Number 51 - Malorie - Josh Malerman

This has to be my most anticipated book of the year, in fact of the last two years.  It was originally slated for release last year but Josh Malerman is a perfectionist when he wants to be and it was held back while he gave it those last few tweaks.

The big question is of course - was it worth the wait?

There's a danger inherent in looking forward to a new book, or film, or whatever, that you'll build it up so much in your mind that the real thing can never compare.

Judging by the fact that this is the fourth Malerman book I've reviewed this year (and I think the 8th since I started this blog). any regular readers out there will be able to guess how high my hopes were for this book.

And it not only lived up to, but exceeded them.


The story picks up a few years after the ending of Birdbox, and then jumps another ten for the main body of the novel.

Seventeen years have now passed since the creatures arrived.  Malorie is still living with the two children, now on the cusp of adulthood.  When she finds out that her parents may still be alive, she sets out on a quest to find them.

Josh Malerman is a world-builder.  In each of his full length works he's created distinct strange, warped realities that work on their own terms.  The world he created in Bird box is nightmarish and claustophobic in the extreme.

I've seen negative reviews of Bird box, claimig the science is hokey.  Of course it is.  It's not a scientific treatise.  The central characeter isn't some scientific genius trying to piece together how and what went wrong, she's a terrified woman trying to survive a danger that can't even be looked at safely. How and why it's happening isn't important.  It is happening.  That's what we need to know. The point of the story isn't to be scientifically accurate, it's to create tension and make us scared for this woman and these two children.  And by god he did that in spades in the first book.

He keeps that going in Malorie too.  We also see chapters from the points of view of young Tom and Olympia. The relationships between the characters are strained - two teenagers and the ultimate in strict moms.   These are scared people trying to survive a world that human's don't seem equipped for any more. Is survival all it's cracked up to be? Shouldn't people be trying to move on? As Tom yells at his mother at one point "All we ever do is survive!"

There are segments in this book so intense that I physically forgot to breathe while I was reading it. The set pieces are startlingly good.

There are minor flaws.  A character they meet along the way (I won't name because - spoilers)  is allowed to fade out of the story just as he was becoming an interesting protagonist in his own right.  There are a few coincidences that seemed a bit too convenient.  But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise excellent book.

This is a worthy follow up to Bird Box.  It builds on the mythology of the first book.  We find out how people have been trying to move on in a world where survival is a skill in itself.  Malorie has kept her small family apart from the world and it's through hers and the children's perceptions that we encounter the changed landscape of the world.

Last but not least - check out that gorgeous cover.

Easy 8/10

Available from any place you can buy books.  Try to support your local bookstore.  Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more money.

Number 50 - The Walking Dead vol 13

And the saga continues apace

Well actually the pace has slowed a fair amount.  After the killing of half the cast a few volumes back, it's time for new characters and they need time to settle in. 

This volume is the first one where I recognised nearly every story beat from the tv show.  They're in Alexandria and trying to get used to life in relative peace.

But is that even a good idea?  Should they let their fighting instincts relax?  Can they trust the people in this apparent haven?

It's clear that the townspeople have become lax and the fighting instincts of our heroes come to the fore, leading them into higher positions of authority in the town.

As Sheriff, Rick suspects a townsman of beating his wife.  His reaction is arguably a little over the top. 

Meanwhile, on a scavenging trip, Glenn and the town's other scavengers attract the attention of a violent group of survivors, provoking a confrontation.

The relaxed pace is a pleasure.  It's impoossible to keep the writing as intense as it had been.  This volume ended on a cliffhanger so I'm expecting bloodshed in the next volume.  And I know that Negan is due to make an appearance in the not too distant future.

Given how much more brutal the Governor was in the comics than on TV, I dread to think how much more vicious Negan is going to be. 

Number 49 - The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Where do I start with this one?

This is one of the most famous book that I'd never read.  65 MILLION copies sold.  It's extolled as a masterpiece by many brilliant people (and Will Smith).

A Fable about following your dreams!! I have a feeling that this review may show me to be somewhat cynical in my outlook.

A shepherd boy dreams of finding treasure near the pyramids.  Twice.

He goes to see a gypsy woman to interpret his dream  She tells him he's going to find treasure if he goes to the pyramids.

Well that was worth the one tenth of whatever treasure he finds that he agrees to pay her.

So he sets off on a quest to find his treasure, to follow his dreams. On his way he encounters hardships and... actually no he doesn't.  Even the very few relatively minor setbacks he encounters are not actually setbacks but the next step he needs to take to follow his dream and find the treasure.

I know this story is an allegory from start to finish, and it's not meant as a rollicking adventure or action packed treasure hunt, but surely, some kind of narrative tension or drama somewhere down the line would have been nice.  Knowing that it's all metaphor doesn't make a character sitting down and having indepth erm... heart to heart chats with his own heart any less silly.

The prose is occasionally very good, but often it feels like this book should have been printed on a soft-focus photograph of an inspirational lanscape and typeset in a dramatic, yet friendly, font.  This felt like 150 pages of inspirational photo memes (without the photographs).

 That's not to say I hated the book.  I certainly didn't.  It was a perfectly pleasant read.  I could almost see why people of certain mindsets would view this as a classic. 

Follow your dreams and you'll get there as long as you don't give up! That's the message that this book heaves at us for its full length.  Everything the boy does drives his quest forward and gains him friends and riches.

People who've never really faced any hardship are bound to feel that message is a valid one.  And the majority of names that are dropped in the author's introduction, and the reviews on the back are names from the priveleged set.  If they met the shepherd boy before he was rich, I doubt they'd give him the time of day. Or is that my cynicism talking?

The biggest issue that this book has is that I feel it's my fault entirely for not thinking it's the true blue classic its painted as and nothing to do with the overblown proselytising and tweeness of the book's central theme.

 5 out of 10.  Available from all bookshops.

Number 48 The walking dead - Vol 12 - Life among them

And the saga continues.

Slightly misleading picture on the cover of this one.

The "Them" in the volume title isn't zombies any more.  Our intrepid survivors have reached Alexandria.  The episodes of the TV show that covered this were very faithful to the source material.  We're so caught up in the paranoia of Rick and his friends that we struggle to trust these new people with their apparently perfect existence. 

As with the TV show, there are moments where we start wondering if Rick is turning into one of the bad guys, especially  the ending of this volume.

The storyline Carol followed in the tv show seems to have been transferred to her from Andrea almost completely.

The pace drops in this volume compared to the action of earlier issues.  But that's not a bad thing.  There are several new characters to meet and bonds to establish. This volume, and I assume the next one, explores trust issues and paranoia.  The father/son storyline continues to be the emotional heart of the story.

It's getting close to where I am in the TV series (end of season 8), so I know Negan is about to make an appearance, as well as King Ezekiel and the Hilltop cast.

This is the point in the narrative where the story ceases to be merely about survival, but about trying to rebuild some form of workable society - with a war or two thrown in for good measure.

Number 47 - Squirm - Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen is another of those authors I've been collecting books by for well over a decade.  As far as I know I have everything he's written, but I am a couple of books behind on reading his YA books. 

His fiction novels all tend to have either one or two word titles.  The two word titles are all adult novels.  The one word titles are for younger people. 

In practice this means that there's no swearing, no sex and the violence is kept offscreen in the one word titles.  They're still the same brand of easy to read lunacy, normally with a very strong environmental message built in.

This one is no exception.  Billy Dickens is a Floridan high school kid who loves wildlife, and just happens to collect snakes.  He won't stand any nonsense and will always fight for the underdog.  This is typical of Hiaasen's lead characters.

Within the first two pages you can't help but like young Billy regardless of how unlikely some of his behaviour may be.

This is a very good thing since Billy is the first person narrator, telling us most of the story in the present tense.

His dad walked out on the family when he was a toddler.  In the first couple of chapters he finds out where his dad lives and cons his mother into letting him fly across the USA to Montana to meet him. His dad turns out to be an eco warrior chasing after a particularly nasty big game hunter and spoiling his hunts.

 Even though this is 276 pages it flies past as if it was half that length.  The weakness of the first person narration is that the bad guy barely features at all, but Billy is such an entertaining narrator that that doesn't really matter.  The closing chapters contain some genuine tension and the message about wildlife preservation is crystral clear without being sledgehammer style unsubtle. 

It's predictable once the pieces start slipping into place, but it's not written for adults.  However, as YA fiction goes, it's easily substantial enough to keep me entertained.  If I wanted to, I could probably pick a plot hole or two - but see the end of the first sentence in this paragraph.  And it's so entertaining it would be churlish to do so anyway.

This is still available from all good booksellers and probably quite a few bad ones as well. 

He has a new adult novel due out in the next month or so, and I've already preordered it.

Number 46 - The walking Dead Volume 11 - Fear the Hunters

The last volume ended with the group running away from the farm as it was overrun by a horde of zombies.  This one picks up on the action a few days down the road. 

It all seems to start happily with the discovery of a working van complete with bedding and blankets which will make the journey to Washington so much easier. 

However, the tragic actions of one of the twin boys leads to a moral dilemma.  When that is ended suddenly and violently, the group is stalked and hunted by a group of humans.

This volume was the loose basis of the Terminus storyline in the tv show, and one or two scenes were repeated very faithfully (although with different characters in the victim position)

The usual mix and match of who's alive and who's dead from the tv series to the comics continues - Andrea (on the cover here) died very early in the tv show, but is still here in season 5 events.  I get the feeling that Carol (who is no longer with us in the comics) has been given the Andrea storylines for the TV. 

The artwork seemed sub-par in places in this volume but the story is as gripping as ever. 

These continue to be the best cheat reads I've found to date.

Number 45 - Pilo Family Circus - Will Elliott

I'll start by saying a big thank you to my friend who recommended this book to me.

From that, you can probably guess that I enjoyed this one.

I'd go so far as to say that this is an easy contender for best book of the year.  Discovering writers like this is why I love reading so much.

I'd never heard of Will Elliott before a few weeks back when a friend on Facebook posted a recomendation.  I thought it sounded interesting so ten minutes later I'd ordered it from a famous online bookstore.

The basic plot - Jamie is just your average guy trying to get by with a shitty job in a lousy neighbourhood and less than desirable housemates.  On his way home in the early hours of the morning he witnesses a gruesome event involving three clowns, one of whom drops a small velvet bag.  When Jamie takes the bag he finds his life becomes a lot more... interesting.

He is (slightly less than) cordially invited to audition as a clown himself.  Not having any choice in the matter, he does so and passes. He then finds himself working for the weirdest circus I've encountered in fiction.

This place makes the big top in Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark seem completely normal.  At least the big top section in that just feels like a bad trip.  The Pilo circus is a brilliantly realised location, filled with freaks and strange creatures, magicians and fortune tellers. You can almost smell the sawdust and the smoke. It's location is somewhere not earthbound so poor Jamie is as stuck as it's possible to be.

At no point in this book did I have any idea where the totally insane storyline was going. The clowns are by turns hilarious and terrifyingly violent. The   rest of the circus characters are no more pleasant. 

The writing is pretty straightforward but occasionally throws in a bon mot or two.  It has a very visual feel to it and I raced through this in the brief slices of time I've had available for reading this past week. 

Why this didn't make Elliott a household name I don't know.  I do know that it won a few awards the year it was published, and they were well deserved.

I've already ordered the sequel - The Pilo Travelling Show - and will probably be reading that in the next few weeks.

Numbers 43&44 - The Walking Dead vols 9 and 10

I just realised, when I put the picture of volume 10 on my facebook album and it lined up with volume 9, the pictures along the bottom of the front cver lines up perfectly with previous volume. This has been going on since the first volume and I hadn't noticed.

These really are a type of genius in design.

The story continues to improve as well.  In the TV show, one of my favourite episodes was just after the prison fell, and there was a two-hander with just Rick and Carl, Rick desperately ill and helpless, leaving Carl properly on his own for the first time.  It was an acting masterclass from Chandler Riggs, and still his best contribution to the show.

I was so happy to find that that was taken directly from a single issue of the comic. Not only that, but the writing in that editition is genuinely touching.  Carl is becoming a very strong charater in his own right and not just a bratty kid. The Rick/Carl relationship is now front and centre of these volumes.  How do you saty a parent in a world like this?

These two collections are my favourites to date.  I genuinely do think this is just getting better as it goes on.  I'm starting to prefer this version to the TV.  In these two volumes, I've been genuinely moved, upset and shocked by various happenings.  I also felt real fear for the cast when the herd appeared.

Abraham, Eugene and Rosalita make their first appearances in Vol 9.  There's some alpha posturing between Rick and Abraham which leads to a truly emotional revelation in vol 10 when they go on a road trip to Rick's old hometown. 

The parallels in the storylines between this and the TV version are almost as fascinating as the story itself.  The actors they hired for Eugene and Abraham are the most perfect of the characters so far. They even look closest to the original versions. 

The artwork is subtly improving all the time as well.  Loving these books.

Number 42 - A Liar's Autobiography - Graham Chapman

Book number 42 for the year has to be, by law, connected with Douglas Adams.  therefore I've naturally gone for the autobiography of Graham Chapman.

The link might not be immediately obvious, but there are a few.  Douglas Adams was a co-writer with Chapman on a sketch show.  He also wrote some material for Monty Python.

More importantly, he's one of six writers allegedly behind this book.  David Yallop, Alex Martin, Pedro Montt, David Sherlock, Douglas himself and of course there's some input from a geezer called Graham Chapman. I suspect Pedro Montt may be a fanciful addition to the list of writers since he's a dead ex-president of Chile....

When I picked this book up I wasn't entirely certain what to expect.

Now I've put it down again having read it, I'm not entirely sure what I just read.

It's certainly a pauntly enough read (those who've read the book will know what that means) and is laugh out loud funny in many places. However the opening chapters were a struggle to get through.   The randomness that characterised Python humour was in full flow and then some.  It made no effort in the opening chapters to give any type of coherent narrative, jumped about in time and even into space, and made zero sense.  That type of knockabout randomness might (and does) work when on a screen, whizzing past in a matter of a couple minutes, but sustained over 20 plus pages, it's a bit of a chore to get through.

It's possible he's putting on paper the feeling of the DT's that he's going through in chapter nought, but I can't say for certain.

However the style did settle down considerably and the narrative is a lot less cluttered and more readable from that point on.  It's almost impossible to know what is and isn't true in this book.  Some of the falsehoods are obvious, the flights of complete fancy etc.  Much of the rest of the book feels like anecdotes of reasonably amusing stories that have conflated over the years and expanded, so in the midst of the fabrication there's a real event or three going on.

There's one chapter that's actually incredibly moving (chapter 9 -  where he lets a pair of young men stay in his house to keep them out of trouble with the law) and, confusingly enough, there are swathes of this book that feel like he's laying his soul bare on the page for us to see with seering honesty.  He then spoils that effect every time with another digression into fanatasy.

I made the mistake of reading the chapters where he's at medical school while I was on my luch at work.  This is not advisable.  There is some gratuitously unpleasant description of  mucus and pus filled orificeses.

The footnotes scattered through the book are used to great comic effect.  He frequently seems to be having chats with his co-writers in the footnotes. Once the writing settled it was genuinely good fun to read.  The pictures scattered throughout are also pretty funny.  Try not to look at page 208 though.

The whole thing is very choppy, lots of little anecdotes with varying degrees of reliability in the telling.  Being an autobiography, obviously it just peters out at the end, although he does manage to close off a running joke type thing in the final pages which gives for a definite sense of an end even though it isn't one.

I'm glad I finally got round to reading it.  It's available from various online sources.  I got mine from the charity section at the front of my local Tesco about two years ago.