Number 36 - The Cockroach - Ian McEwan

 

Before I start, I will apologise,  there will be slight spoillers in this review.  it's almost impossible to discuss the story and the themes of this one without giving away some plot details that can't be gleaned from the blurb on the book.

This opens brilliantly. The first few pages are an almost perfect takedown and reversal of the opening of Kafka's most famous work. 

A cockroach wakes from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic creature, with only 4 limbs (two arms and two legs), binocular vision instead of compound, his skeleton on the inside of a mound of pink flesh...

Yes the cockroach has woken as a human.

Not just any human. the Prime minister of Great Britain... The country is in a fragile state, it recently voted narrowly in a referendum to enact a totally ridiculous and disastrous piece of  legislation which will inevitably isolate the country and destroy the economy.

This is a distinctly unsubtle dig at British politics over the last few years. Can the cockroaches in command force through the results of the referendum regardless of the damage to the country? What starts as confusion into the knowledge the Roach has in his new role gives way to a mix of amusement and an icky disturbed sensation as the explanations become clear by the end of the book.

This book is a short exercise of concentrated chutzpah on McEwan's part. It's a vitriolic commentary on the state of UK politics. It also feels too close for comfort to a genuine explanation of the last 6 years. We now know who will actually benefit from the whole fiasco.

I loved this unreservedly even if some of the political machinations initially went over my head and I had to reread a section to understand what had just gone down.

For the cynically minded, this is a real treat.

Number 35 - All The Seas of The World - Guy Gavriel Kay

 

A new novel by Guy Kay is always going to jump straight to the top of my out of control TBR pile. They always reward their priority spot, and this one was no exception.

This is a sort of a follow on to his two previous novels, A Brightness Long Ago and Children of Earth and Sky.  Indeed it has several returning characters from each of those books. As per the earlier books, the fantasy elements are firmly on the sidelines and don't form the main crux of the storyline.  These are almost but not quite historical fiction/almost but not quite fantasy novels.  A writer of Kay's talent walks that tightrope with exquisite grace.

In this one, the world is still reeling from the fall of one its mightiest cities in the previous book. Political allegiances flow and sway with the tides, trades are made, killings ordered.  Some achieve their aims, others don't.

This is storytelling on an epic scale, as well as the intimate. We follow traders Rafel ben Natan and his associate Nadia bint Dhiyan from their dangerous commission in the opening of the book, and the repercussions of that mission throughout the lands of this almost Europe,

We also see into the lives of dozens of other characters, some with the power to change the known world, some struggling to keep their place, however influential they might be, others of low status but surprisingly important. 

The roles people play in events far beyond their ken is a continuing theme in this sequence of books, along with the power of stories and storytelling. Any book about the power of stories needs to be one hell of a story itself, and this doesn't disappoint on any level.

The story has a relaxed pace. Despite the ever enlarging ripples through the societies in this world, we never lose sight of the smaller pictures contained within. The frequent diversions into the impact of the larger events on the smaller people in the story are beautifully done and frequently deeply moving.  

This is all done in Kay's normal lucid and hypnotic prose.  I was reading this in a crowded pub yesterday and so completely absorbed I barely registered any noise around me.  

These aren't books to rush.  They should be savoured and enjoyed slowly.  There is real complexity and subtlety here that can't be skim-read without doing the world Kay has created a huge disservice. This whole series will reward multiple re-readings.

They will work well as stand=alone novels even though there is such a strong continuity. The returning characters are fleshed out anew for any fresh readers and the fallout from previous books described in detail.  I would still advise to read in order, otherwise you'll go into the earlier books knowing who lived and died and which cities were still standing at the end and spoilers are called spoilers for a reason..

Numbers 33 & 34 - Something is killing the Children vol 4 & Monstress vol 4

 

Two quick reads and once more, all the comments I've made in write ups of the previous volumes apply to these.

Something Is Killing the Children - This volume goes back to the beginning of Erica's story and we find out how she came to join the House of Slaughter.

The story is fast paced and action packed.  It adds extra layers to the story we read in the first three volumes.

The art continues to be functional at best, but it suits the story.

Monstress - The story is getting more convoluted with sides playing off against each other whilst the Old Ones lurk in the background preparing to resurface. 

The storytelling is as ambitious as in any prose novel, with the added benefit of some of the most beautiful artwork you'll see in a graphic novel.

The contrasting takes on how to deal with monsters are worthy of a separate discussion by itself. 

  Both feature very strong female characters up front and centre.  These are badass women you don't want to mess with. I've always said that, rather than change existing characters from male to female, create strong and compelling woman characters in their own right instead. It seems less patronising somehow.

Hopefully these will be optioned for the screen at some point. And hopefully, they'll do a good job.

Number 32 - State of Terror - Hillary Clinton & Louise Penny

 

This review will contain some spoilers.

I'll start with the positives.  It was a fast read. The story has the potential to be interesting. I also found a really interesting bookmark in it left by the previous owner.

That's that bit over and done with.

The back cover proclaims this to be the most authentic political thriller I'll ever read. I'm sorry but if Dr Seuss wrote one it would feel more genuine than this. The last Carl Hiaasen felt a lot more realistic than this - and it was well written - which gives it a huge advantage over this farrago of a novel.

This is by far the worst written book I've read in years.  The prose can charitably be described as clunky. if I wasn't feeling charitable, I'd go for frenetic, irritating and just plain bad.

The writers seem to think that action sequences are best done with ever shorter sequences featuring different characters finishing by cutting away from what the final character sees without telling the reader what that was.  

At some point in the next chapter, one of the other characters will talk about what happened. 

The lead character Ellen is the newly appointed secretary of State for the USA, appointed despite being a huge political rival to the newly incumbent president. We might as well call her Mary Sue as she is the most obvious self insert by Mrs Clinton. She's almost impossibly astute, fluent in a dozen languages, and utterly flawless in personality.  Despite her perfection and intelligence though, she fails to recognise the villain of the piece when he's stood right next to her and talking to her, even though she once spent two years making a documentary about him...

That's just one plot hole out of many in this badly edited, badly written attempt at literature. When I say badly edited, you can't give a better example than when we get this direct quote from the book  (Pages 360 &361 in my copy)

"The second wave took off, the helicopters filled with precious cargo. The sons and daughters of parents who would be terrified to know what their country was asking of their children. The young men and women clutched M-14 rifles and stared across the aisle at each other.

The young men and women clutched M-14 rifles and stared across the aisle at each other."

Apart from the repetition of an entire sentence, this section shows just one of the thousands of sentence fragments to be found in the book.

Constant use of incomplete sentences for no reason.

Sentences without verbs. Scattered all through the book.  At least 5 to a page. In action sequences, probably twenty per page. And no payout at the end of it. Because of cutaways. 

It becomes very wearing, very quickly. There are several deaths in the book. But all off screen with a cutaway immediately before it happens.

If it was better written I could forgive some of the flaws. If it hadn't promised "the most authentic - and gripping - political thriller I've ever read" on the back cover, I might be willing to accept the scene where she blackmails the Russian leader by photoshopping him into child porn and threatening to release it to the world unless he tells her where the bad guy is hiding, or where she follows the US version of the SAS on a raid into the villain's house, or where she seems to be able to travel halfway around the world in a couple of hours, or any of the other places where it's slightly less realistic than the Tiger who Came to Tea.

But it isn't. 

This is a dreadful book on nearly every level. It's the closest I've come in a long time to not finishing.  The only reason I did was because it's this month's book group read. I forced myself to finish it, and I'm sorry that I did.

The last two pages are the most cliched pile of nonsense in the book.  It's all over, the threats gone... Or is it? Mwa ha ha ha ha.

Don't waste your time with this book. My copy will be going to mulch down somewhere for compost.  I don't see any justification for inflicting this on anyone else. I have no one I hate that much.

Number 31 - Locke and Key the Golden Age - Hill & Rodriguez

 

Since the original series came to a natural end, Hill and Rodriguez have been filling in some of the blanks from the history of Key House in a number of smaller stories.

In this collection, all those smaller stories are brought together, culminating in the crossover story with Neil Gaiman's Sandman - Hell and Gone.

I already have the Small World and the Heaven and Earth volumes (I believe I may have reviewed both of them on here a few years back, but I don't have the energy at the moment to check). 

I'd forgotten how moving heaven and Earth was.  Once again it brought a small tear to my eye. That was nothing compared to the impact that the previously unread stories had. 

Face the music is an amusing and gruesome little short short story.

To Pale Battalions Go is one of the best storylines in the L&K history. Young John Locke decides he wants to join the army and use the keys to fight the Germans. He tricks his way into the army and wreaks havoc for a while on the enemy forces.  Of course, things don't go his way for too long and tragedy strikes. 

If I was wiping a small tear at the end of Open the Moon, I had a little cry at the end of this one.  It was heart rending, and led beautifully into Hell and Gone. As previously mentioned, this is a crossover with Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  It's a long time since I read any Sandman (I think I may need to collect that set of graphic novels next) but it didn't matter.  The characters are just as engaging or terrifying as they were under Neil's auspicious penmanship and no prior knowledge is necessary to follow the story.

The artwork is spot on throughout without even one subpar panel. You can spend ages looking at the detail in the full page spreads. This may well be the best of the L&K titles so far and that is high praise indeed.

Number 30 - The Tomb - F Paul Wilson

 

This is listed on Wilson's website as part two of the series begun in his novel The Keep that I  read last year. However, I see no links whatsoever with that novel.

Unless my memory is completely wrong, that book was vampires attacking Nazis in an ancient keep in Transylvania.  This one is a man investigating the disappearance of an old woman and finding ancient Indian demons in 80's New York.

It also doesn't feature a Tomb.  

However, despite not being an obvious follow on to The Keep, and despite not having any relevance to its own title, its a brilliant piece of 80s horror history that I'm only disappointed I didn't read decades ago.  

Wilson would have been right up there in my list of top horror reads along with King,  Campbell and Somtow years ago and I wouldn't have the game of catch up on his works that I now find myself with.

 This book follows Repairman jack (who has his own series of books separate to the series started by the Keep) in his first battle against the supernatural. Jack lives outside of the legal system. He "fixes things" for people to earn a living. Sometimes those things involve violence, which jack enjoys.

He's asked to help in two separate incidents here.  First is when his ex girlfriend phones and asks him to find her missing Aunty who vanished from her locked third storey room in the middle of the night.  The other is when an Indian diplomat asks him to track down a necklace stolen from his grandmother in a mugging the night before. There's extreme urgency and a lot of money in it for Jack.

The two cases intersect in the most horrific ways. Jack needs all his wits about him to survive and to save the life of his ex-girlfriend's family members.

This book starts quickly and never lets up.  The fast pace stops you thinking too closely and looking for plot holes. I'm sure there are some, but I didn't spot them because I was enjoying the rollickingly good adventure story going on far too much.  Part detective, part human drama, part supernatural thriller.  This book has it all. Some of the shock reveals were a bit obvious, but at least one I only spotted two pages before when one of the final jigsaw pieces was hinted at.  It's good going to hide a secret as openly for nearly 300 pages. All Credit due to Mr Wilson.

The Rakoshi are brilliant demons and superbly drawn.  They're genuinely creepy.  (and the subject of one of the biggest shocks in the book). They're easily as nasty as the vampires from The Keep (and they were the best type of scary vamps).

Repairman Jack is a great creation and I'm going to have to track down all his books too, on top of the Keep series. I just hope I can get as many as possible in these gorgeous N.E.L. covers from the 80s and early 90s. 

Is it a carefully considered, thoughtful masterpiece written in delicious prose that sings off the page and resonates in my soul? No.  Is it a damned good fun riot of a book that kept me enthralled for 380 pages and gave me a few surprises and scares along the way?  Hell yes! This is a cracking good read and you all should track down a copy for yourselves.