Number 84- The Dead Take the A Train- Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

 

Cassandra Khaw writes like no one else about eldritch horrors. They're at their best when writing inhuman central characters. Their prose has an unworldly quality that suits the bizarre and extreme.

Richard Kadrey (in the one book of his I'd read previously) writes a hard boiled fantasy noir crime stories with a tough edge that would make Sam Spade quiver in fear.

Together they've written this and it plays up to both of their strengths.

From the opening page we're thrown into the life of the rather blandly named Julie,  a demon hunting freelancer in New York who uses magic based in pain to earn a crust, taking on the dirty jobs other demon hunters shy away from.  

I knew I was in for something very different when, with zero explanation, on the very first page,  a bride was mentioned with blood spurting from the stump of her missing hand, whilst her mother complains to Julie about the mess.

Meanwhile Julie's ex-boyfriend is making a power grab in a supernatural agency. His actions are going to cost Julie dearly, and possibly bring about Armageddon.

This book is a near perfect blend of Khaw's wildness and Kadrey's noir plotting. It does flag slightly in the second act, and Julie's romantic subplot taking centre stage maybe softens up the character a touch too much. But that's a minor quibble and never made me want to stop reading.

This is the first part in a duology, but still manages to give a satisfying ending. there are enough plot threads still open to make part two a definite "read and buy immediately" title when it emerges from the pits of this pair's imaginations.

The book is gory, wild, mind-blowing and exciting. The prose isn't as extreme as Khaw normally writes and may well convert some of those who read and hated Blackened Teeth. The demons are pretty damned scary, and the human villains easily give them a run for their money.

If you want a real wtf piece of writing with demons, angels, evil corporations in living buildings, and world threatening danger, this is an easy choice.

Number 83- Ghostwritten- Ronald Malfi

 

My second Ronald Malfi book is this collection of 4 vaguely linked novellas, each on the theme of dangerous books, and set in the same universe, with cameos from recurring supporting characters.

Each one is a standalone story though 

The Skin of Her Teeth

The opening tale is a cursed novel that drives people insane if they try to adapt it in any way. 

There's a pretty major plot hole in the centre of this story that I can't mention because of spoilers.

It didn't detract from the story though which is a good fun variation on the old haunted object theme.

The characters are all relatable and the world we're in is set up nicely. 

The Dark Brothers' Last Ride

I can't choose between this one or the next as my favourite in the collection.

A pair of small time criminals, Danny and his volatile brother Tommy. are hired to transport a book to a mysterious customer.  There are very strict rules about this including "Don't open the briefcase" and certainly "Don't touch the book".

Of course, Tommy touches it. He quickly regrets it. They're traveling along a route specified by the customer which takes them into a strange liminal world. And all the time, things are getting worse for Tommy. This is actually genuinely emotional at the end of the story.

This Book Belongs to Olo

This is my other favourite in the collection.  Olo is a ten year old boy (nearly 11) who has made the most amazing pop up book of his house. When he moves parts of the pop up house, it changes the real one.  For his birthday he invites all the children from the local park to his birthday party. he needs new friends to join the old friends trapped in the fictional parts of his house.

There's a tonal shift in the writing for this story that makes it seriously off kilter and weird long before any supernatural elements are revealed. Olo is one of the most sympathetic villains you're likely to read about.

The Story

We close the collection with an online "find your own adventure" book that seems to have more impact on the real world than it should. Our unlucky hero stumbles into it and... well... he's not in for a good time afterwards.

This one takes its time to get running with the story, but ties everything together in quite a genius final act.

This is an excellent set of stories and has persuaded me the Black Mouth wasn't a fluke.  Malfi needs to be better known on this side of the pond. He really is the natural successor to King.  I get the same vibes from the two books I've read so far as I do with the best of King. I normally don't compare horror books with King because it feels too lazy a comparison, but in this case, I can't not compare. 

I have two more of his books in my TBR and am looking forward to them even more now.

Number 82- Baal Robert R McCammon

 

I was warned before I started this one that I probably wouldn't like it. It's McCammon's first novel after all and he wasn't up to his later standards.

I'm happy to report that, despite some reservations, I had a good time with this book.  It was definitely a step up from my last book, since I actually finished it.

It's very much a product of its time and some aspects of the book probably wouldn't get through if it was written today.

A woman is assaulted on her way home from work late one night.  he body is covered in strange hand shaped burn marks where her assailant held her down.  The child born from the assault is not fully human and casts a dark shadow over everyone in his life.

When he eventually lands in an orphanage, he orders everyone to call him Baal and leads a revolt, burning it down. As he leaves, he takes a group of devoted followers with him.

It's only in section 3 of the book, nearly 100 pages in when we finally meet a character on the side of humanity who seems destined to live to the end of the book.  Baal himself now takes more of a background role in the story. Our first hero of sorts is a professor who goes looking for a fellow academic who has gone missing in the far east trying to investigate the cult led by our eponymous antichrist type character.

He meets a mysterious stranger named Michael who is also seeking Baal, and together they go on a quest to stop his reign of terror from starting.

It's not as well written as his other books that I've read, but the unusual story structure makes the story slightly less predictable. Some of the attitudes and casual racism on display hit a wrong note that it probably didn't back in the day.  And I'm pretty certain that Inuit is a more appropriate name for the Eskimo people.  

I wonder after reading this if They Thirst and Swan Song are types of sequel to this book, as the ending is vague enough on whether the evil is gone or just transmuted and spread. 

Overall this is no masterpiece, but I never found it less than readable and he did build a good atmosphere in places. His depiction of the shanty towns in the Middle East was grimy enough I almost needed to take a bath after reading it. I found myself wishing that he'd included the cult in California which is referenced at one point (and on the back cover) as another segment of the book.  

Number 81- Not Quite White- Simon Thirsk

 

This is my first DNF since I started this blog. I struggled through 300 pages so I don't feel guilty  about classing this as a full book in my count for the year.  God knows it felt like 10.

In the village of Llanchwaraetegdanygelyn, Welsh is the number one language spoke. The village is hidden deep in the valleys and mountains of North Wales and has no electricity or running water. The locals won't allow electricity to come to the village because it apparently means the English will overrun the place and they won't be allowed to use their own language any more.

Jon Bull is a young black civil servant sent to the village to negotiate the supply of piped water and electric. There he meets the young Gwalia and they fall madly and predictably in love with each other. 

This is supposed to be a biting and "endlessly funny" satire. To describe something as endlessly funny when one of the biggest revelations in the first half of the book is about a brutal gang rape oon one of the characters is a bit of a stretch.  I think it made me smile slightly two or three times in what I managed to read.  it's truly laugh a decade material.

As for the satirical elements, I grew up in North Wales after moving there from England in the 70s. I remember hearing about holiday homes being burnt down in the 80s, but by the time this is set, all that was well and truly over. It's hardly biting satire when it's decades out of date. There was a scene with a racist taxi driver who oh so funnily used the phrase nig-nog somewhere in the region of 30 times in three pages. Not even the most committed racist has used that phrase since the 70s. Again, decades out of date with his social commentary.

It gains a point from me in that the two alternating chapters, narrated by each of the two main characters, actually do sound like they're written by different characters. They have their own voices and they're distinct. 

it's a shame the story is so poor.  the characters are all stereotypes lifted from the wrong decade. The whole set up is totally unbelievable.  As someone who grew up in North Wales, I would expect to be able to recognise the targets of the alleged humour, but none of it rings true enough in any way shape or form. the characters are too over the top to be believable, but not grotesque enough to be witty send ups.

There's also a massive plot hole at the centre of the story- more of a gaping chasm or a Marianas Trench than a regular hole- in that they're stalling the electricity by refusing to allow pylons or poles to be constructed, saying the wires have to be fed underground. This would apparently make it impossibly expensive to do.  However, they have telephones in the village as Jon phones his office on a regular basis. Therefore, either underground cables or poles are already in place and the whole game of small town politics falls over into even more total stupidity. 

The rest of my book group seemed to like it, so you dear readers may appreciate it. For me, it's the very definition of a book that when you put it down, you can't pick it up again.

Number 80- The Great Troll War- Jasper Fforde

 

The conclusion of the Last Dragonslayer tetralogy. I brought this many spots up the TBR after the cliffhanger at the end of book 3. 

Jennifer Strange is back and facing her greatest challenge yet. At the end of the last book, we found out that in her forced excursion to wales, trolls had invaded the rest of the UnUK. Now only Jenny and her ragtag bunch of friends are all that stands between the troll's complete takeover of the land, and also the Wizard Shandar's fiendish plans for world domination at the very least.

As usual this is brilliantly inventive stuff.  despite being YA, the plot has become extremely convoluted and elements from all three previous books are essential to following the story.

It's hysterically funny- also as usual.  But the drama in this volume sometimes overwhelms the comedy.  There are a couple of character deaths that felt unnecessarily cruel on this particular reader at least.  I liked those guys! Damn you Fforde! 

I know he's writing about a war and people will have to die... but not those guys 😢😢

That's probably a good criticism that he's made me feel so much for the death of fictional characters but I'm reading a comedy. I didn't expect those feels.

The solutions to the problems are ingenious (once again as usual) and the clues are layered through the narrative flawlessly so none of it came so far out of left field as to feel dumb (the author of the previous book I reviewed could take notes here). 

Page 215 is the most glorious piece of meta-fiction I've read in many years. 

This probably wouldn't work as a standalone novel, but as the closing part of a genius series, it works amazingly well. lots of laughs, and some sad farewells.

Recommended reading - as long as you've read the other three.

Number 79- Where Sleeping Girls Lie- Faridah Abike-Iyimide

 

Another book with pretty red spredges.

This YA novel was the choice at a new book group I joined recently and would probably have slipped past my consciousness entirely otherwise. 

Sade Hussein (luckily she corrects someone on how to pronounce her name about three pages in so I knew Shar-day rather than say-d) is the new girl at an exclusive boarding school. Her room mate disappears on her first night and a few weeks later, a student is found dead at one of Newton House's famous parties.

Sade is suspected to be involved in both of these incidents. Can she prove her innocence?  What are her own deep hidden secrets?

This was all going fine for the first 400 pages or so despite some reservations on the nature of the school itself. Then the explanations started to kick in and IMHO the story pretty much fell to pieces.

On the subject of the nature of the school.  This is supposed to be a boarding school somewhere near London, England. However, Sade has apparently joined the third year.  She's 16- which would make her a 5th former (or maybe year 10 these days). The school has it's autumn half term two weeks after Halloween- which is far too  late unless the term only started in October (a month late for UK schools). There's no mention of GCSE's- which 16 year-olds would be studying for, or A' levels which the 17 year old forth years would have been starting to study for. The whole set up of the school is very alien to the UK. This has been written for the US market with no thought to make the school feel like an English school would.  I suspect the UK setting is merely for the upper/lower class divide. I don't know where the author lives but she has either done zero research into the UK school system or she did and ignored it all for her market of choice- even reading Harry potter would have given her clues how to make it more convincing to UK readers. It shares strong similarities to Netflix's Sex Education in that regard.

I was willing to give it a pass on the school being so US-centric because it was a decent enough read. But then the plot revelations started piling in in all their unconvincing lack of glory. I'm always willing to forgive some narrative flaws in YA books, predictability, oversimplification of themes, some unrealistic adult behaviour, etc.  These books aren't written with savvy adult readers in mind. But this just started taking things too far. The allegations coming forward would have pretty much closed down the school instantly they were made public.

The fact that every straight male character in the book was a villain was quite noticeable. Every single diversity tick box was ticked except for nice straight male. Yes, the book is trying to warn against a certain type of predatory behaviour, but... 

I would expand on the exact plot points but that would be quite spoilerific and I didn't hate the book enough to do that. Overall this starts well and descends into silliness. I will say that considering the revelations about Sade's family, the central villain of the piece would certainly have recognised her more than just a passing "have I met you before?" line when they met, and he certainly wouldn't have acted the way he did towards her. 

Good to kill a few days.  A quick easy read but unconvincing even by YA standards, and a bit irritating. But it has nice spredges.

Number 78- Sweet Tooth- Jeff Lemire

It's a shame this is the TV Tie in cover, but it was cheap. This is a collected edition of the first 12 issues of the original comic and covers much of the same ground as the first season of the tv series. 

This is the most definitive apocalypse I've read yet from Jeff Lemire, who also takes on the artistic duties this time around. Most of humanity has been wiped out by a disease, just known as The Illness. meanwhile, the potential future of the species, the newborn babies, have not been quite normal. 

Since the Outbreak 7 years previously, every baby born has been a hybrid, part human, part animal.  Sweet tooth (aka Gus, our central character) himself is part deer. With no humans born and the Illness coming round and killing more and more 

The TV series follows several plot strands simultaneously, only winding them together very late on.  That's very typical in Jeff Lemire's comics, but doesn't actually happen here. 

For the first two thirds of this, there is only the one storyline, Gus being found in the woods by Big Man and led to safety. When Singh appears in this volume, he is far from the sympathetic character we know in the TV show.

There are other marked differences between the stories, whether the extra characters in the TV show will be introduced in Book 2 remains to be seen.

I wasn't a fan of the artwork initially but it definitely grew on me, especially when it started incorporating the weird tricks with layout that characterize Lemire's comics. The style looks rough and quite ugly but it's consistent and the emotions are clear on character faces, even the animals.  The panels where Sweet Tooth is hypnotized are particularly effective. the story is deeply personal and emotional at the same time as wildly apocalyptic. Lemire does seem to pull this trick off nicely, and here it's particularly well done. I felt genuinely sorry for all the central cast by the end of this compendium.

Book 2 is on my shopping list for when i pop into town tomorrow.

Number 78- Scattered all over the Earth- Yoko Tawada

 

URGH!

I could almost leave this review there. But I do try to give detailed write ups.

I don't know if it's a poor translation, but I really did not get on with this book in the slightest.  It took me nearly a week to read it and its only 217 pages.

I spent the whole book wondering if it's supposed to be a comedy.  If it is supposed to be a comedy it fails entirely.  If it's supposed to be serious, it hits all the wrong notes. 

Each chapter is narrated by a different character but you'd never guess by the narrative voices. Considering that there are 6 narrators over the 10 chapters, they all sound exactly the same. If you're doing multiple narrators, make them sound different. You should be able to identify a character from their voice- especially if they're all supposed to be from such disparate backgrounds as this bunch. The fact that this is supposed to be all about language and how it shapes people, that makes this sin of bad writing all the more egregious. This might be down to the translator, but since I don't speak Japanese. I have to rely on her skills in expressing the book accurately in English.

I read one of Tawada's books a few years ago and was quite meh about that one. this one is a step below meh. I actively disliked it and the whole experience of reading it. Despite the occasional nice image, it sometimes feels like it was translated by Bing translate and not a human.

The characters are uniformly unconvincing. The worldbuilding is poor at best. The forced coincidences are farcical without ever reaching the level of actual humour. The plot is almost non-existent.  A bunch of people who sound the same, despite being from Greenland, Norway, Denmark, India and Japan, wander around a few countries in a "near future" that does not feel even slightly authentic, talking about language and looking for a sushi chef so he can talk Japanese to one of the identikit characters.

Maybe I'm missing some cultural references.  Maybe it's a bad translation.  Maybe it's just a badly conceived and executed idea for a book. Whichever it is, I will not be reading any further Yoko Tawada novels.

Number 76- Reprisal- F Paul Wilson

 

The second from last book in the Adversary cycle until relatively recently. Also the last one published with this style of cover by NEL.  That's a great shame because I love these covers.

Will Ryerson Is a groundskeeper on a college campus. He has a secret past and keeps most people at a distance except for faculty member Lisl. His friendship with her verges on the romantic, but he refuses to get too involved. However his past is catching up to him. Why do phones ring with a mysterious message from beyond the grave whenever he is near one?

When Lisl becomes romantically involved with a mysterious new student, events start taking a turn for the worse.

Considering how close to the original finale this book is, there's a relative lack of overt horror in this book. Perhaps this is the calm before the storm.

The relationship between Lisl and the satanic young man is the key to the story and her corruption is nicely portrayed.  The middle section, where we flash back to Will's history and his link to the cycle, is the most overtly supernatural part of the story. There is a sense of tension that ratchets up gradually through the book, right up to the finale which blows things wide open for the last book of the series. 

Wilson is as good as King at drawing out the characters. They all seem to have their own personal backstories and feel like they've been in several books previously even if this is their first appearance.

This is how you do a cliffhanger ending in a horror novel. the central plot elements of this story are complete, but the overarching story of the series has reached crisis point. Nightworld has moved several steps up my TBR pile.

Number 75- Recall NIght- Alan Baxter

 

Book 2 of the Eli Carver trilogy that began with Manifest Recall which I read a few months ago.

Eli has been living in exile in Canada since the events of book one. When he finds out it's safe to return, he flies back to the States.  However, a chance encounter on a train lands him in the middle of a turf war between rival New York gangs, and the body count is set to rise once more.

He's still haunted by five smart-ass ghosts of some of his previous victims, but are they just his mind playing tricks on him, or is something more sinister happening?

Baxter doesn't give a clear answer to that question still, although events take more of a supernatural twist than in book one. Carver is great at rationalising all the events surrounding him.

That quote on the front does sum the book up in three words. It is indeed brutal, with a death toll in double figures in a short novella.  It is indeed gritty.  The depiction of the criminal underworld feels deliciously seedy. And it is indeed fun. 

Baxter writes in uncluttered, easily readable prose that rockets you through his books. This series might arguably be low on originality, but the high octane action and sheer breakneck pace of the storytelling makes that really quite insignificant. It's what you do with the familiar elements that counts, and Baxter delivers in spades.

This is a great series so far, and I will be reading the final part reasonably soon. It will make for another very enjoyable cheat read to get my numbers up for the year- with all the satisfaction of a book three times its length.

Number 74- The Outlaw Varjak Paw- SF Said

 

My second children's book in as many months, but this one I really enjoyed.

This is the follow up to Varjak Paw which I read last year after I picked up both books in a second hand shop discount bin. It's about cats and it's illustrated by Dave McKean so it started with two huge plus points.

Since the events of the first book, Sally Bones and her gang have spread their territory and now rule the whole city (the cat population thereof) with an iron paw.

Can Varjak find her weakness? Can he free the cats of the city from her tyranny? Can he regain his powers?

It's as good as the first book.  Once more we have Varjak learning everything he needs to complete his quest in convent dream sequences where he communes with an ancient ancestor. 

Once more, it's all very predictable.  But it's not written for adults who read as much as me, of course it's going to have  a basic plot with no diversions or big twists. 

Once more Dave McKean's illustrations add a whole new level to the book. 

It's surprisingly gruesome for a children's book.  When we find out what Sally Bones's punishment to traitor cats is, it's really rather unpleasant and I can see people who can't read cruelty to animals not being able to read this. No animals are harmed by typing words on a page, so I personally have no issues. It adds a real tension to the book to think that his friends (or even he) might have such cruelty inflicted on them.

It was a quick read and I finished it in a day. If you can handle reading about cats fighting to the death, and don't mind dipping into young people's fiction, I recommend this.  Read the first book first though.

Number 73- English Pastoral - James Rebanks

 

This one fills my annual quota of at least one biography/autobiography. It was my book group read for the group I've been in the last 15 years.

The point of being in a book group is to read things you normally wouldn't look at twice, and this is a perfect example.

In this book James Rebanks tells us about his childhood on a small Cumbrian farm, and how he fell in love with farming.  He also tells us about how farming changed and industrialised over the decades and details exactly what the reasons are that this is not a good thing.

He finishes the book with glimmers of hope that the damage that's been done could be reversed with the right impetus.

It's a book of three parts.  Part one is his childhood memories as a 10 year old working the farm with his grandfather. This part I found to be exceedingly dull unfortunately. He's trying to be poetic and paint pictures with his words, but it doesn't quite work and comes off as a try hard attempt.

The second part follows the changes in the literal farming landscape that happened between the 60s and 90s, and lays out in clear, uncomplicated terms exactly how much damage industrial farming has done. This part develops an urgency and drops the overly flowery prose that slowed part one down to the dullness that it was.

Part three comes right up to date and Rebanks explains how he is working to improve the landscape and the soil with traditional methods. He offers glimmers of hope that I mentioned earlier. The urgency recedes from part two but fortunately it doesn't turn quite as flowery and purple as part one. 

It's a bit of a curates egg. I found it compulsive after the dull opening section. It opened my eyes to the damage that industrial farming for profit is doing to the land. Whether his measures will help, and his methods will spread is yet to be seen. But we can hope.

An important, if not always interesting book.

Number 72- Morace's Story- Kaaron Warren

 

I’ve read a few Kaaron Warren novels before, and found them almost unputdownable. So this seemed like a good choice for a quick cheat read.

Sadly it wasn’t.  I don’t know if it’s because it’s pitched below YA that I didn’t like it, or because I’ve not read Walking the Tree- the book this is a companion piece to- but I found this to be less than compelling and rather dull to be honest.

The eponymous Morace goes to school, which means walking around the impossibly large tree that fills the land they live on for five years, stopping at assorted villages to learn their customs on the way around.

It’s a bit repetitive and lacks any real drama or impetus IMHO.  Maybe if I was in the age group it’s aimed at I would have thought it was thrilling, but this is a “not my sort of thing” book.

I did get through it in just under an hour, so it’s a fast read at the very least.

Number 71 - Yellowface - Rebecca F Kuang

 

My first RF Kuang book.  Apparently this made a big splash in the last couple of years but it passed under my radar until the end of last month when I found out my local Waterstones has its own book group and this was their choice.

The unlikelily named Juniper Song Bradshaw (normally known as June Bradshaw) is a failed writer.  One of her friends from college is the mega successful Athena Liu.  When June is invited up to Athena's flat one night and Athena dies in a freak accident, June finds the just completed manuscript of Athena's newest book.

She steals it, edits it and sends it to her agent who ships it out to publishers and it's snapped up and published under the name Juniper Song. It makes all the bestseller lists and turns her into an overnight sensation. How long can she keep the secret that this isn't her book?  How much pressure does fame put on a person? Exactly how cutthroat is the publishing world?

All these questions and more are answered in fine style in this entertaining novel.

June is a distinctly unlikeable protagonist but, as you may have noticed from other reviews on this blog, I don't mind that, and actually it can be a major positive for me.

June is a scheming, manipulative character with not so well hidden shallows. But I found her narrative to be an easy and fairly compulsive read. The levels of self justification she manages for the worst of her actions are so twisted she could win a breakdancing contest.

There are no real bon mots or startling insights into humanity on display here.  There's a deep rooted cynicism in its place. And that appeals to my personal worldview. I flew through this book in just a couple of days. 

Interestingly, a fair number of the criticisms leveled at the character of Athena in the book are lifted directly from online criticism of Ms Kuang herself. You can make of that what you will. For me, it added to the satire element inherent in a bestselling expose of the rotten heart of bestselling publishing.

It does raise valid points about accusations of cultural appropriation every time an author writes outside their own culture. The fact that she has genuinely stolen the story makes this an awkward lesson but adds to the satire. 

On the strength of this, I have already bought myself a copy of Babel which I intend to read sooner rather than later. It generated a heated discussion at the book group, which means it's doing something right.

Number 70- Strange gardens- Michel Quint

 

A short but sweet cheat read.  this killed half an hour in the pub last night while I was waiting to go to the cinema and having a quick bite to eat.

The young narrator is embarrassed about his dad's clowning hobby. his uncle fills him in on the reasons for it.  A surprisingly dramatic story about sabotage and capture whilst they were in the French resistance opposing the Nazi regime.

The translation is nice and smooth.  It held my interest. It's very slight- as witnessed by me reading it in about half an hour.  There really isn't much more to say about it.

Number 69- Shoebox Train Wreck- John Mantooth

 

I've read two Mantooth novels so far and loved both of them. This is my first try at his short fiction, and straight off the bat I'm going to pay this the highest compliment I can give a short story collection by saying it is easily as good as any Ray Bradbury collection I've ever read.

There isn't a single weak story in the collection. It's difficult to choose a standout tale because they are all great stories.

The longest of the stories is only 20 pages, but in each one he manages to build a distinct cast of characters and makes this particular reader at least care about them.

School buses must have been important to Mantooth since three of the stories centre around them. They're very different stories though. Guilt is another common theme in the collection, and the title story in particular is quietly heartbreaking. 

It's difficult to pin this collection to any particular genre.  there are shades of the supernatural, ghosts, crime, occasional science fiction adjacent ideas, and the fantastic.

What they all have in common is that they drag you in from the first sentence and don't let go. If I was forced to pick a favourite, I'd probably go for This Is Where The Road Ends.  The moment I clocked onto where the story was going it felt like my heart dropped out of my chest. 

Or maybe I'd go for Walk The Wheat, which is almost a zombie story about the bonds of love and family. Or maybe Saving Doll, where a young track star is blackmailed by her brother in a most horrific way. Or maybe any of the other stories. James is a beautifully sad story about outsiders. Chicken is about teen rebellion leading to tragedy. 

They're all great. This is just a great book. I'm almost tempted to go back the start and read them all all over again.

If you like your southern gothic to be southern and gothic, and apparently I really do, this is an exemplary example that will be hard to top.

Number 68- the Silence- Tim Lebbon

 

My second apocalyptic horror of the year.

This time around, the danger comes from inside the earth.  When a cave system is opened for the first time in centuries, creatures escape to wreak havoc on the world.  they kill their victims and lay eggs in the corpses, spreading exponentially across the planet. Being completely blind, they hunt through sound, the only way to avoid them is silence.

This sounds similar to a particular movie currently on its threequel (prequel) but predates the first film in the franchise by a good few years so all similarities can be safely ignored.

Also, these flying creatures, known as Vesps, are small, the size of cats and overpower their prey through weight of numbers, rather than giant things that fly off with their victims.

Our lead characters are a very normal family with a deaf daughter, teenaged Ally (although she's annoyingly called Ali on the back cover- I wish blurb writers would get the details correct). 10 year old Jude, and the parents Huw and Kelly.

When they see the stories about the spreading swarm on the news, they decide to take the dog and run from the city to an old family home in Scotland. Of course, things are not going to go easily for them.

The vesps are certainly the stuff of absolute nightmare. Once they reach mainland Britain, the tension raises and never drops. 

I really like that the book just follows a completely normal family.  There's no scientist or soldier to work out the cure and to save the world.  These are regular Joes in an extreme situation, just trying to survive. They follow what's happening in the world through increasingly unreliable social media for as long as Ally can keep her iPad charged.  Every chapter opens with a quote from someone online, on twitter or Facebook etc, with an increasingly hopeless viewpoint.

The family are easily relatable and their relationships are completely believable. These are people we want to see get through this somehow. Lebbon has created a great central cast of characters. I hope that there is a follow up because I need to know what happened next.

This is my second Tim Lebbon book and I'm kicking myself that I haven't read him earlier, because now I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Number 67- A Writer's Diary - Toby Litt

 

This has been on my TBR for at least 18 months so I really needed to read it.

All through 2022, Toby Litt posted diary entries on a daily basis on his substack.  He still does, and has over 1000 entries now.

The first year though was prewritten for the whole year, and published online daily, and then in book form on the first of January 2023.

It's an interesting experiment.

The story of this first year includes a birth and a death in the family. Otherwise it's lots of rumination about life, death, the art of writing, his desk, dust and pencil sharpeners; among other topics including the correct use of semi-colons.

Whilst it works relatively well on a one page a day basis, I'm not so sure about as a book. 

There is some beautiful writing in here.  Litt is a great writer of prose.  he really knows how to craft a good sentence.

As a book though, it comes across as more a selection of essays than a novel.  Some of them are more interesting than others.  the two weeks spent discussing Keats for example, I only skim read, to make sure there were no notifications regarding the pregnancy or his mother's ill health hidden in there.

There are also days where he rambles quite incoherently. 

I was hoping to hear more about his writing workshops which were a highlight in the early part of the book.  Unfortunately, they kind of faded out after I'd gotten interested in their interrelationships in the class. They provided a continuity in the first half of the book that I feel was necessary. The second half of the year moves a lot faster because more of a narrative arc forms, with the later stages of the pregnancy and the declining health of his mother.

In those sequences, I could really get involved emotionally.  

Overall I enjoyed reading it, but I definitely think it needed more of a narrative arc and less essays about dust. Even though the essays could be interesting (even the ones about dust), there were just too many of them which detracted from making this feel like a novel.

Number 66- the twisted ones- T Kingfisher

I've been hearing a lot of good things about T Kingfisher so I figured it was about time to try her out.  I like a good bit of folk horror and this sounded like it could be a particularly scary example.

Melissa (aka Mouse) is sent by her elderly father to clear out her recently deceased grandmother's house. In addition to being an all round not nice person, her gran was also an extreme hoarder, so it could be a long job.

In her grandad's old room, she finds a journal which seems like gibberish. Unfortunately, after she takes the dog a=on an eventful walk, where she finds geographical features that shouldn't exist, his writings begin to make a lot more sense.

I was hoping for something dark, twisted and scary.  instead this is actually more of a comedy. The cover mis-sells this book entirely.

Mouse is a very funny narrator. Her descriptions of living with her coon-hound almost make me (a devoted cat-person) want a dog. 

Looking at it as a light-hearted horror with a comic edge, this really works very well. Once I adjusted my expectations I found a lot to like in this book.

The ramblings in the Granddad's journals are actually taken from a 1904 Arthur Machen story- The White people.  I'd never heard of it until the writer's afterword, but prior knowledge of the story will probably not affect enjoyment overmuch.

Despite never being particularly scary because of the light tone of the narration, Kingfisher still generates some decent tension in places. As a reader I liked her and the dog, and didn't want to see them come to any harm. I particularly liked the fact that, when things took an unambiguous turn for the nasty, Mouse's first instinct was to get the hell out of there. She's certainly one of the most believable central characters in a horror novel in that regard.

The supporting cast are nicely drawn and good comic support.  The monsters when they appear are imaginatively nasty.  

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and will definitely be buying more of her work in the near future.

Number 65- the Book of Elsewhere - Keanu Reeves & China Mieville

 

An angled photo to try to show off the spredges (sprayed edges) which are the same colour as the writing on the cover.

Back in 2021, Boom comics released BRZRKR, a series of comics by Keanu Reeves about an immortal warrior with a tendency for ultra violence, who just happens to look a lot like one Mr Reeves. (He's slated to play the role in an upcoming live action version too.)

The comics did rather well and apparently broke records for the sales figures.

Now there's a novel set in the BRZRKR world, with Keanu's name above that of the actual author of the novel. And here it is,

Reeves has been completely honest about his level of input into the writing process of this (I believe his quote was along the lines of "China Mieville wrote a novel").

The immortal warrior Unute aka 'B' is almost as old as homo sapiens.  He's immensely strong and prone to berzerking, where he basically kills anything in range, including friends and family if they're too close. Even on the odd occasion when he dies, a magic egg will form and rebirth him, full size and ready to kill all over again. He longs for mortality.  he doesn't want to die, he just wants to be able to.  In the modern day, he's working with a top secret government agency. When a very dead young soldier mysteriously resurrects, it looks like forces from his past may be coming back to face him all over again.

I will admit that I struggled to get into this book.  However, after about 70 pages or so it became a lot easier.  I'm not sure if that's because the style of writing settled down, or whether I just tuned into the style, or maybe just because I understood what was actually happening at that point... Regardless of why, it became a much easier read and quite compelling in its own way.

He alternates chapters between modern day and relevant flashbacks to his past which serve to explain what's actually going on (although some of the relevance is not clear for a long while= you have to take him on trust that it's going to mean something and he does repay that trust).

It's an odd book for Mieville to have taken on and is very different to anything else he's written. The storyline is very action-comicsy (as it would be considering the source) but Mieville doesn't compromise on his writing style.  I have had issues getting into a couple of his earlier novels too but they've always been worth the effort. In amongst the outbursts of violence he manages to give us some more meaningful passages. 

It's probably the least good book of his that I've read, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a serious literary take on a very basic and pulpy plotline. It's a mix that probably shouldn't work as well as it does (and I could sympathise with people who might claim that it doesn't work) but I would give this a clear 7/10.