Number 55- The King of Satan's Eyes- Geoffrey Marsh

This is the first book I've read by Geoffrey Marsh.  It is however, probably the sixty somethingth book I've read by this writer.

That is just a slightly confusing way of saying that Geoffrey Marsh is a pen name for one of my favourite writers- in this case Charles L Grant- and this is the first book of his under this pen name that I've read.

Grant's pen names are all water related, Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Mark Rivers and Timothy Boggs. I have yet to source books from those last two pen names. 

Back to this one...

This is the first of the Lincoln Blackthorne series. Lincoln Blackthorne is an adventurer unsuccessfully trying to live a quiet life in a sleepy midwestern town.

These are tongue in cheek adventure novels in which many a buckler is swashed. (I actually googled to see which way round that should be. If you see someone claiming to buckle swashes, they're wrong... ) It's not as funny as the Lionel Fenn Kent Montana books, but is equally outrageous.

Lincoln is relaxing in his tailor shop when he's suddenly attacked by villains with a machine gun. He escapes and is tasked by a local collector of rare objects to find the eponymous King of Satan's Eyes. The King is a playing card from a mystical pack that was scattered many moons prior. Anyone who gains who whole deck of cards can apparently live forever. For reasons. Linc's taskmaster of course has all the cards but this one and needs to complete the set.

It's all quite silly and good fun with half a dozen villains popping up, a chase across South America and the Highlands of Scotland, femme fatales who may or may not be treacherous, and many scrapes with death including falling from planes and close encounters with big cats.  It's vaguely confusing.  I never quite understood how the playing cards were so powerful, but the characters chasing after it did (with the exception of Lincoln who remained pleasantly baffled throughout). 

It's not Grant's greatest work but was a fun and undemanding read. And that cover is just mad. I get the feeling that someone gave Charlie a really bad title and bet him he couldn't make a story out of it.

This character and his scrapes would actually make for a good film or tv franchise. I'd watch it anyway .

Number 54- Hansel and Gretel- Stephen King & Maurice Sendak

 

Whoops, is this my first King read of the year?  I need to get one of his full works down my eyeballs soon.

We all know the story here, Hansel and Gretel taken into the woods to die when they find a witch's cottage yadah yadah yadah

This is King's retelling, and it's pretty standard stuff.  No real changes to the story.  he's simplified his style a touch for the younger readers and there's only the well known little bits of violence in there.

Sendak's artwork is the usual high quality workmanship, colourful and slightly surreal.

There's an introduction by King to tell us how the project came about. 

He actually wrote in Danse Macabre an interesting section about this story and how the subject matter would be something people would not read to their kids if they stopped to think about it, amoral stepmother, evil dad (he knows he shouldn't leave the kids to die but does it anyway, so he's evil.  She sees nothing wrong with it, it's just a way for them to live- so she's amoral) abandon two children to die.  This is followed by enforced slavery, attempted cannibalism and justifiable homicide. 

He's got a point.  I'll still be buying this for my youngest niece for Christmas though.

Number 53- When the Moon Hatched- Sarah A Parker

 

Where do I start with this one?

This is not a good book, and the review may contain some spoilers.

Romance is not my genre, but I have found a couple of books that I did enjoy within it. I read a fair amount of fantasy and typically will enjoy a well written fantasy novel. Romantasy is a mash up genre I've never really tried as it didn't appeal. Therefore I was a bit apprehensive before i even picked this one up.

Even with not much hope of a good book, this managed to subceed (is that the opposite of exceed?)  my expectations on almost every level.

The one claim this book can make to originality is that when dragons die, they calcify and float into the sky to become more moons. Although even Doctor Who had an episode where the moon hatched and a dragon flew out so this could be argued to be a variant on that.

On a world populated by magical fae and dragons, Raeve is an unstoppable paid assassin capable of taking out any target and disappearing into the shadows. Kaan is the dragon-riding king of a neighbouring land. She's fierce and independent and doesn't need a man in her life, but just like that fast show character of the tough woman, every time that Kaan is near her she pretty much loses it with lust and all her abilities seem to fly out of the window. 

We have the traditional hate to love narrative which is annoying enough in a well written book, but in this it's the most irritating I've ever seen it. Every time they meet for the first 400 pages he's saving her life, or healing her wounds, rescuing her from imminent danger while she simultaneously announces how much she hates him, tries to run away from him and tells us readers how much she wants his body. It gets old very quickly.

I know there are only so many stories, and fantasy has a lot of familiar tropes, but some fantasy authors can make the old tropes feel like something new and original. Parker takes the tropes and runs them all in the most predictable fashion possible.  Every plot twist seems to be ripped off from a million better books.  At one point she escapes from Kaan, and finds herself captured by a warrior tribe, who instantly invoke the ancient prophecy standard, and proclaim her their queen with a title that is just far enough from the word Khaleesi to avoid being sued for a direct copy.

All this predictability might be excused if the writing was up to par.  But this is the worst written book I've completed in years. She seems to have favourite words which she uses multiple times in a handful of pages, whether they're good word choices or not.  In the first real chapter of the book, she uses the word "demure" five times in three pages. 

Later on, when she's been captured by the warrior tribe and they're fighting to the death to see which of them should take her as their bride, in a matter of 4 or 5 pages, characters "fist" handfuls of sand, weapons, and assorted other objects at least a dozen times. In a chapter close to the end, in a protracted and cringeworthy sex scene, Kaan fists first her hair and then "his own length". In a chapter from the main villains point of view, he also "fists" his "solid cock". Someone really needs to point Parker in the direction of the words Grab, Hold, Grasp, Clench, Grip, Seize, or any one of the dozens of better words she could have used.  

Speaking of cringeworthy sex scenes, (these thankfully only take up two chapters) Raeve refers to her lady parts as her throbbing entrance at least 5 times in those two short chapters. She refers to her heart as the hard organ inside her chest dozens of times throughout the book. It's a sign that she's softening when it just becomes the organ in her chest.  

In Kaan's chapters, he also refers to the organ in his chest multiple times.  This highlights another basic flaw in the writing. If writing first person narratives from multiple points of view, you should be able to tell the difference between the voices. You can't.  The villain swears more in his chapter than the other three narrators, but they all have the exact same verbal tics and phrasing. 

And.

The.

Strange.

Emphasis.

Thing.

That happens at least twice in every chapter. I think I counted 8 times in one of them. 

It's all very poor, repetitive, very derivative, repetitive and predictable, with the most annoying and cliched characters I've had the misfortune to read about in years. The plotting is lazy in the extreme.  When she's decided she needs to get revenge on the man who captured and tortured her in the early chapters, but instead settles down for sex fantasies with Kaan in a cabin in the forest, the villain conveniently decides to travel to Kaan's kingdom for a visit allowing her to seek her revenge without having to really put any effort into the search for him. 

The reveals as we get close to the end of the book are not shocking. They're painfully obvious set ups for book two. I was seriously considering DNFing this book with only 50 pages to go out of 570.  The best I can say about the ending is that they at least cleared up one plotline. 

In case anyone was wondering, I will not be reading book two.  

Number 52- Love on the Dole- Walter Greenwood

 

Many moons ago, in the days when I still had a full head of hair and barely needed to shave once a fortnight, I played Harry Hardcastle in the stage adaptation of this book.

I was kind of aware that it was based on a novel, but I never made the attempt to read the book until the end of last month (sorry, playing catch up)

The story is fairly controversial for the time it was written. The Hardcastle family live in Hanky Park, a massively deprived area of Salford where everyone lives hand to mouth, pawning their family's good clothes every week to afford food. Where siblings share beds regardless of gender, even sharing their parent's rooms in their tiny houses with large families.

Harry starts as a clerk in the local pawn shop but foolishly quits to apprentice at the local factory. Sally works at the mill.  She's described as being a natural beauty and half the male cast of the book are deeply in lust with her, only union leader Larry Meath wants her for her mind as well as her other assets. Sam Grundy, the villainous bookmaker, only wants one thing from her.

We follow the family through nearly ten years of their subsistence. Harry has his own girlfriend and, despite not being married, engages in marital activities with her on a regular basis. The extra marital affairs would certainly have been scandalous at the time, and the very end of the book, with the way Sally is able to lift her family out of the absolute poverty would have raised a lot of eyebrows.

This is poverty porn 1930's style. The copy I read was printed in 1935 which explains the condition. 

A few major takes I got from this book were exactly how much life has improved. Most of the employment tricks used in this book, the hours, the hire and fire policies, the pay, etc would be completely illegal today. The welfare state provides a safety net that we should all stop taking for granted. 

Yet, despite all the differences, there were times when I was thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The attitudes of the well off to the poor, the response to the poor standing up for themselves, and the government trickery to pay the poor as little as they could all felt very familiar even today. 

This is an important yet fairly ignored work. It's basically a UK version of the Grapes of Wrath and deserves more attention. 

The writing is typical of the time it was written. By today's standards it could be described as overwritten, but it's still an easy read. Some verbal tics such as characters ejaculating when they talk raise smiles for the wrong reason.

The dialect the characters talk in might be difficult for some readers, but, having lived in Salford myself for a few decades, I didn't have any issues. I was surprised to learn that the area where I work used to be the local millionaire's row. The main location of the book was demolished in the 60s and 70s and is now a heavy concentration of high rise blocks.

This is a fascinating glimpse at bygone times. Highly recommended.

Number 51- After the Fall- Queyssi & Juzhen

Now this was just poor in virtually every aspect of storytelling.

The artwork is good although it does seem like the worst excesses of early sword and sorcery artwork where all the women have impossibly perky bosoms and none of them wear many clothes. The female costumes are never particularly practical.

The script is cliched nonsense.  the panels below the review are typical.

This is the first time I've seen a blatant continuity error in a graphic novel.  on page 6, one of the impossibly perky-bosomed women is holding a toddler in her arms.  The toddler is nude and his/her bottom is clearly visible.  In the second panel on page 7, the woman holding the child passes them to another impossibly perky-bosomed lady (this one has her magnificent mammaries on full display) but now the child has a brown tunic.  Two panels later on the same page, they appear to be nude again.

The plot is typical post apocalyptic monsters running around with mutant humans and the real monsters are the remaining normal people type of thing, along with a plot reveal that throws the entire timeline of the story onto the scrapheap.

This was very poor apart from the artwork.  Really not recommended.  if someone offers you a copy, ask them why they hate you so much.

File this one under I read it so you don't have to.  Although you might enjoy the bosoms.  there are a lot of them in here.

.

Just to be unambiguous, there are no characters in the story with more or less legs than the standard bipedal humanoid.

Number 50- The Midnight Library - Matt Haig

 

From the multitude of reviews, this is a totally original concept and unique storyline for a book. 

It isn't.

It's not a bad book by any stretch, but I don't think this is a particularly amazing book  either. 

It's not an original idea. It's just another entry in the list of "What would your life be like if you'd made different choices" subgenre. 

Nora is fed up.  She never made it as a swimmer when she was young, her music career never took off, her novel never got written, and she's just been sacked from her dead end job in a music store.

She decides to end it all and wakes in a strange library where every book she chooses is one of the lives she could have lived if she'd made different choices.  

Cue a string of "Success isn't everything if you don't have your family/friends" type stories and an ending so cheesy the gorgonzola in my fridge is jealous.

It's all very easily readable and moderately entertaining. But it's so predictable.  There are no surprises at all at any point in this book.

The lesson at the end is condescending and insulting to pretty much anyone desperate enough to be doing what Nora tries. 

I don't think I was bored at any point while I was reading it.  But I certainly wasn't particularly entertained either.

This was my first matt Haig book, and almost certainly my last.

Number 49- What we talk about when we talk about love- Raymond Carver

 

Apparently this is a classic collection of short stories. I know it's what made Carver's name on his side of the Atlantic, but I'm not sure I agree with the general adulation this collection seems to attract.

For me, a good short story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

With few exceptions, this is a collection of middles. 

We're dropped into the middle of a situation (with varying degrees of interestingness) and after a few pages, Carver stops writing and moves onto the next.

None of the contents of the book are badly written.  I do like the spare prose style. there isn't a wasted word in the book.  However, there are no particular bon mots or truly memorable events.  

There are several very nice character studies.  He manages to build the characters very efficiently. They seemed quite real as I was reading each story.  The dialogue always felt natural and unforced.  It's a shame they were never particularly memorable.

I finished this book last week and I struggle to remember what most of the stories were about from the titles. It's not a good sign when they've faded so completely from my memory in such a short time. I cannot recall any plot detail for most of the contents of the book. 

 

There are two stories that I thought did have full set of beginning, middle and end and they are also the stories that stuck with me the most.

Tell the Women We're Going is a disturbing vignette. It has a particularly subtle way of telling a very unsubtle story.  He builds tension beautifully in the second half of the story. The last line of the story is a masterpiece of understated brutality.

Similarly, Popular Mechanics has a last line that hits hard in a backhanded way.  In just three pages he gives us a deeply shocking and disturbing story. this is the story that has stuck with me most from the collection.

I don't think this is a BAD collection of stories.  I've read far far worse, and as I said, I like the prose. I just found it overall a little underwhelming and forgettable. It subceeded my expectations by quite a distance. I might try more Carver in future.  He won't be very high on the TBR pile though.

Number 48- King Sorrow- Joe Hill

This was a NetGalley ARC read in exchange for a fair review.

Joe hill continues the family tradition of the 900 plus page horror blockbuster doorstop. 

And he does it in style.  

When Arthur Oakes falls foul of a local group of drug dealers, he is forced to steal rare and valuable items from the university library. After he steals a rare arcane volume on mythical creatures, a group of his university friends band together to help him. In the process, they drunkenly (and druggedly if that is a word) release a deadly force on the world in the shape of King Sorrow, a dragon from the Long Dark who will do their bidding.  

The Dragon sorts out their issue, but the following year he returns and forces them to choose another victim.  They will have to choose victims every year unless they can find a way to rid themselves of the beast.

This is very firmly set in his father's universe.  Early on, two characters argue about whether Greg Stillson was using a baby as a human shield, or trying to save it from the gunman Johnny Smith.  There is also a not very subtle nod to the Dark Tower series in the summoning chapters.

The story is epic in scope, with a story spanning several decades and two continents.  At times it feels a little episodic, but all the plot threads do interweave. enough that by the end it was no longer an issue. 

there are plot twists and shocks, and every time you think you have the hang of where the story is going, Hill pulls the rug out from under you again. With 100 pages to go, I had no idea who might still be alive for the finale. 

Some of the set pieces are positively cinematic. particularly the sequence on the plane. King Sorrow himself is a wonderful creation, a Faustian bargainer and an utterly terrifyingly powerful beast. 

This might be Hill's masterpiece.  At no point in the 900 pages did the story seem to drag.  Even the first 90 pages which were mainly scene setting for the arrival of the eponymous evil are steeped in dread, with human villains every bit as scary as what was to follow.

With some sly humour weaved into the narrative, this is an almost flawless book.  If I had to pick a fault it would be that he refers to the twins as identical at one point, when one is male and the other female. But in the scheme of things, that's almost an irrelevance.

This is released properly next month and I will definitely be snagging myself a physical copy.  And you all need to do so as well- because I told you to.

Number 47- Grace - A.M. Shine

 

My regular readers out there will know that I am a big fan of AM Shine, even if I do get frustrated with some of his endings.

This was a NetGalley review copy of his new book, due out in October. 

This time around the horror is on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland - the Isle of Croaghnakeela- henceforth referred to as IoC.  I'm not typing that out more than once.

The eponymous Grace runs a rare book shop on the Irish mainland.  When she receives a phone call from a Catholic priest (Father Richard) on the IoC to tell her that her birth mother has died and left her her house, she drops everything to travel over to find out about her past.  She was adopted as an infant and has never known about her birth family.

Of course, the island has more than its fair share of secrets, some of them deadly, and these were the reason that her mother gave her up. When she returns to the island, it allows an old evil to rise up once more, breaking the stalemate that has existed on the island for the past 30 years.

As usual with Shine, this is incredibly atmospheric and has a number of twists and turns in the plot.  I thought one of them was sprung from left field until I realised he'd been dropping hints the whole time and, actually, this was one of the best hidden in plain sight plot twists I've seen for a good long while.

The monster at the heart of the story is truly terrifying.  It appears that Irish folklore has a lot of untapped horror potential, and AM Shine is an expert at mining those seams.

This is the least predictable of his books so far.  Before the book is halfway through, just when I thought I knew what was coming, the narrative moved in a wholly unforeseeable direction and never looked back. The second half of this book barely lets up the tension.  Some of the set pieces are among the scariest bits of writing I've seen outside of an Adam Nevill novel.

At a brief 221 pages, this packs in more atmosphere than a lot of books three times the length. The picture he paints of the island is so intense you can feel the fog creeping around you as you read it. The islanders are all well drawn characters and we understand their flaws and their actions.  

With horror ranging from the deeply personal to almost cosmic, and a truly terrifying creature at the heart of it all, this is island horror at its best.   (Is island horror a separate subgenre?  If it isn't, it probably should be.)

An easy 8.5/10.  I will definitely be buying a physical copy when it is released properly.

Number 46- Daisy Jones and the Six- Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

After 200 pages of walls of text with no paragraph breaks in the last book I read, the format of this book was a blessed relief.

This is written as snipets from interviews pieced together into a coherent story about the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac style rock band in the 60s and 70s.

Like a talking heads style documentary, the character name would be followed by mostly single paragraphs talking about the events under discussion at the time. Occasionally, someone would have a whole page talking about how they felt or why they did something, but it was rare.  There were frequent interjections of single short sentences.

The plot is slim. It's a rock and roll memoir from the POV of all the band members, management and their significant others. We know from the start that this is going to be a rise and fall story and the reasons for the fall are all too visible in the rise.

I thought this was a real page turner.  I read the whole thing in a matter of three days or so. It's fast paced, brilliantly evocative of the era and totally convincing.

The contradictory voices are a great way of suggesting deeper stories hidden below the surface and the character's truths hidden somewhere between what they actually say.

Daisy and Billy are a great pair of central characters and, as much as I hate will-they-won't-they narratives normally, I was invested in this one.

This is also the first time I've been able to listen to the soundtrack of a book as i read it.  The music from the TV series was released as the Aurora album that we read about. It's noticeable that the lyrics are quite different in the actual songs but I really quite enjoyed it. I normally like heavier fare, but this was a genuinely good album.  I probably need to watch the tv show now to see if the changes for tv explain the different emphasis in the lyrics.

Highly recommended.

Number 45- Satantango - Lazlo Krasznahorkai

 

This was a DNF for several reasons.

The main one is that after 200 pages I still had no inkling of any type of story and there has been at most 500 sentences in all those pages.  Very few pages had more than three very long run on sentences.

There were no paragraph breaks, just massive walls of text on every page. It was wearying to try to read it.

I never realised how much paragraphs improve the reading experience.  I can thank this book for that insight but not much more.

The plot seemed to centre around a bunch of very similar characters in a village and someone they thought was dead returning to said village for reasons too buried in walls of text to be interesting.

Apparently there is a film of this book that's 8 hours long with verrrrrryyyyyy long sloooowwww shots.  that's exactly what this felt like.

Not a fan.

Number 44- Fever Beach- Carl Hiaasen

 

Florida's greatest satirist returns with one of his most polemical novels to date. I can't imagine any Trump supporters reading this and enjoying it.  The depiction of the MAGA crowd is somewhat less than complimentary. 

Twilly Spree, last seen rampaging the everglades with Skink, dishing out justice to those who defile the environment, is back.  This time he meets the beautiful Viva Morales and soon finds himself embroiled in a plot involving corrupt congressman, a white supremacist militia group who would struggle to find three brain cells in their entire membership, a fake charity exploiting children, and a pair of rich zealots funding the whole shebang.

Dale Figgo, leader of the Strokers for liberty, is one of the funniest creations in Hiaasen's entire catalogue. When I saw the name of his white supremacist group, I thought strokers must mean something different in American slang.  But it doesn't.  Figgo was kicked out of the Proud Boys for a feces related incident on January 6 and formed his group as a competitor. 

Hysterically, the Proud Boys genuinely have rules preventing their members from pleasuring their own members. In Figgo's group, his soldiers can play with their privates all they want, he even provides them with sex toys he steals from his day job. 

This book is not what you would call subtle.

What I would call it is brilliantly funny. I'm guessing that the congressman is a very easy to recognise interpretation of a genuine congressman if you know more about US politics than I do, so i am probably missing out on a few jokes, but it doesn't matter. Clure Boyette is one of the most memorable characters in the book.  His utter incompetence is rivalled only by Dale Figgo. 

Hiaasen's targets in this book are very easy to hit, but he scores bullseyes with every shot.  There is a lot of low hanging fruit here that Hiaasen has plucked and served as a gourmet meal. I don't normally find a book entertaining on the basis that it will make a lot of people angry, but this will annoy all the people that deserve to be annoyed. 

And that pleases me immensely.  It's the gravy on top of a veritable feast of top class comedy writing. Basically, if you take this book personally and feel offended by it, you probably are the intended object of the joke. 

This is easily the best thing he's written for a few years. Go out and buy it. 

Number 43- Coyotes Vol 2- Lewis & Yarsky

 

The second volume of this unusual feminist take on the werewolf legend.

I actually found this much more entertaining than volume 1.  Packed full of violence rendered in gorgeous artwork, combined with great thoughtful storytelling.

This manages to hammer home its messages without ever feeling preachy about it. 

So, thought provoking, beautiful to look at and entertaining, what else do you need from a graphic novel.

Number 42- Starship Titanic- Terry Jones

Book 42 as ever has to be Hitchhikers related. 

This is one of the few that I'd not already read.  Based on one line from HHTTG (about the Starship Titanic undergoing a Sudden Massive Existence Failure (SMEF) a mere ten minutes out of space dock), Douglas Adams took the idea and used it for a computer game.  The novel of the game was handed over to Monty Python's very own Terry Jones.

So story by Adams, words by Jones, should be a recipe for success...

Sadly, the most remarkable thing about this book is that it was written entirely in the nude. This was the condition Jones made when he was offered the writing task.

It starts extremely well.  We are introduced to a cast of aliens involved in the building of the ship, including the genius architect behind the design. Also the corrupt politicians who've been cutting corners and planning an insurance job.

The problem with the book starts once the ship has suffered the SMEF. At this point the action switched to Earth and a cast of tedious humans.  The Starship suddenly appears in the atmosphere and crashes into a building they've just bought and they're taken on board as passengers while the genius architect is left on Earth. This is a third of the way through the book and a sudden complete change of cast.  A couple of the original characters pop up but not for a long while.

The biggest problem with this book is that it isn't really all that funny. It also doesn't fit in with the HHTTG universe since the Babel Fish isn't a thing and translation from alien to human is done through the ship's computers. The humour is very broad and nowhere near as clever as Adams's writing. 

It's very readable.  I can't say I was ever bored reading it, but it never rose to the ranks of classic like the original series.  It also falls into the same trap as many novelisations of games, where the characters keep getting moved onto side quests before returning to the main plot.

I think this one is for completists only.

Number 41- Memoriae- SP Somtow

 

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).

Book 3 finished with Nero and Sporus returning to Rome after their eventful trip to Greece. Nero has lost support of the Senate and his time as Emperor is now limited.

Is there anything Sporus can do to help himself in the Post-Nero Rome?  From the entire structure of these books, with Sporus telling his story to his make up artist before being sent into the Coliseum to be viciously murdered, we know the answer is probably a resounding No, but this book manages to remain compulsive as it moves to the inevitable conclusion.

The research that's gone into this series feels meticulous, but rather than feeling like info-dump which can be a danger, it feels like atmospheric world-building. The city of Rome is so well portrayed you can almost smell it.  

The complex politics of the Senate are described in an easily accessible and understandable way.  

It's sad to see the nd of this series, and that's always a sign of a good book. It's impossible to feel anything but sympathy for Sporus.  He really has had a tragic existence, even if he was revered as a Goddess at one point.

A fitting end to a great series. 

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

When my book group suggested this book I was convinced I was going to hate it. The reviews on the back cover using all the phrases that make my stomach churn in entirely the wrong way.  this sounded like the literary equivalent of a diabetic coma.

However, once I started reading it, I found it an object lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

Miss Benson is a teacher in 1950s England.  When she catches her class passing around a distinctly uncomplimentary picture of her, she experiences a moment of clarity about how much she hates her job and her life, and she walks out on it all to try to fulfil a childhood ambition- to find an almost legendary golden beetle in the remotest part of the remote land of New Caledonia on the opposite end of the world. 

She advertises for a companion to come with her on the journey, but due to circumstances, takes the distinctly unpromising Enid Pretty with her.  Enid is everything Marjorie Benson isn't. At first they clash, but as is the way in these things, they find unexpected depths of friendship on their voyage of mutual self discovery.

Normally this is the type of thing to make my eyes roll far enough to see the back of my own skull and dislocate the optic nerve into the bargain. But Joyce's writing is sublime.  She has a lovely turn of phrase and I can only describe this book as delightful.  I've never used that word to describe a book before, but it's easily the best I can think of for this one.

There is a dark(ish) heart to the story.  Miss Benson has sad reasons for being so obsessed with beetles, while Miss Pretty has a dark secret of her own. Also, Miss Benson is being followed by an ex-soldier with PTSD and a dangerous obsession of his own after Marjorie refused his application for the role of her companion. The ending of the book is a genuine emotional rollercoaster.

This is an easy contender for the best book of the year so far.  I never expected that when I picked it up and read the reviews on the back cover. I am now going to have to add her back catalogue to my ever expanding TBR pile.

Number 37- McGlue - Otessa Moshfegh

It's 1851 and McGlue wakes up from an alcoholic bender in the brig of a cargo ship.  He's told he murdered his friend and colleague (and possibly much more) Johnson.  He has no recollection of having done so because of his drinking problem.

With enforced sobriety, McGlue finds himself reliving the worst parts of his history. He needs a drink more than anything to stop the stream of memory.

This is another historical almost horror novel from the author of Lapvona which so impressed me last year. I'm not sure this one is quite as successful.  It didn't have the same visceral impact on me that Lapvona did.

It's still an excellent read and I fully understand how it was shortlisted for the Booker in 2016. Moshfegh is an unusual writer and she very successfully manages to portray all McGlue's internal conflicts through the fractured nature of the writing.

She makes no attempt to sanitise 19th century attitudes for a 21st century audience, so some readers will take offence to some content in this book.  However, it would be a much lesser book if she  had tried to do so, and the character would have felt much less realised.

It's not her masterpiece- so far I think that's Lapvona- but an excellent character study of a deeply flawed person in a convincing historical context. A strong stomach is required at times, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Number 36- Cat Lover- Dan Spencer

No prizes to regular readers of this blog as to why I bought this book. Anything with a cute kitty on the cover :) 

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.