Number 26 - The walking dead 4 The Hearts desires - by the usual people

The apocalypse continues.

Volume 3 ended on quite a cliffhanger which is solved in a suitably violent manner in the first pages of this one.

Michonne makes her first appearance and instantly causes problems by getting romantically involved with Tyreese - who is of course the beloved of Carol.

Carol doesn't take things too well and this leads to a great stand off between Rick and Tyreese.

Human drama is definitely to the fore in this installment.

The art is the usual basic style.  This sometimes makes it difficult to know who some of the characters are as they are drawn fairly similarly.   That's only a minor quibble though as this continues to be a dramatic and well told zombie apocalypse.

I bit the bullet and googled when Daryl would enter the storyline and was surprised to discover that he never will.This is a franchise where googling a character name can reveal huge spoilers.  Luckily, in this case I avoided those.

Volume 5 arrived in the post today, so that will be my cheat read when I finish the 700 page Stephen King I just started today.

Number 25 - The Only story - Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is one of the most famous writers that I've never read.  Up until now.  I've heard the name for many many years.  I've heard about the awards he's won and how great he is. I've seen his books on the bestseller lists and the must-buy piles in Waterstones.

And still never got round to reading him.

This month's book group book forced me to take the leap.

The reviews of this book tell us that it's devastating, profoundly beautiful sad and powerful.

Personally, I think it's the single most middle-class and safe book I've ever read.

The prose is good.  I'll give Mr Barnes that much.  He can write. This book was never less than readable.  There were moments of droll humour which did make me laugh.

But the story is almost non-existent. Nineteen year old boy falls for a 48 year old woman at the tennis club (how very middle class). They start an affair and yadah yadah yadah.

It actually starts off pretty well. Paul is an engaging narrator to begin with, telling us the story of his youth from the point of view of his much older self, with some nice observations about memory. The problems kick in in part two of the book.  Part two also begins well.  Part one is entirely the happy nature of his relationship with Susan. Part two takes us back and looks more deeply, revealing the less pleasant aspects of their early life together.

At some point, the narrative switches from a first person past tense narration to  a second person present tense narrative voice. You watch as she does this, you watch as she does that... etc. It flicks back and forth randomly.   In this section, Paul switches from an engaging young man to a dithering and quite annoying character, you wish he'd grow up and make a decision for himself.

By part three the book has completely lost it for me.  Part three starts talking about Paul in the third person. At first I thought that maybe we were getting Susan's side of the story and my interest peaked, but it quickly became obvious that this was either some unknown person or Paul talking about himself in the third person.  Is this meant to demonstrate his distancing from his feelings because of the rather predictable events of part two?  I don't know.

Part three follows him into senior adulthood and his life after Susan.  It's extremely random and is more full of allegedly wise observations on life and love than any actual story. Susan's eventual fate is an illness that was dealt with more movingly in one of the segments of Joe Hill's Strange Weather.

He's done a good job in part two of robbing all sympathy from the reader for both central characters, so the final part of the books fails entirely to engage the emotions.  I'm not sure he was aiming for that when he wrote it.

It's all well written but ultimately it's very ordinary middle class people doing very ordinary middle class things and it all seems rather pointless.    

The title is quite prophetic, as it's probably the only story I'll ever read by Julian Barnes.

Number 24 - The Walking Dead Volume 3: Safety Behind Bars

And the apocalypse continues unabated.  This saga is my instruction document for the near future.

Volume 2 ended with the band of travellers finding the prison - as seen on the cover there, subtract the zombies at the bottom of the picture and that was the closing image of the previous book.

In this one, fellow humans have become the biggest risk to life.  There are several deaths - possibly the highest death rate so far, and all have been at the hands of another human.

Plot threads have been sewn for future storylines and there's still no sign of Daryl.

If I recall correctly, the third series of the tv show had Rick going slightly crazy in the prison.  Evidence is in place that that is on its way.

Herschell is far from the nice guy he was in the tv series and is virtually psychotic.  He was a god-botherer on tv, but a nice one.  In the books, he's a total religious nut and violent towards his family. It's going to be real interesting to see how his storyline develops. 

With a title so steeped in irony, a good tense storyline and a real cliffhanger ending, this is the best volume so far.

Number 23 - Blood Forge - Kathryn Meyer Griffith

 Some of these old 80s horror paperbacks with the OTT covers can be worth a lot more than you'd expect.  This isn't one of them though.

This can be filed in the I-read-it-so-you-don't-have-to file. And I can't even try to sell it to make up for the lost hours of my life.

A common criticism I hear leveled at Stephen King is that his books are bloated.  Anyone that thinks King's background details on characters, and attempts to characterise his casts are bloat needs to read this to see what bloat looks like.

Basic story - through various contrivances an ancient Peruvian Snake-demon possesses a colt .357 pistol. Anyone who owns the gun is haunted by the demon and turns into a serial killer.

There is a possible good novel to be made out of that idea.  But this isn't it. A story as ridiculous as this should be a 200 page maximum pot boiler, fast paced and revelling in its inherent silliness.  Instead this is 397 pages and takes itself completely seriously.

The pacing in this book is so far out of whack.  We're almost 70 pages in before we meet any recurring characters. At one point when Emily,our brave heroine, has had her first bust up with her husband after he has taken possession of the gun, we get a TEN PAGE flashback telling about how they met at high school, he went to Vietnam, came back and became a drunk but quit the drink when she threatened to leave.  All the information in the flashback had been provided earlier in the book. All this did was slow the action down.

The mysterious priest - who wears blue jeans so he must be a cool dude priest - is mentioned in passing somewhere around page 150, appears for a page in person about 50 pages later, and doesn't come back into the narrative until about page 320.  Considering that he's the only one who can fight the demon, maybe he should have been a character for more of the story? And even with him we get a five page flashback to fill in his past.

There are massive gaps in contiuity in this book.  When first told of Sam's alcoholic past we're told he wasn't a nasty or violent drunk so Emily was lucky in that respect.  When he starts drinking again under the influence of the gun, we're told he was a belligerent and angry drunk.

The author has no real imagination for names.  Sam's surname is Walters and his cop partner is called... Walter.

The behaviour of the characters under the influence of the gun isn't even unique amongst the characters in the book.  At one point Sam is called to stop a wife-beater (who has a full one page monologue while beating his wife as the two cops stand and watch) who behaves exactly as the possessed characters do, breaking down into tears after his violence and apparently unable to remember what he did, despite the gun never having been in his possession.  Perhaps if more of the town had been featured like this, some case could have been made for the pervasive influence of the evil of the demon possessing the gun, but nothing of the sort.

The aforementioned Walter, after killing his bedridden mother, literally just sells the murder weapon to Sam and leaves town, never to be mentioned again in the story except for the one brief mention when his mother's body is discovered nearly 200 pages and a month in book time later.  Considering that the carriers of the gun need to own it and get insanely jealous if anyone else touches it, the selling of the gun makes no sense whatsoever.

He's not the only character to simply vanish from the narrative.  The first murder we have in the 80's section of the book involves best friend cops Roger and Tom.  Roger is a womanising alcoholic wife beater even without the assistance of the gun, but nevertheless the gun is in his possession. His wife Sandy has started an affair with Tom and asked for a divorce. Tom is also married and has told his wife. This chapter is nearly 40 pages of the various relationships, Roger with his wife Sandy, Sandy's version of events, Tom with his own wife and Tom and Sandy together, culminating in the murder. Roger calls Tom over to the house for a chat, and promptly kills Tom and then is hanged by the demon in his prison cell. Note I don't give Tom's wife's name.  That's because she is never mentioned again even in passing after this chapter. 

The prose is repetive beyond belief.  For example, when Sam ends up in hospital, we hear nearly twenty times in three pages how well liked he is by the hospital staff and that Emily doesn't think they'll believe her story about an evil gun. We're given the same information time and time again, as if the author thinks we'll forget what the characters said to each other ten pages ago.

There are no normal characters in the book.  There are no normal relationships.  Either it's the perfect family and everyone deeply in love and happy (despite past indiscretions and problems) or alcoholic wifebeaters.  I get that the writer has done this for contrast when a charcter turns, but truer relationships work much better in fiction.  Life exists in shades of gray, this book veers from the purest white to the darkest blacks with nothing in between.

If you really want to buy a copy of this book, it is still available - although the title now appears to be Blood Forged.  I don't think the added D will help the overall quality of the book.

I don't think I will be reading more by this particular writer. 

A generous 3/10 for a potentially nice idea.

Number 22 - The Walking Dead Volume 2: Miles behind Us - Kirkman Adlard Rathburn

These are turning into pretty good choices for cheat reads.

It's quite fascinating to see the differences between this and the TV show.  The end of book 2 - heading for the prison that was the basis for series 3 and 4, and no sign of Daryl yet. Daryl of course is one of three characters who has been a regular in all the first 8 tv series.  I'm wondering when or if he's going to appear.

The artwork is basic and functional again.  There were some set pieces in this volume which I'm disappointed didn't make it into the tv show, particularly the housing estate and the reveal when the snow dripped off the wall to reveal the warning painted on the walls outside.

This is a soap opera with flesh eating zombies popping in to spice up the proceedings and I love that.  There are so many of these to get hold of, and at about one to two hours to sit and read through, my numbers will be very high this year depending how many I can get my dirty mitts on cheaply.

I do wonder why the front cover shows a character in the background who appears to be Michonne even though she's not appeared yet.

One big diference was how sweary Herschell was in the comic, compared with the personality he had in the tv version.

I was worried that my familiarity with storylines would affect my enjoyment of this but it's sufficiently different to give a reral isight into the differences between the storytelling techniques in even the most visual of storytelling devices - film and comic.

Number 21 - Caging Skies - Christine Leunens

Before the cinemas shut up shop for the duration, I was lucky enough to manage to see Jojo Rabbit and I thought it was Taika Waititi's best film to date.  I also noted from the opening credits - Based on the novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens.

Going by the old adage that the book is better than the film, I popped into Waterstones the next day and picked this up.

Based on the novel appears to be somewhat of an overstatement.  The film bears as much resemblance to the book as Cannibal the Musical bears to the real life story of Alferd Packer. I think "based on" needs to be changed to "vaguely inspired by".

The central idea is there - fanatical member of Nazi youth discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in the attic. But that's as far as teh resemblance goees.

Johannes isn't a cute young 12 year old innnocently falling in love with the girl. He doesn't have a weird invisible friend in darling Adolf himself.  He's 16 when he finds her, and his interest in her is less than innocent. And, when the war finishes, the film finishes, but the book has nearly 200 pages left.  The book is almost a different genre completely from the film.

I stilll love the film.  The changes to the story are necessary to keep an audience watching I suppose.  The Hollywood need to give your protagonist some redemption if he's done things he shouldn't seem to dictate the way the film moves. The invisible friend is a brilliant shorthand way to show how infatuated with the third Reich young Jojo is.  He's also shown to be a nice guy at heart frequently and learns how misguided he's been.

The book is so much darker.  We read everything from Johannes' first person viewpoint. We witness his indoctrination by the Nazi ideals after the Auschluss.  We don't need a goofy Hitler figure telling him what to do, he's more than happy to join in with the bookburning for himself.

Johannes is far from a compassionate, or indeed reliable, narrator and his conscious cruelty to Elsa is never redeemed.  The book reads more as a descent into madness and borderline psycological thriller than the happy fantasyesque story the film led me to expect.

However it's so well done that the confounding of the expectations is a good thing in this case rather than a disappointment. We might not like Johannes as a person, but we still feel his sorrow when family members die and feel sorry for him regardless. And it still manages to pull of a deeply black humour.

The ending leaves a few unanswered questions, as it should given the lack of reliability of the narrator.

All in all, this is a completely different experience and story to the film, and disturbing as hell in places.  I loved nearly every page of it.

A strong contender for best book of the year.  A solid 9/10