Number 105 - I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus - SG Browne

 

My Christmas read this year is this rather good follow up to Breathers.

Breathers is a horror comedy novel about a newly revived dead man working through the issues with his zombification.  It's that rare breed of horror comedy that deserves both words in the genre description.  It's unpleasant enough and disturbing enough to qualify for horror and funny enough to work as a comedy.

Happily, this sequel continues the trend.

It opens with Andy waking up on a pile of dead zombies with a bullet hole in his skull and wearing a Santa outfit. 

We then jump back a few days (it says three but I'm not sure the timescale is entirely accurate - however I don't care) to his captivity in an experimental lab and work forward to find out how he ended up with the perforated head-bone.

Andy is a congenial narrator.  The humour never feels forced and the running gag of "If you haven't experienced x,y,z you wouldn't understand" is particularly funny.

As with the first book, the comedy and gore are interspersed with more tender and erm, human,,, moments.

My biggest complaint with this book is that every time I look at that cover, I get an earworm of THAT song but with the lyrics changed.  I hate the song this title riffs from. I don't want it in my head even with funnier lyrics.

It's a fast, easy read, laugh out loud funny in places, gruesome in others.  Perfect Christmas reading.

Number 104 - The Swallowed Man - Edward Carey

 

After reading Heap House a few books ago, I went online and bought several more Edward Carey novels. I will return to the world of the Iremongers early in the new year, but this book caught my eye for a more immediate read - mainly for it's relatively short length and the Max Porter quote.

It tells the story of Gepetto (yes, that Gepetto) trying to eke out his remaining life after being swallowed my the giant sea creature. It starts with a brief retelling of the more famous story of Pinocchio from Gepetto's point of view and explaining how he came to be where he is before embarking on less familiar fare.

To be fair, even his retelling of Pinocchio feels fresh since it's not from the usual viewpoint.

By some miracle, Gepetto has managed to land inside a ship previously swallowed by the shark/sea creature.  The ship is reasonably sturdy, but, just as importantly, it contains candles, food and the captain's logbook and ink where our narrator writes his weird history.

After the familiar story, we learn about Gepetto's early life and loves. We also learn how he tries to survive the loneliness of his captivity in the stomach of the creature. However, his supply of candles is running low, as is his food, and something is scuttling in the recesses of the ship.

The prose is scattered with more of Carey's rather distinct artwork, and assorted strange photographs that complement the narrative perfectly. The tone of the book is as weird and wonderful as Heap House was even though this is aimed at an older demographic. He managed the almost impossible and surprised me with the final chapter of the book.

I can't recommend this too highly to those people who like a skewed take on familiar tales.  

Number 103 - Gideon Falls Vol 5 - Lemire et al

 

A return to the mind-bending worlds of Gideon Falls.

Now we have a grasp of what exactly is happening, this is getting more nightmarish and gripping.

The artwork continues to astound and the plot is getting twistier and twistier.  The cliffhanger ending is almost unfair.  it means i have to get the 6th and final volume much sooner rather than later...

It would be difficult to say much about what's happening without being very spoilerific for the previous 4 volumes.  Plus without a good understanding of what's gone before I'm not sure anything I say about the story here would make sense.

Suffice to say the Smiling Man is a truly scary villain and it's obvious why this series won as many awards as it did.

It takes talent to drag together as many disparate plot threads into a cohesive story in the way Lemire has done here. Sorentino's art helps build the atmosphere and general air of weirdness brilliantly as well as introducing me to narrative techniques only possible in a visual medium like comic books.

Seek these out and read them immediately.  

Number 102 - I am the Tiger - John Ajvide Lindqvist

 

This is part three of a triptych of books by John Lindqvist.  I'm not sure I'd call it a trilogy as such.  The first two books (I Am Behind You, and I Always find You) are only linked tangentially and whilst this book does tie them together much more tightly, the links between the previous too books are still too tenuous.

The first book was set on a caravan park where a number of vans suddenly found themselves in a strange landscape with an unending green field and a sunless sky.  

Book 2 was set in the real world and followed a young John Limdqvist as he moved to the city for the first time, trying to make his living as a magician and found himself embroiled in a supernatural cult, a strange alien slime that transports people to a heavenly new world,  and a plot to kill a prominent Swedish politician - a real event from Swedish history (the Swedish equivalent of JFK - to this day no one knows the true identity of the killer)

This book follows a washed up crime reporter who starts investigating a new crime lord on the block the mysterious X who is smuggling in huge amounts of the purest cocaine whilst simultaneously persuading existing crime lords to commit suicide.  We also follow his nephew, a teenager who's been selling his ADHD medicine since he was 13 and who is offered the chance to get in on the ground floor selling ridiculously cheap and pure cocaine...

For the first 150 pages or so, this reads like a crime thriller, with very few hints of the supernatural (other than subtle hints as to the cause of the spate of suicides). Even when the supernatural becomes evident, the focus is still very much on the human cost of the crime in progress and the dual viewpoints on the cocaine ring, the rising star in the organisation and his uncle investigating.

The story rattles along at a cracking pace for the most part.  There is one sub-plot regarding Tommy's living arrangements that slows things down in the middle section, but not enough to be a real issue. There are also hints about Tommy's dog being in some way special that never amount to anything. Thinking about it now, it's a little bit irritating how much time he spent on a plot thread as strange as that that went nowhere.

Like Gary McMahon's excellent Concrete Grove, this book builds up a convincing picture of a run down estate and a local boss who is much more than he seems.  There are probably more thematic similarities to Concrete Grove in this book than there are to the first two parts of his own trilogy. However this book isn't quite as scary or freaky as Concrete Grove.  It's far more grounded in reality and doesn't play the supernatural up as much as it could have done. 

The ending was unexpected to say the least, despite the fact that, in hindsight, the clues have all been laid out clearly.  Lindqvist certainly earns a few extra points for that. 

You need to read the first two books to appreciate this one properly.  Some detail could be confusing otherwise. It ties the previous two books in fairly cleverly, but I may need to reread the series again to see how accurate the links are. I'm not sure if the link to book 1 is forced or if my memory is faulty. I won't mind, they're all really good books, at least as good as an average Stephen King. 

There are Easter eggs for his other novels too. Little Star is referenced at one point for definite and some of the background events seem familiar too.

Overall, this is a damned good read, but not perfect.  It could have lost a subplot or two on the way and possibly been that much tighter a narrative but it's never less than very readable indeed and some of the set pieces are genuinely frightening. When he does play up the supernatural, the novel takes off and I think I maybe wanted more of that than Tommy's domestic life. It still kept me enthralled all the way through and delivered some great shocks.  It's done what it's supposed to and then some.

Number 101 - Buddha Boy - Kathe Koja

 

The very definition of a cheat read - i finished this in one sitting.

Kathe Koja excels in these YA novellas at introducing us to the social outcasts of high school society. In this book, it's the Buddha Boy of the titles - aka Michael martin - aka Jinsen.

He's just transferred into Edward Rucher High School and he does NOT fit in. He dresses wrong. He begs for money in the cafeteria. He acts weirdly and doesn't respond the way he should.  That includes showing not respect/fear to the school bullies which makes him number 1 target.

The narrator of the book, Justin, is forced to partner with Jinsen on a school project where he discovers that Jinsen is an amazing artist. From that grudging moment of respect, a tale of friendship against the odds builds rapidly.

The story is told in Koja's unmistakable stream of consciousness style of writing. It's a compelling read, as evidenced by the fact that I read it in one two hour sitting. 

She delivers a great message about acceptance of people who seem different, about getting to know people rather than writing them off as freaks. Jinsen's back-story, when it's revealed, feels genuinely tragic and his recovery uplifting.

My only disappointment with the book is that, being told in flashback, I hoped to find out more at the end about what happened next, just an epilogue chapter to say what the characters achieved and if the friendships continued or fizzled with distance. Even that is just a personal feeling of disappointment because I wanted more, rather than a flaw with the book's ending, which is suitably emotional. 

She left me wanting more... that can only be a compliment.

I have more of her full length adult novels on my shelves due a read or re-read at some point next year. She really is one of those writers who I will read anything she writes, no matter how far out of my personal comfort zone.  She can make you feel the character's deepest feelings with ease. 

Number 100 - In the wars - Dr Waheed Arian

 

Number 100 for the year! This was my book group read and the second autobiography in a row. I did a bit more research and Chump Change is almost certainly a fictionalised autobiography.

However, whereas Chump Change was a warts and all decent to his lowest point with a glimmer of hope at the end, this one takes almost the opposite path.  This one starts with his horrendous childhood and takes us through his pathway out of poverty and danger and to his current status as head of a prestigious charity and a doctor in the NHS.

The opening sections of the book were certainly the most interesting. His childhood in Afghanistan with breaks as a refugee in Pakistan before moving to the UK was filled with drama and incidents. He (or his ghostwriter) paints a vivid picture of the precariousness of existence in Kabul. 

Once he reaches Britain, his fortunes changed very much for the better.  He manages to enroll in a college while holding down two jobs  to get his A-levels before he is accepted into Cambridge University for his medical degree.

His work ethic puts most of the rest of the world to shame. He comes over as a truly remarkable man in every way.

This is where the cynic in me wonders what has been left out of the story. This is the only autobiography I've ever read where the author doesn't reveal even a single wart. The book reads in the end like an advert for his charity (which from the last two chapters, that's exactly why he wrote it) so I can understand that he doesn't want to show himself in a bad light at any point.  This book isn't warts and all. it's a plea to donate to his -very worthy indeed- charity. 

All in all it's a very interesting book, engagingly told. It shines a light on life experiences in war zones, the lengths people have to go to to escape, and the confusion and problems encountered trying to set up a new life in a totally different culture. 

If it was fiction I'd be complaining that the protagonist is too perfect. Was it really nothing more than youthful naivety when he didn't realise the "travel agency" that sent him to the UK wasn't completely on the level - despite fake passports etc?  Please let us see that you have some human failings other than mildly amusing cultural and lingual misunderstandings at university. 

It feels awkward admitting that I kind of feel that way about this even though it's non-fiction. However, I expect unfettered honesty from the author of one of these books, so I should be honest in my review. I am cynical by nature and struggle to believe that people can be this flawless. I want to see the whole person when I read an autobiography, not just the good bits.  Although maybe he's just a better person than me and deep inside I'm jealous. 

The work he's done is amazing. he's achieved more than I ever will in my life. He passed on a guaranteed consultancy post to concentrate on the charity work. Even if he hasn't shown us any warts, he's still a remarkable man doing great work. His charity deserves all our support, it's doing great work and actually improving things on the ground in places like Afghanistan. If you can support his charity Arian Telemedicine, do so.  They need every bit of help they can get. 

Number 99 - Chump Change - Dan Fante

 

Dan Fante is the son of Jon Fante.  As any people who read these reviews regularly will know, I discovered Jon Fante entirely by chance a couple of years back because I liked the title of one of his books (1933 was a bad year). he rapidly became a firm favourite of mine. 

I'm close to having read everything Jon Fante ever published and I wondered if the talent ran in the family. So I ordered this online - his books don't show up in Waterstones the way his dad's do - and I'm so glad I did.

The unflinching gaze at the underbelly of life is well and truly present in the writings of both father and son. 

This book is one of the most disturbing things I've read this year.  I find myself hoping that it is complete fiction and not based on Dan Fante's real life.

However - the lead character is Bruno Dante.  His father is Jonathan Dante -  a novelist and screenwriter dying from diabetes. We meet him in the book, lying on his deeathbed, a shriveled husk of his former self with no lower legs due to his illness, and only breathing through a sheer refusal to die just yet. Jon Fante died of diabetes - he too had lost his feet to the disease. 

 Jonathan Dante's book that is referenced in this is called Ask the Wind.  The last of the Bandini novels was Ask the Dust. There are so many similarities between Jonathan Date and Jon Fante it's impossible to surmise anything other than Dan wrote his father into this book under a very thin veil indeed.

Given that the father character IS his real life father, how much of the character of Bruno is Dan Fante?  

Bruno is not a nice man.  He's an out of control alcoholic with a mean streak a mile wide and totally self destructive.  We meet him first when he's released from rehab a few days early so his wife can take him back to LA to see his father before he dies.

What follows is a compulsive and horrifically readable account of alcoholism and a crash to the bottom. I'm not sure Dante makes one good decision at any stage of the book. We certainly can't root for him and his behaviour. We can't sympathise in the slightest.  But Fante's prose makes us understand him and empathise. We can hope that he might turn a corner somewhere, but it never seems likely. This spiral is a bad one. The only thing close to a redeeming feature is his attempts to look after the dog, and he's not even very good at doing that.

This book messed with my dreams and gave me a sleepless night. Most horror novels I read don't manage that. His depiction of broken humanity is so convincing that it hits on a deep deep level. However there are shafts of humour shining through. This isn't a misery memoir.  It's compelling in part because of the jet black humour used to illuminate the darkness.

I will certainly be tracking down more of his work.  He truly manages to carry on his father's legacy.

Number 98 - Monstress Volume 1 - Liu & Takeda

 

Another randomly chosen graphic novel for a cheat read - although this was 200 pages, making it one of the two longest graphic novels I currently own. 

As with a lot of the graphic novels I've chosen randomly from Forbidden Planet this year - I chose it because it was cheap and the artwork looked really rather special.

There's a lot to unpack in this book.  Marjorie Liu on writing duties is building a whole new world of magic mixed with science and Lovecraftian horrors from the dawn of time.

Also throw in a war between half breed humans and full bloods, a race of superbeings and have plot points described by talking cats with too many tails, and you run the risk of overegging the pudding.

However, Liu, assisted by Takeda's stunning artwork, manages to never overstep the mark.  This never feels silly and the next bit of weirdness feels earned and logical in the framework of the story.

Our central character - Maika Halfwolf - is everything you want from a questing heroine.  She's more than capable of looking after herself in a fight, has magical powers which occasionally manifest and a mysterious past. She's brave and loyal to her friends, and dedicated to avenging her mother's death in unexplained (so far) circumstances. She is also host to a malicious demon from prehistory which has issues with not killing everyone near her. That's the least of her problems though.

There's a lot of worldbuilding going on.  The first issue was 70 pages long in order to set up all the various alliances and feuds. This is epic fantasy on the scale of A Song of Ice and Fire. It's won several awards and it's very easy to understand why. 

There are some obvious influences to the story. But they're incorporated naturally enough so they don't interfere with the storytelling. It's virtually impossible to write something 100% original anymore in any case. This still feels fresh.  It's what you do with the ingredients that makes it work.  The story is strong enough in its own right that it doesn't feel derivative.

I've always said it's better to create new strong female characters than it is to change the sex of existing male characters and this is a beautifully done example. It covers important themes of sexism and racism without being in your face about it. 

I'm wishing I'd got into graphic novels a lot sooner.  With material of this quality that I've been missing out on through pure ignorance and dismissal of the form, I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Number 97 - Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV - Eric brown

As titles go, that's not a good one.  It took me 4 tries to pronounce it and I still don't think I did it right. Even with the alliteration, it's clumsy.  There's no hard and fast rules about titles, but when they trip off the tongue like it's superglued in place, that's not a great sign.

Fortunately, the story does improve on the title. 

Matt Hendrick is a cop trying to find his estranged wife, who along with her surgeon lover, has kidnapped his daughter.  He's traced her to a distant planet, 4th from the sun Fomalhaut an d the book opens with him telemassing (this particular book's version of teleporting interstellar distances) to the local spaceport.

There he meets the mysterious Tiana, who's girlfriend has recently disappeared. They head off into the wilds to track down their respective loved ones, meeting up with the native inhabitants once there. 

For a story about a quest to a far off exotic planet, two thirds of this could have been set in any regular ship port on planet earth.  It's only in the final 25 pages (this is not a long book, which was the reason i chose it) that the location and storyline justify the sci-fi setting.  Prior to that it was just another regular cop tracing mis-per story.

The style of writing was reasonably good, if a bit bland.  The sections in italics at the end of every chapter from Tiana's point of view were needless and irritating.  There were only 2 that delivered any information we hadn't been given in the preceding chapter. The rest just felt like Brown was repeating himself.

I received this book in one of the bundles that PS publishing offer on their discount site.  I also happen to have books 2 and 4 of the quartet on my shelves. because I already have them, I will pick them up and read them at some point. If they are up to this standard, they will be a decent way to kill an hour or two,  I hope book 3 arrives in the bundle I ordered the other day, then I don't need to make any effort to find book 3

Number 97 - Joyland - Stephen King

 

I suddenly realised when I looked at my list for the year that I hadn't read any Stephen King yet in 2021. 

So to make up for that grievous omission, I picked up this one that's been gathering dust for  a couple of years.  

As you can guess from the fact that the publisher is Hard Case Crime, this isn't a horror novel.  There's no terrifying presences stalking the cast.  There is a small amount of supernatural but it's on the side of our narrator.

Devin Jones is a college student whose girlfriend has just ditched him. he's working a summer job at the Joyland of the title.  This is the early 70s and Joyland is a small theme park on the North Carolina coast. He hears about a murder that happened on the ghost train ride a few years earlier. It's rumoured that the ghost of the girl who was murdered appears to staff and occasional visitors to the ride. 

Devin also meets the second love of his life whilst moping about the first. Other characters include the carnie psychic, a dying young boy, some lifelong friends and more carnie staff.

King takes his time with the storytelling.  People who accuse him of bloat in his writing will likely hate this book. I've noticed that most of what people call bloat is his character and world building.  This book is a character piece, a coming of age story with a slight murder mystery thrown in for good measure. By the end of the book he's built this insular world of Joyland so beautifully it's almost a surprise to realise you didn't work there yourself at some point.

The murder mystery isn't particularly mysterious.  The cast is relatively small and the choices are limited. But that's not the point of this book. This is about the characters.  If the chapter where young Mike visits Joyland doesn't fill your heart with a bittersweet joy, you don't have feelings. I was grinning and trying not to cry simultaneously at the evocation of the boy's experience at the park.

This may well be my favourite non-horror King book. Devin is a totally believable and relatable narrator, recounting his youth and how he got over his first true love ending rather cruelly. We feel for him and sympathise with his darkest moments and we're happy as Howie the Hound when he scores his victories.

My next King book will be a horror, but this is proof that King can write pretty much anything he sets his mind to. 

Number 95 - Of Whimsies and Noubles - Matthew Hughes

 

As you might be able to guess from the title, this book is a whimsical affair.  A whimsy in this case though, is a portal through different dimensions that works as a wormhole to vastly distant corners of the universe, but can send people mad who enter them unmedicated.

An art forger in the distant future trades his latest forgeries for Noubles, a rare and highly sought after jewel. He soon finds that he's been double crossed and is stranded on a prison planet and forced into dangerous work.  Can he find a way out?

There are some nifty science fiction ideas at work in this.  Where do Noubles come from?  Who built the whimsies since they're certainly not natural occurrences?  What lives inside them?

The whole thing is engagingly written.  Hughes has a slyly sarcastic style that I like a lot.  To be completely honest he won me over with the author bio.

"Matthew Hughes writes science fantasy.  Booklist have called him "heir apparent to ack Vance," George RR Martin has called his Archonate tales "a tremendous amount of fun", and Robert J Sawyer has called him "a towering talent". Hughes calls himself "Matt". His webpage is at www.matthewhughes.org ."

Everything after that was a bonus.  

It's very short.  I read it in a couple of hours and enjoyed myself immensely in the process. i will be seeking out more of his work.

Number 94 - Gideon Falls vol 4 - The Pentoculus

 

This series gets more mind-bending by the volume.

The stakes are raised considerably in this collection of issues 19 through 24 of the original comic. 

I am so glad I'm reading them in this form instead of having to wait a month for the next issue. The drawback is that some of the double page spreads don't have the same impact. Whereas the comics open flat, there's always the crease in  the centre of a book with a solid spine. 

The art continues to impress with the highly original use of layout to advance the storytelling. 

The writing continues to impress.  The tension has really wracked up considerably in this volume.  Things are starting to make more sense but that doesn't lessen any of the impact. It's pretty obvious why this won so many awards while it was out.

It's easily on a par with my previous favourite series Locke and Key.

Number 93 - Cunning Folk - Adam Nevill

 Nobody writes "Bad Place" horror novels quite as effectively as Adam Nevill.  Ritual, Apartment 16, House of Small Shadows and No One Gets Out Alive all have locations so well drawn that no sane person would want to go there. 

In his new novel out now from his own imprint (Link at the end of the review), he somehow manages to give us his scariest location yet.

A young family, Tom and his wife Fiona and 4 year old daughter Gracie, desperate to leave the inner city, buy a decrepit old house in an unnamed village somewhere in the deep countryside in the South of England. The suicide of the last owner isn't really an issue for them.  that's history.  it doesn't matter any more. They're going to do the house up and make a beautiful family home for dear little Gracie to grow up in. 

That's the plan anyway.  They hadn't banked on a pair of truly malicious neighbours. From an initial frosty welcome, events start spiraling completely out of control. And who will believe Tom when he says the neighbours have magical powers and are laying curses on him and his family? 

As much as I've loved everything else Adam Nevill has written, with this book, he smashes it out of the park.  The horror starts in such a grounded way for Tom et al.  The financial stakes are so high, this is the greatest gamble he's taken - but we know from the prologue what the neighbours are capable of doing and that things are unlikely to turn out nicely. At the very least, he may well end up financially ruined, or he could lose so much more than mere money. When things start to escalate, they become more vicious than anything I've seen in any of Nevill's other work.

The sense of doom is palpable, the flashes of hope that glimmer through the gloom are extinguished in the cruelest of ways. One scene in particular, and it's immediate aftermath felt like a hammer-blow to the psyche. It's not an unearned shock, or done solely for effect. It's a shock that's been carefully planned and built up to. From that point on it's almost impossible to put the book down.

Despite the oh-so-familiar trope of the family buying a new home and bad things start happening, this feels like a fresh take on the old storyline.  The place is a bad place because of the neighbours, not the place itself.  The story wrong-footed me several times and I was second guessing myself constantly - and getting it wrong most of the time. 

There is a jet black sense of humour running through the book as well, despite the darkness. this just serves to drive the shocks deeper. 

This is quite possibly the best thing that Nevill has written to date. Tom's relationship with Gracie and his fears for her feel so true, I wonder how much of the early part of the novel is maybe based on the real experience of buying a place in the country and uprooting with the family.

As usual from Ritual Limited, the book itself is an object of beauty before you even open it.  Everything about this book is top quality, the artwork, the feel of the paper, everything.

The only thing I think would have improved this book would have been if the toy penguin was called Fluffy and not Waddles.  People who know the other work of Mr Simon Nevill (Adam's brother - a very talented family) who drew that rather terrifying boar's head on the front cover will understand what that means.

This book and all his back catalogue are available through his website 

All – Adam LG Nevill

Number 92 - Birthday - Cesar Aira

 

I picked this up very randomly in Waterstones on Sunday.  Basically because it was very thin.  The description said it was about a guy who just past his 50th birthday and a chance conversation made him reevaluate his life.

This did resonate with me a little since I turned 26 and a bit quite recently myself.  It feels dishonest if the bit is more than half the total...

I'm not sure this classes as a novel or even a novella.  It's more like a 80 something page essay.  There's no real story, just a geezer ruminating on the fact that he's not young any more.  He tells us his thoughts about a host of the big subjects in life.  He makes a few good points.  He waffles on about some tripe as well.  

He talks about his plan as a novelist and how he's not convinced he's done enough.  He's refreshingly honest in his self assessment, but not seeringly honest. I can't say I came away from this book with any real impression of the writer as anything other than a slightly self obsessed bore. 

It kills a couple of hours. There are a few nice observations. It's generally quite readable. I can't really praise it much more than that.

Number 91 - Pretty Deadly Vol 3 - The Rat

 Volume 3 of this series sees another time jump.  this time it's set in Hollywoodland in the 30s.

One of the descendants of the lead character from volume 1 has been murdered and her uncle enlists the help of  Deathface Ginny to solve the murder.

each of these three volumes has been radically different from the others. From the weird western vibe of volume 1 - to the war story of volume 2, her we have a film noir vibe that is perfectly captured in Emma Rios's continued beautifully rendered artwork.

Rios needs as much credit for her artwork and layouts as Kelly Sue Deconnick does for the writing. Their talents meld amazingly well.  These are not comics to be quickly skimmed.  These are filled with resonances and deeper meaning. They need to be savoured. There are pages where you can forget about the story for a moment and just appreciate the artwork.  

This series is easily on a par with Sandman. Any story that can encompass the range of time periods and moods as this has so successfully is special indeed. The fact that they both feature a female Death character is probably just coincidence. 

This is the end of the Pretty Deadly series for now, and it's a great ending,  but there are story strands left open which I would love to see continued.  Hopefully there will be another story arc to come. 

Number 90 - English Magic - Uschi Gatward

 This collection of short stories is the latest offering from Galley Beggar Press. Not only did it come with the usual dedicated bookmark that these special editions are supplied with, it also came with a crushed dried flower.  A very unusual touch indeed.

Unsurprisingly, since this is a debut collection, this is a new author for me.  And I have to say that when she's good, she's very good indeed.  There isn't a badly written story in the collection. 

The book isn't without its faults though.  As with a few non-genre short story collections I've read, there are a few stories that don't end, they just stop.  

When I make that comment I'm reminded of the bit in Stephen King's novella "The Body" (filmed as Stand by Me) just after Jordy has told the story of Lardass Hogan and he's disappointed when his friends ask him what happened next.  However, the story of Lardass Hogan tells of one particularly dramatic and memorable event.  The stories in this collection that don't end just seem to be everyday slices of life that don't seem to have any particular point or meaning to them and I don't see the reason for stopping where they do.

They are extremely well written and a pleasure to read.  They just frustratingly seem to suddenly sputter out.  This seems to be typical in "literary" short fiction.  It's my biggest complaint about the Paul Theroux short story collections I've got. Also the Jon McGregor short story collection, as much as I love his writing...  

I love short fiction. I started on Ray Bradbury's short fiction when I was 12 and it showed me how amazing a good short story can be. But his stories have a distinct beginning, middle and end.  Some of the stories here succeed on that front, but not all.

The Clinic is a great opening story but the first to frustrate me with the ending.  It felt like the opening chapter of a much longer work.  There was so much unanswered detail.  Why is their child so advanced?  Why do they feel the need to keep it hidden? Why take the extreme measures they do?  But there are no answers, so as brilliant as it was while reading it, the end left me wanting. As an opening chapter this would be brilliant, you'd have me hooked, as it stands, it's sadly lacking.

My Brother is Back has a similar lack of detail, but the story feels more complete. We feel for Syed on his return to England after a mysterious incarceration on US shores.  The ending to this feels natural, as he finally gets to relax and wait for the promise of normalcy to return. 

Oh Whistle And... is the most interesting stylistically.  It's written in lots of short freewheeling and not immediately obviously interlinked paragraphs.  It efficiently builds the picture of a large group of people, none of whom are named with more than a single letter of the alphabet, and who are either monitoring or being monitored for their political/religious beliefs. A really interesting piece and possibly my favourite in the book.  this style of freewheeling narrative is difficult to pull off but Gatward manages it here.  

Beltane tells the vaguely threatening tale of a couple attending a rural festival in an English village. Another good story with a more natural feeling end.

The Bird - A couple return from their honeymoon to find a bird is trapped behind their fireplace and tapping tapping tapping at the back of their gas fire.  Again, this is a strong story, mired in mataphor and symbols, and with a definite end.

On Margate Sands follows a pair of friends trying to find an old attraction one of them remembers seeing in Margate many years earlier.  It's a sad little meditation of memory with a bittersweet feel.  Another strong story.  

The Creche - a day trip with the toddler group goes badly.  This is another frustrating story.  it was witty, funny, deeply insightful and then it just stopped... I'm not sure if it's just me that can't see the symbolism in the ending but I was enjoying this so much and there seemed no point when it finished.

Lurve - maybe I need to be more in with the fashionable crowd to get this one.  It's the longest and one of my least favourite in the collection.  It paints a good picture of a set of unlikeable self absorbed characters on the edge of the art crowd in London. Again, it just sputters out.  Again, this could be a starting point for a much longer and deeply satisfying work.

Lammas - Again she tries a freewheeling approach to narrative.  This jumps about all over the place, and time.  Unfortunately, I don't think this one holds together particularly.  The quality of the prose dips in this story too. The opening is florid to the point of being irritating.  My least favorite in the book by a fair margin.

Samhain - I really don't quite know what to make of this one.  It certainly ends on a vaguely threatening note.  It seems deliberately obfuscated though.  Lovely atmosphere built up, but I'd prefer to have a clear idea of what the ending was.

What's For You Won't Go By You - is the Ollie in this one of the characters from Lurve?  I'm not sure.  he seemed very similar.  Another slice of life that seems too unfocussed with no real end. A pleasure to read still, just unsatisfying when it finished.

backgammon - the final story. An woman gets an insight into the possibly abusive relationship her friend is involved in. Again, this reads like the start of a longer piece.  Although in this one, I can see how the end is a comment on how people leave awkward situations hanging because it's the easiest thing to do.

With only one exception, I thought the writing in all these stories was very good indeed.  I would like to see her write in past tense a little more.  All these stories are in the present tense. This makes it feel like there isn't much variety to the stories as the style rarely changes. That's only a minor quibble since it was never a chore to read any of it, in fact I took great pleasure from most of the stories.  That makes it seem more of a shame that they feel unfocussed and unfinished at times.

I will certainly be checking out her next book when it comes out. maybe it will be the novel that at least one of these stories seems to want to be the start of.

Number 89 - the Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

 Neil Gaiman does an imaginative variation on Kipling's Jungle Book.  Instead of Mowgli living in a jungle and befriending the wildlife, we have Nobody Owens, a child who finds himself orphaned and living in a large cemetery being raised by ghosts (and a vampire).

Considering that this is a children's book, the opening chapter is very dark indeed with The Man Jack  proving to be a really quite scary villain as he creeps through the house and viciously murders Bod's entire family.  

Luckily for Bod, he's chosen that day to toddle unseen from the house and up the road to the deserted (by humans) graveyard. After a confrontation and a plea on his behalf, the decision is taken by the ghosts to grant young Bod the freedom of the graveyard and raise him to adulthood.

Like the Jungle Book, this book takes the form of a series of interlinked short stories.  The longest story joins them together and uses plot elements from all the preceding tales to give a more than satisfying conclusion to one of the overarching plots.  I found the final chapter to be really quite moving.  

As usual for Neil Gaiman, the prose is excellent.  He achieves a fairy tale feeling which is deceptively charming, given the darkness of the subject matter.  Bod is a brilliant creation and watching him grow and mature is a lovely experience. The supporting cast are all uniformly engaging, some mysterious, some funny, some scary.   The illustrations are rather good as well.

I was going to power through this book but found myself slowing down to savour it instead.  As children's books go this has plenty to engage the more mature reader too. 

Buy it for your kids if you must, but don't feel ashamed of reading it for yourself too.  You won't regret it.

Number 88 - Gideon Falls vol 3 Stations of the Cross

The problem with doing a write up of a continuing series is twofold 

1 - If I say too much about the storyline in the later episodes, it serves as spoilers to the earlier volumes and I try not to leave spoilers.

2 - If the quality stays at the same level, a lot of what I might have to say about the current volume will have been said before.

In this volume we start to find explanations for the events in volumes 1 and 2.  Everything is very wibbly wobbly timey wimey with an extra twist.

The artwork and layouts continue to be astonishingly good. The plot is opening to more questions at the same time as it answers them.  I completely understand why this won awards the year it was released.

Not really much more to say except that these volumes are available from all good booksellers.  Go out and buy them ASAP.
 

Number 87 - Starve Acre - Andrew Michael Hurley

 I finished this a few hours ago and it hasn't quite settled yet.  I'm not entirely sure it's going to.  I think that a picture of this book will be included in the dictionary next to the word unsettling from now on. 

I picked this up on the strength of that cover, with the verse around the pages as seen in the second picture.  On the top edge of the book the last line reads  “T’is part of his game To vary his name”  

The book follows Richard and Juliette Willoughby as they struggle to move on after the death of their five year old son Ewan. Whereas Richard has thrown himself fully into  his work to the point that they forced him to take administrative leave,  Juliette has taken the opposite path and retreated into herself.  She hasn't left the country home -the Starve Acre of the title - in months.  Richard has found projects to keep himself busy at home particularly the search for remnants of a legendary oak tree in the field across from the house.

This story is the definition of a slow burn.  Hurley takes his time drip feeding us information, dropping hints as to the nature of events at Starve Acre.  Juliette truly losing her mind or is something else at work? All may or may not be revealed.

Hurley's prose is immaculate and dispassionate.  He never asks us to feel sorry for the couple, he merely presents us with their behaviours and allows us to decide for ourselves. The atmosphere builds steadily. Events take a turn for the strange after Richard discovers the skeleton of a hare in the field. His absolute disconnect from reality is demonstrated by his reaction to those events.

The end of this book sent a genuine shiver down my spine.  For a horror aficionado like me, that's an achievement by the writer.  

As with any book, your mileage may vary but I found this to be a creepy and effective slice of folk horror. I recommend it highly.

This special edition with the writing on the page edges is available through Waterstones.  the regular edition is available from all good bookshops (and probably some bad ones).

Number 86 - Pretty Deadly Volume 2 - The Bear

 Deaths Head Ginny returns in this second volume of this intriguing series.  

Times have moved on and we're now in World War 1. The surviving humans from the first volume are in their dotage and the boy from the first is a soldier on the western front.

The conflict is no longer just between humans.  The reapers are now front and centre of the story.  The Reaper of War is gaining power and spreading across the world. 

This is a powerful story about the folly of war combined with a grand supernatural tale about the nature of death itself.

It owes something of a debt to Sandman and suffers in comparison - but most works of this type do.

The artwork is mostly impressive but there are places where it's difficult to tell exactly what is happening, especially in the fights between the reapers where the art is almost impressionistic. 

A good cheat read again and i have no regrets that I bought volume 3 at the same time as this one.  

Number 85 - The Only Good Indians - Stephen Graham Jones

 

I'd heard a lot of good things about this book, but with a TBR pile the size of mine, it's taken a while to get around to it.  My October horror reads month is the perfect excuse.

I'm so glad that I did.  This is the best horror reads month I've done in years.  Not a dud so far, in fact, they seem to be improving.

I can honestly say I have never read anything quite like this.  Except in the broadest terms of a revenge from beyond the grave narrative, this is genuinely like nothing else I've read

The story follows a group of four Native American friends who went hunting together and shot a lot of elk.  Ten years after a particularly successful but disturbing hunt, they find themselves being hunted themselves.

The writing is outstanding.  I have seen a couple of Amazon reviews that say they don't like the way it's written, but those people just don't know good writing when they see it.  

There are four main sections to this book and they are all slightly different in the writing style although the present tense narrative remains throughout.  It's almost a portmanteau novel with very closely linked stories.

The prologue sets us up nicely and then we get a section titled The House that Ran Red. This follows one of the hunters (Lewis) in a very close third person narrative and we soon start to think that he is going rapidly insane... the reveal of what is actually happening is one of the most satisfying scares I've seen in a book for a long long time.  

The third section contains the best use I've ever seen of a second person narrative, dropping us the readers into the character of the spirit/demon/creature stalking the human characters.  It reads normally for the most part, "he does this/that/whatever", but when the creature does something or is seen, it switches to second person - "He sees you across the yard" etc. We feel as though we are the ones hunting these characters, the guilty and innocent alike. This gave that section the most impact for me.

Then we have the closing segment.  I had no idea how Jones could bring this to a satisfying close given what had happened in the previous section but he managed it in absolute spades.  

This is a genuinely emotional and disturbing book.  I have already ordered his previous novel - My Heart is a Chainsaw (which is already a winner just on the strength of that title) and his books have moved into the buy as soon as they come out category.

I can understand why some people are maybe put off by the writing.  It's highly stylised and (especially in the House That Ran Red) there is a lot left to the reader to piece together so it's not the easiest read.  But if you're willing to put in the small effort needed to adapt to the prose, this is one of the best horror novels of recent years.  It's certainly the most original, in terms of style, plot and execution.

Go out and buy it.

Number 84 - Joe Hill's the Cape 1969 - Jason Ciaramellar, Nelson Daniel

Joe Hill actually had nothing to do with writing this one (or the first sequel either).  He's listed as a creative consultant on the credits page and as the author of the original short story this is the prequel to, but he has no writing credit. It's a shame his name appears on the front cover but not Ciaramellar who actually wrote this story from scratch.

How much more can there be to add to the story?  The original short story (and the graphic novel it spawned) is a self contained piece with a clear beginning, middle and end. That ending was pretty definitive too.

The first sequel was entertaining enough and filled in what happened when the cape wearing antihero/villain vanished for three days in the original story.

The only other place the story can go is backwards, and therefore this is a prequel. Back in 1969 we follow the father of our previous lead character  is in Vietnam.  He's on board that helicopter you can see on that cover and unsurprisingly he finds himself in the jungle pretty soon after trying to evade capture.

Quite how any of this is going to tie in with the original story is never made clear until almost the final page, despite a fair bit of human levitation related revenge happening.  When the reveal is made, i will admit that the first thing I did was pull the first graphic novel off my shelf to see if the detail was correct - which of course it was. 

I wasn't sure if this book was going to jump the shark a little but I'm happy to report that it doesn't.  it's a worthy addition to the Cape's history.  The story is exciting and occasionally gruesome.  despite being a prequel, I didn't see where the story was headed - a neat trick to pull off. The ending is genuinely clever.  The art is excellent throughout.

All in all, a good fun cheat read and well worth tracking down a copy.

Number 83 - Heap House - Edward Carey

 

I just discovered that I bought this book by mistake.  I found it in Poundland in their book section for only a pound.  That's both a great bargain and a damned shame. More on that statement later.

When I saw that illustration I thought that this was by the illustrator of that alphabet book with all the dead children so I snapped it up. As i just discovered, that alphabet book is called the Gashlycrumb Tinies and it's by Edward GOREY.  He died in 2000 and so is most definitely not the author of this book which was written in the mid 2010s.

Back to that statement about this being in Poundland being a damned shame... Poundland's basic business model is buying remaindered stock for any non food items and things that you would reasonably expect to pay more than a pound for.  That means that this book certainly didn't sell as many copies as it deserves to.

This might be a children's or Young Adult book, but it's one of the best things I've read this year. I've had so much fun reading this book. 

The storyline is kind of traditional - strange family, strange house,  in comes a stranger and things start to unravel. The most sympathetic member of the family faces a quandary regarding his loyalties... etc.

What makes this almost entirely unique is the plot details. The reason the family is so strange, the setting, and the characters set this book apart from pretty much anything else I've ever read.  I genuinely can't think of anything that this would compare directly to. Think Dickens trying to write Gormenghast with Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snickett with a dash of Roald Dahl and indeed the aforementioned Edward Gorey and you'd be somewhere in the ballpark.

Heap House is the home of the Iremonger family.  It's set in the middle of huge rubbish heaps imported from neighboring London. All the upstairs Iremongers have names almost but not quite like ordinary names.  Our hero is Clod Iremonger (short for Clodius), he has cousins called Moorcus and Timmus who also feature heavily in the story.  Our heroine is Lucy Pennant, a new servant in the house. All the servants are distant relatives too poor to live in the main house.  Once indentured they lose their London names and just become known as Iremonger. Lucy doesn't want to lose her name

Everyone who lives in the house has a birth object that they cannot be parted from. Clod's birth object is a bathplug, Timmus carries around a tap etc.  Clod has an almost unique abilty to hear all the birth objects talking. They all shout out names.  His bath plug, for example, always shouts James henry Hayward. 

The drama starts in the story when his great aunt Rosamud's door handle goes missing.  Clod and Lucy meet and form a forbidden friendship. Events quickly spiral out of control.  Items are moving by themselves.  Huge angry creatures are forming from the rubbish and a storm is gathering over the heaps.

There's a very blatant anti-capitalist metaphor at the heart of the story which adds whole layers of meaning to the proceedings.

The mock Victorian setting is brilliantly created and helped along by the mordantly funny illustrations that introduce every chapter. I didn't realise that this was part 1 of a trilogy when I bought it.  I'm very happy that it is because that means I have two more books in which to experience this world in. I've already ordered both of them.

This is still available in the usual outlets, although in paperback with not such a great looking cover.

It may be aimed at the younger generation but it entertained this adult enormously.  an easy 9/10 

By the way - here's the Edward Gorey thing if you've never seen it before

Animated Gashlycrumb Tinies Alphabet - Narrated by TDC - YouTube

 

Number 82 - Wytches - Snyder, Jock et al

 

My first foray into the October long reading of horror and nothing but (as if I need an excuse), is this rather excellent graphic novel.

This opens with a dictionary definition of witches.  On the following page, we see the same definitions but this time they've been scratched out.  The witches in this volume are nothing like we would expect.

Scott Snyder has created his own mythology around the traditional stories and it's a real feat of imagination.  The Wytches are truly scary creations, underground creatures with a horrible hold over people on the surface.

As with a lot of horror stories, we start with a family settling in to their new home, and the daughter settling in to her new school.  She has more reason than most to be nervous about joining a new school.  At her old school she was implicated in the disappearance of the school bully.  The truth is too bizarre for anyone to believe. 

Suffice to say, the move to a new town doesn't improve the situation.  Things get steadily worse instead.  

The artwork is stunning.  It's moody and evocative with things hiding and watching in many many panels, adding to the unease that the remarkably frightening script is rapidly generating.

The six issues of the comic are followed by notes from the writer, describing the writing process and the personal nature of this particular story.

My only complaint about this is that there is no volume 2.  I'm very late to the party on this.  It's over 5 years old and a continuation was promised... It's still not here, except for a Halloween special issue from 2018 which sells for silly prices.

Brilliantly written, beautifully drawn, scary as all hell.  I cant recommend this too highly.

Number 81 - Starship and Haiku - SP Somtow

Continuing in my quest to read Somtow's entire back catalogue, here's one of his earliest novels. In fact it won the the Locus award for best first novel, so it's his first.

You can tell this is a late 80s reprint from the fact that it has his shortened name on it instead of Somtow Sucharitkul. They knew how to put together a nice looking book cover in the 80s and this one is no exception.

The story has to score several points for originality. We're in the distant future (2022) and a plague is spreading across what's left of the world after the millennial wars.  The story is split between Japan and Hawaii.  

On Hawaii we meet Josh Nakamura and his little brother Didi who was born on the night that the moon was blasted out of the sky. People think Didi is simple but he has abilities that no one could guess.   They're desperate to leave for Japan, the last vestige of civilisation on the planet.

Japan has more than its fair share of problems too. Mass suicides are in progress at the behest of a mysterious figure calling himself the death Lord.  Ryoko Ishida, daughter of on of Japan's first ministers and blessed with the ability to talk to whales,  has other plans. 

This is a world ending apocalypse unlike any I've read before, and I doubt I will again.  I think maybe if I knew more about Japanese culture I might have picked up on some details that I've missed.

Somtow's prose is lush and lyrical.  He builds this bizarre end of times in broad strokes.  Where some writers would have used 210 pages just to set up the premise, Somtow trusts his readers to follow him on this headtrip and not lose track and tells the whole story in those 210 pages. And it's a trip well worth following him on.  There are world changing revelations about the nature of humanity and life itself.  They're thrown at us as casually as most writers will have a character decide on what coat to wear.

Like everything else he's written, this is a damned good read. Highly recommended.

Number 80 - Gideon Falls Book 2: Original Sins

 

The second volume, collecting issues 7 through 11 of this continuing series by Jeff Lemire and stunningly illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino

As per my comments on the first volume, this book is gorgeous to look at.  It has a truly mind-bending plot. The art is amazing and the way the layouts are used as an integral part of the storytelling is remarkable to say the least.

There are some hints towards an explanation, and the apparently separate storylines are now officially merged.  

I've ordered book 3 already.  These books show how graphic novels can be just as valid a writing form as prose.  And they demonstrate tricks in the storytelling - use of layout etc. - that prose novels could never hope to emulate.

Number 79 - Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers

 

This month's book group book - I will admit I would never have picked this up of my own volition.

There's always a danger in giving a book a title like Small Pleasures.  It leaves the door open to so many possible attacks from reviewers if they don't like it.  

However it also opens to "This was no small pleasure" types of reviews. Indeed this book opens with 10 full pages of glowing reviews of that sort. I can't remember the last time I saw so many at the start of the book.*

Anyhoo.. what did I think of it?

This is definitely another book that's out of my  normal genre choices.

In the 1950s, a single 40 year old female reporter at a local paper is tasked with looking into an alleged virgin birth.  Her relationship with the family of the "miracle" child leads to the possibility of escape from the drudgery of her home life.

This isn't a book of overplayed, highly strung emotion.  Jean is emotionally repressed, still living at home caring for her elderly mother.  Her relationship builds slowly and steadily. Most of the drama is kept off screen and everything seems very cozy. The only high passion relationship that develops is kept off screen and revealed not to be all it was hoped for.

The language used throughout the book is very restrained and somewhat dated.  However, this serves to cement the 50's setting with remarkable accuracy.  This being a modern novel though, there are other themes present and Jean's attitudes do seem to be a few decades out of their time.

By and large she's a sympathetic creation.  We have full sympathy for her drudgery and the tedium of looking after her elderly mother.  The glimpse into her possible future when she goes on holiday is probably the least subtle moment in the book

Near the end of the book though, I almost started to feel that Chambers was just piling misery on poor Jean for the sake of it. How many ways can you throw hope at a character and then grab it back?  The ending is a gut punch, but one that the attentive reader might guess from the opening chapters.

It held my interest throughout. I did actually feel sorry for Jean at times. The tedium is maybe too realistically portrayed. I kicked myself for not being quite attentive enough to realise the relevance of the opening of the book until the end.

I'm not sure I'll read another Clare Chambers again in a hurry, but this does what it sets out to do and provides more than small pleasure on the way.  

*Actually I believe my copy of the Wasp Factory has a similar number of reviews before the book starts.  However, it hilariously includes as many bad reviews as good, and the bad reviews it lists are full of hatred. It was one of the things that made me read the book - the fact that it inspired as much hate as love.  For the record I loved it.

Number 78 - Talk - Kathe Koja

Non-supernatural teen drama is not my thing. High school arguments and who wants to go out with who are sub plots.  Not the lead story.

That's my normal thoughts on the genre.  Then along comes Kathe Koja again and writes a compelling and utterly absorbing little book like this where the most out there thing that happens is a fight at a town rally.

Lindsay is the school's queen bitch. She's used to  getting what she wants.  Kit is a quiet kid hiding a secret about his sexuality.  He's persuaded to try out for the school play - Talk - and finds himself cast in the male lead opposite Lindsay.

Lindsay has just recently dumped her jock boyfriend and finds herself attracted to Kit. Things are not going to go well. As you might guess from that cleverly designed cover, the play attracts a fair amount of controversy. 

The chapters are told in almost stream of consciousness narration from the POV of Kit and Lindsay alternately.  There are also inserts of script from the play.

The voices telling us the story are clearly delineated, you can tell them apart easily from the rhythms and word choices.  The story races along at a great pace and the more Lindsay fixates on Kit, the more tense things become.  

The ending happily doesn't shut down all the storylines.  Life rarely does this so it's nice to see this reflected. I wondered if the ex boyfriend had a more accurate gaydar than a straight guy would normally have. of course we only have his actions to judge him by as told through the two narrators and there's no way to  know if there's more to my pondering on that.

We feel real sympathy for the two leads. Despite Lindsay being the queen of the school, we know her thought process and why she does and says the things she does. We know she's heading for a big fall and the inevitability of that is the lead source of tension in the book, even ahead of the "will the play go ahead" storyline.

As YA dramas about school life and regular normal people doing regular normal things go, this is really very good indeed. It left me wanting to know what happens next.  That's always a good thing.

Number 77 - Monster Town - Bruce Golden

 

Now this was a lot of fun.

Dirk Slade is a washed up ex cop working as a private eye (what else could he be with that name) in Monster Town. Monster Town is where the movie monsters go to live when work in the movies dries up. It's the 60's so they're in a particular slump. I'm not talking about the actors who played the monsters.  In this reality, the monsters are real and play themselves on the screen.

When Dirk is called to investigate the disappearance of the son of Vladimir Prince (aka Count Dracula), it starts a chain of events in progress that he would never have predicted. 

His best friend, a local journalist, is murdered whilst following up a Godzilla big story. As well as the missing boy, he needs to avenge his friend's death and uncover the story.

Along the way he runs into the wolfman, the invisible man, Quasimodo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a vicious gargoyle and others, and starts up a new romance with the beautiful wasp Woman, She has a sting in her tail.

It's all told in classic hard boiled prose. All short and sweet as a short and sweet thing, with similes galore.

It kept a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it.  This is a comedy that doesn't rely on telling jokes (although  there are some gloriously convoluted puns to be found) but on telling the ridiculous story as straight as it could possibly be told.

At only 120 pages it's a quick and very easy read.  For fans of the old horror movies, there are a ton of Easter eggs and sneaky references. It's not particularly deep and meaningful.  It's not meant to be.

If you want a droll, surreal murder mystery in a brilliantly realised setting, this is the book for you.  And it's on special offer over at the PS Publishing discount site.

 

Number 76 - Something is Killing the Children vol 1 - Tynion/Dell'edera/Muerto

 Another cheat read I picked up purely for the title. 

It is almost as subtle as the title suggests.  The plot, surprisingly, revolves around a monster killing children in small town America.

Enter Erica Slaughter, a mysterious monster hunter with a toy octopus that advises her along the way - not always reliably...

It's good fun to read.  There are shades of the story of Grendel and Beowulf. There are hints at a secret society she works for who may or may not be entirely working for the public good (even though she certainly is on the side of stopping giant monster eating children herself). Misunderstandings with the locals make her job more complicated than it should be.

The artwork ranges from pretty damned good to  wild and wacky to purely functional to not very good in places (what is with the boy's nose in the flashback to the first set of killings at the end of chapter 1?).  

The layout is occasionally confusing, switching randomly from individual pages to having to read straight across the double page spread as if it was one page.  

However those are minor niggles and I will be seeking out volume 2 for some more uncomplicated violent fun.

Number 75 - Spontaneous Human Combustion - Richard Thomas

 

This book was a pleasant surprise.  A few weeks ago the ARC dropped through my front door. I have no recollection of requesting it and, until it arrived I'd never heard of the author.

I'll never complain about receiving a free book though - and this did look pretty damned good, especially with that killer quote from Chuck Palahniuk.

The next question is of course, were the contents of the book as nice a surprise as receiving it in the first place?

Happily, the answer to that is a definite yes. 

These are literate and well thought out stories and the horrors are subtler and more refined than a lot of collections I own.

There are 14 stories (despite the back cover saying 15...)  and even the least good is rather fine in its own way. There are definite stand outs in the collection.

Clown Face is a scary clown story unlike any other that I've experienced.  It was the first story in the book to give me that little frission at the end.  As it's only the second story, that's not a bad hit rate so far,

The next story - Requital - also gave me that delightful little shiver. A man awakes time and again in a shack in the middle of a desert and is faced with different dangers each time.  As the story progresses, it becomes more nightmarish and strange.  It feels like a good episode of Black Mirror transposed to the page.

Open Waters has a similar Black Mirror feel. A man stuck on an island that proves to be so much more and less than it appears. I loved the ending to this (and the fact that the lead character's cat is called Isabella which was my Nanna's name). 

Nodus Tollens meanwhile, feels like an exceptionally good Twilight Zone episode. Be careful what you accept as a prize in a poker game.  You might get more than you bargained for.

In his house takes the form of a letter from a follower of the great elder being Cthulu himself. It's an effective ploy to creep out the reader. Lovecraftian fiction can feel cliched but this manages to feel new despite the the use of an overfamiliar trope.

This is a common thread throughout the collection.  A lot of the ideas flying about aren't new in the slightest, but Thomas's style means they stay interesting and fresh enough to avoid the cliché.  

Undone has to be mentioned for the bravery of writing a story in only one extraordinarily long sentence, a gamble that pays off as this one achieves an immediacy and urgency that drags you through at breakneck pace - and throws out some really great imagery as well.

How Not to Come Undone is a cracking little story about the symbiotic relationship between a pair of twins which is disrupted when the boy twin gains unusual powers. 

Hiraeth was a good story till the last page.  I'm afraid that ending didn't really work for me although I can see what he was going for and it's a brave choice to end it the way he does.  In the afterword he admits that it could divide the audience.  

The final story is the longest and also possibly the best.  A man is alone in a testing station, with only the occasional visits from the enigmatic Rebecca to relieve the monotony (stranded people is quite a common theme in this collection).  Through some interesting narrative choices we find out that he's a test subject for... something.  

This is a great collection of stories by a writer with a truly distinctive style to his writing. It's weird, surreal and occasionally pretty damned chilling. 

The book comes out in February 2022 and my recommendation would be that you go out and buy it when you can.   

Number 74 - Gideon Falls - Lemire, Sorrentino, Stewart

 

I'll be honest and admit that I picked this up just for the cover.  I think I'm getting pretty good at accurately judging books by their covers because this is a stunningly good piece of work.

Graphic novels like this really break through the stereotype that they're for kids and they're just comics.

This is an intelligently written and beautifully drawn story. It's got horror. It's got mystery. It's got great characters.  Just a hint (so far) of a possible conspiracy, and was there some science fiction thrown into the mix later on? 

The artwork is absolutely stunning.  Sorrentino uses layouts better than any illustrator I've seen in the last few years. Unlike some graphic novels I've read where I just skim over the pictures with no words in, in this book I find myself studying every panel as they each feel like an integral part of the storytelling rather than something to fill the page.  There are effects on the reader caused by this artwork that would be almost impossible to replicate in a text based medium.

We're introduced to two very different characters. Norton is a reclusive character living in the streets of a dingy city, obsessively collecting bits of trash.  the only person he really talks to is his therapist.  Father Wilfred a priest struggling with his belief who's moved to the parish of Gideon falls when the old priest dies. There he quickly becomes embroiled in the strange events happening in the town, especially those surrounding the Black Barn. Their stories run parallel with only the barn as a connecting factor until very close to the end of this volume.

I won't say what suddenly connects their stories - that would be an unfair spoiler. 

Volume two of this series is very high on my to buy list.  This series may well be the first graphic novels that I say prefer to Locke and Key - and from me that is almost the highest level of praise there is. 

Number 73 - Playthings - Alex Pheby

 

As regular readers will spot, this is my third Alex Pheby novel in the past 12 months. 

This is his second novel, written in 2015 so I'm a few years late. 

It's his first with Galley Beggar Press.  I do like these very plain but distinctive covers. These editions are also printed on a very nice grade of paper which adds a whole tactile experience to the books.  This one i found second hand and has clearly been read a couple of times before.  The binding seems remarkably durable for a paperback edition.  It's probably not an issue for most people but I do think it's a good sign when the publishers put as much work as GBP into making the physical item itself as good quality as they do.

As for the content, GBP are normally reliable in finding good, interesting novels.  This one is no exception.  It follows Judge Paul Schreber when he suffers a mental health incident in the street and is institutionalised against his will. This is based on a true life story.  Schreber is a famous name in the world of psychoanalysis and several studies have been made of him.

This is a fictionalised account of his third out of mental illness and incarceration. It's beautifully written, as Pheby's other two book have been. It gives what feels like a disturbingly accurate depiction of a mental collapse. 

In the blurb on the inside of the front cover, it says that it "unearths the roots of the great ills in the twentieth century, the psychological structure of fascism, the cancer of anti-semitism, and the abuse of institutional power". I definitely got the abuse of power, that's a clear and present theme in the book. I'm not sure I got the other themes quite as powerfully.  It's certainly a very strong narrative on institutions abusing the power they have on the inmates, also on the impact of an abusive childhood, but I'm not sure that a delusional man with an imaginary companion in the shape of a Jewish man he briefly knew as a child- who fills him in on the reality of his situation on a regular basis whether he wants to hear it or not (mostly not)- counts as comment on antisemitism in the 20th century and beyond. The Fascism theme might be clearer when the book has had a chance to settle in my head.

The ending of the book is something of an emotional hammer blow.  This book is going to stay with me for a while.

It's available from Galley beggar press through their website, or though the usual suspects online.  If you want beautifully written historic fiction which tackles deeper themes, This is a good place to look.