The ending was a bit of an anticlimax.
Would I read a Dan Spencer novel again if he writes another? Probably out of morbid curiosity, but it wouldn't be top of the TBR pile.
Number 35- Thornhedge- T Kingfisher
I read a Kingfisher novel last year and thought it was fairly good. Enough to encourage me to read another. This one has raised the bar considerably. Thanks to this one, she is now in my must read and collect everything she's written list of authors.
This is a dark take on a traditional fairytale. A princess sleeps in a tower and has done for hundreds of years. When a handsome prince arrives on a quest to find the castle, now hidden behind a huge hedge of thorns as large as swords, will the curse be lifted? Not if Toadling, the changeling spirit guardian of the tower has anything to do with it.
This is of course Sleeping Beauty with a twist. The princess should not under any circumstance be woken, she's the bad guy this time around and the sleeping curse is there to contain her.
Kingfisher truly excels in this book. I raced through it in a day. It's gorgeously well written and there were passages I read multiple times because of the lushness of her language.
Toadling is a fabulous creation, an utterly original character with a bizarre set of abilities which may or may not be able to help her with her assigned task.
I don't think I could have loved this book more. Kingfisher is attending an event at my local Waterstones in the very near future. I foresee a spending spree after payday for that one.
Number 34 - Sweet tooth the Return- Jeff Lemire
Given the ending of the original Sweet Tooth series, I was surprised to discover that there was a sequel.
I really enjoyed this despite the fact that the premise directly contradicts the ending of the original series.
Lemire manages to not just replicate the beats from the original series, and gives us something new and original with the characters. For that I'll let him off with the fact that the entire situation is impossible inside his own universe that he created.
The artwork is an improvement on the first books and Lemire's writing is every bit as convoluted and unpredictable as I've come to expect. It might be a cash in on the Sweet Tooth name, but it's a good one.
Number 33- Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury
Quite simply I think this is one of the most important and prescient novels of the 20th Century. This isn't the copy that I read, but it is one of the four editions I own of this book. It's somewhat fragile these days (it is more than 70 years old after all)
Sunday, 8 June 2025
Number 32- the Blunderer- Patricia Highsmith
Another reread from my teenage years. I wanted to be really clever and use the following plot description which you may recognise from my review for Wilt (indeed I would only have needed to change one letter.
Number 31- Wilt- Tom Sharpe
A reread from my teenage years and I just have to say I was far too young when I first read this book.
I remember thinking it was hysterically funny when I first read it, and that opinion has not changed on revisiting it 35 plus years later.
Wilt dreams of killing his overbearing wife. When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death. Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved.
This is absolutely the funniest thing I've read in several years. there were scenes I still remember from all those years ago. From the initial burial of the rubber sex doll to its eventual recovery, this is farce at its best.
Sharpe is/was a great writer and even a character as weak and worn down by life as Wilt is initially is eminently relatable. HIs journey of self discovery through the multiple indignities he's exposed to in the course of the story is a joy to read.
The side story of where his wife actually is- stuck on a barge in the Norfolk broads with an insane American lesbian and husband- is equally funny and leads to some of the funniest scenes in the book.
Eva Wilt is a force of nature. Her character defies description. We can completely sympathise with Henry's dreams of ridding himself of her, but we still can understand how and why they're married.
It's always strange reading a book written and set in the early 80s. When a restaurant is criticised by one of the charaters as being too expensive because they charge £0.95 for a prawn cocktail starter, it's now a culture shock. When Wilt's salary of £3500 a year is enough for he and Eva to own their own rather large home in the suburbs and keep Eva in all her expensive hobbies, it really does drive home how much some things have changed.
Luckily, it's only the money talk that truly dates this book. Some people might say that some of the humour might not be considered de rigeur these days, but for the most part this has aged well and even the bits that some people would say haven't are still hysterical IMHO.
This is a pitch perfect blend of satire (the internal workings of the college where Wilt teaches are brilliantly done) and bawdy farce. There is some complete filth in here (not explicit, but still filth) that I was far too young to be reading in the 80s, That makes me love it all the more that parents let me read this stuff. As much as Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams helped formulate my sense of humour, Tom Sharpe definitely deserves a look in as another influence.
Friday, 23 May 2025
Number 30- the Buck Stops Here- Sean Seebach
This is the remaining book in the themed series started by Alan Baxter with the Roo.
This was the second one written, but due to the fact that they're all standalone novels and it doesn't matter what sequence they're read in, it's the final one I've bought and read.
It's probably not a surprise to learn that this one is about killer deer. Not just that, but killer Were-deers.
When people start dying horribly in the town of Rockbridge, Sheriff Abigail Laine finds her peaceful life disturbed. Normally she just has a couple of traffic tickets to write up in a typical week. Maybe dealing with the town drunk, nothing more. Now she has an escalating number of bodies to investigate. And she knows the killer isn't fully human or animal.
This is a great fun read. I loved the mention of the book that started this whole series when one of the characters is seen reading the Roo and Alan Baxter gets a big shout out.
The characters are fun and relatable. there are just the right number of Shreddies (tm) in the story and the deaths are suitable gory.
It manages the balance of keeping the plot silly enough to be funny but serious enough to actually build tension in the confrontations in the second half of the book.
This is the best of this mini series after the Roo. It's a quick read with some not overdone social commentary built in. It's no contender for book of the year but if you want a simple fun book with zero pretentions, it's recommended. It does what it says on the tin and lives up to that cover.
Thursday, 15 May 2025
Number 29- This House isn't Haunted but We Are- Stephen Howard
This was an impulse buy on the basis of that title, and the fact that it's very short. Indeed I did finish it in just a couple of hours.
Simon and Priya have just moved to a dilapidated cottage on the North Yorkshire moors to try to renovate the house and their marriage. Their young daughter has recently died in a tragic accident and their relationship is suffering as a result.
The third character in the book is the House itself. All three characters take turns narrating chapters.
This is a very clever take on the classic haunted house story. The chapters narrated by the House are told in an unusually effective second person POV. Simon and Priya sound different enough in their narrations that I have no complaints on that score.
My only quibble about this book is that the ending feels very rushed. Up until that point it was a well written and creepy tale of a couple dealing with extreme loss and the house that tries to fix them. I would happily have read much more of this story if it existed.
There are shades of ghost story and cosmic horror in this small tale of personal grief and the need to be wanted. I will be keeping an eye out for more by Stephen Howard. He is a talent to keep a sharp eye on.
Numbers 27 & 28- Sweet Tooth Books 2 & 3- Jeff Lemire
I'm playing a bit of catch up here since I finished these about 2 weeks ago,
Monday, 12 May 2025
Number 26- Grendel- John Gardner
There are three principle reasons I chose this book- 1- that gorgeous cover, 2- the Marillion song, and 3- my cat is called Grendel. Not necessarily in that order of importance.
This book is actually the basis for the 17 minute long epic track by Marillion. If you've never heard it, I recommend it, I loved it enough to name my cat after it- my previous cat was called Balrog so I was pretty much continuing a theme.
Grendel is the story of Beowulf told from the point of view of the monster. If you're not familiar with that, Beowulf is one of the oldest surviving written stories, an epic tale of Viking warriors getting torn to shreds by a vicious monster known as Grendel.
There's no attempt to make Grendel the hero of this story. He is still a monster who kills for the sake of it. But the first person narration is almost enough to put me on his side.
He's a great literary creation. One of the oldest written monsters given depth and character at long last. I did find myself googling some of the human characters to see if they were invented for this book, but did all seem to be from the original story of Beowulf, although not painted quite so bravely.
It's all quite densely written and despite its brevity, still took me several days to get through. But that's not a bad sign. it just means there's a lot to savour here. Gardner was one hell of a talent. This is poetic, brutal and quite beautiful in a weird ugly way.
If you're willing to put in the effort, this is a massively rewarding read. Highly recommended.
Thursday, 8 May 2025
Number 25- Cosmic detective- Lemire & Kindt
This is possibly the most psychadelic thing I've read from Jeff Lemire so far, perfectly set off by Matt Kindt's basically insane artwork.
Thursday, 1 May 2025
Number 24- Piranesi- Susanna Clarke
Many years ago, I read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and really enjoyed it. However, since then I haven't gotten around to any more of hers until a book group I'm in chose this.
Number 23- Small Things Like These- Claire Keegan
Friday, 25 April 2025
number 22- Snow Angels Vol 2- Lemire & Jock
The mysteries posed in volume 1 find themselves mostly answered in this second volume. The origin of the Trench, and the history of the residents are explained more than satisfactorily.
An excellent ending to the series. The artwork is excellent as is the writing.
Go out and beg borrow or steal it.
Maybe don't steal it. But if you do, and you get caught, don't tell them I told you to.
Number 21- A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World- C A Fletcher
Apparently he also writes as Charlie Fletcher, so I have a few more books to seek out for my ever expanding TBR mountain.
This is every bit as good as the title promises.
100 years after humanity has all but died out after something happened to make 99.999% of the population infertile, the last few settlements of humans are scattered far and wide.
There are a couple of families on the Scottish Isles. When a smooth talking thief visits our narrator Griz's family on their island, it sets off a chain of events. The stranger leaves early in the morning, taking Griz's dog Jess with him. Griz sets off on a journey across a deserted Britain to get her back.
This is my second real contender for best book of the year so far. Griz makes for a remarkable narrator. I was thoroughly invested in the quest to retrieve poor Jess. I'm a cat person not a dog person, but this book made me feel for that dog as strongly as Griz did.
Fletcher's depiction of a landscape abandoned for decades and reclaimed by nature is stunning. The pacing and characterisation are spot on. I'd worked out one of the surprises near the end of the book at least 100 pages early, but there was at least one other that took me completely unawares.
I can't really say much else in case of spoilers. This is a beautifully written book that pushed all the right buttons for me and I recommend it unreservedly.