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.