Number 67 - The Grave - Charles L Grant

 Charles Grant is one of a handful of writers for whom I own 50 plus books. This is one of his earlier books but one of the more recent additions to my shelves.

It's an Oxrun Station novel. Oxrun Station is the Charlie Grant version of King's Castle Rock or Derry, a small town in the USA where weird things happen. (I just checked the dates and castle Rock does predate Oxrun so i do have it the right way around)

Personally, I think I'd prefer to live in Castle Rock because it's not as creepy. Pennywise would probably be too scared to live there to be honest.

You can normally depend on Grant to build a weird and dreamlike atmosphere where reality is debatable. This book is no exception.

Josh Miller is an investigator in Oxrun Station.  he specialises in finding weird and rare objects for people (this was before the days of Google and EBay). While he's out searching for his latest assigned item, he finds the police at the site of a nasty car crash. One of the occupants of the car has vanished, leaving his arm behind, but not even a trail of blood. 

This is the first in a sequence of events that lead Josh to realise he's being followed by something not quite natural. 

As per normal for Grant, he takes his time building up the atmosphere. Every chapter ends on a minor cliffhanger (sometimes quite a major one), so I did a lot of finishing reading mid-page in this book, at a point where I didn't feel I needed to keep going.

Some aspects of this book do feel a bit dated. Josh is very sexist as a boss by today's standards. But this book wasn't written now so it's a much better reflection of the time it was written than any bowlderised vision of it would be. I do feel it's important to look at when a book was written before you criticise, and, by the standards of the time, Josh is a nice guy.

There are a number of other disappearances before the end of the book, and a lot of weirdness that josh has to face. 

I loved that the supernatural is the last thing to occur to him as an explanation for the increasing weirdness.  it grounded the character in reality much more.

The final chapters in this book contain some of the most concentrated horror I've read from Grant. Almost from when we discover the reason for the book's title up until the conclusion, the pace never lets up. Josh's reality is fracturing, and we have no idea if he's going to actually survive to the end of the book. 

The sense of his disintegrating mental state is palpable. His fear radiates from the page. 

I will admit that I figured out what was going on fairly early, but that increased the tension in the final sequence because I knew what he was walking into even if he didn't.

If you can track down a copy of this, do it. The prose is dripping in atmosphere. There's a constant sense of unease that's almost unmatched in modern horror fiction. Whilst his plotting wasn't always the strongest, at his best he was one of the scariest writers out there. Considering the lack of overt violence in any of his books, that's a hell of an achievement. 

This book is a great example of what he was capable of. the set pieces are genuinely scary and the final act is up there with the best he's written.

Number 66 - The Books of Magic Vol 1 - John Ney Reiber + artists

 It'a a complicated thing to try to collect the Books of magic graphic novels. There's a newish iteration which pops up with similar names to the original series every time you search the assorted book sites.

To make it easy i went for this omnibus which contains the first two years of John Ney Reiber's version of the story.

This of course also contains the storyline I read not too long ago, but being a graphic novel, the reread doesn't take too long.

One thing that becomes very clear when reading this number of the stories back-to-back is how often Tim doesn't need to do anything because a protector he doesn't know he has will pop up and save the day on his behalf. He becomes a very passive character in his own story.

The protectors vary from a unicorn he accidentally revived, to the wife and child of a chained-up angel, to a demonically controlled future version of himself to his childhood imaginary friends come to life. 

It's never less than entertaining and there is a great imagination on display, but I found myself wanting Tim to be a more active feature of the plot. It's very rare he does anything for himself.

That said, he does help other people semi-regularly, in particular his Dad and a succubus who moves in next door. 

There's also a prologue i hadn't read before from a crossover event called the Children's crusade that happened in the 90s at vertigo comics.  Unfortunately, it only contains one section of that story and tells the reader that his voyage back from the land he was transported to can only be read by buying another graphic novel (which I have done, but under duress).

It's fairly weird reading this now, when the "future" version of Tim Hunter lives in the year 2012... It really hammers home how old I am since I used to have the original comics when they came out.

I will be seeking out volume 2 rather than trying to figure out which of the individual storyline graphic novels I need to buy.

Nuber 65 - Lost boy Lost Girl - Pater Straub

 

I had only ever read Straub's rather good collaborations with Stephen king - Talisman and Black House - and had never read any of Straub's solo works. When he sadly passed away earlier this year, I thought it was time to fix that and recommended this for the book group's Halloween read.

He's such a well-respected author in the field, what could go wrong? 

Sadly, this choice of book did. I hope it's one of his lesser works, because I didn't find much to enjoy in this at all. The story starts when Tim Underhill, a writer of horror fiction, visits his brother for the sad occasion of his sister-in-law's funeral after her sudden death. 

There are a number of disappearances happening in the town.  Teenaged boys have been vanishing, never to be seen again. 

Eight days after the funeral, Tim's nephew Mark joins the list of the missing.

This has the potential to be a good story, but I found the pacing, the structure and the plotting let the whole thing down.

It hops randomly through the timeline. I normally don't mind a bit of back and forwards, but it needs to make sense to the storytelling. This starts with Tim travelling back to his old hometown, a couple of chapters in, it jumps in mid chapter, via Tim's journal, to 9 days later where he's travelling back to the town after receiving news of Mark's disappearance. The next chapter, we're back at the funeral of the SIL. A few chapters later, we're following Mark in the week before his mother's death. then it's the day before his mother's death mid chapter, then in the next chapter we're back to a week before her death. 

When it settles down, we get what starts as an interesting storyline about Mark's obsession with a creepy old house on a parallel street that backs onto his house. This part is possibly the best section of the book.

However, we soon jump back to after his disappearance again, and the rest of the book flips randomly.  The timelines seem all messed up too.  There's supposed to be 8 days between his mother's death and mark's disappearance, yet he and his friend seem to spend about two weeks and more before mark stumbles upon at least one of the house's dark secrets.

One of the creepiest things about the book for me was the number of times Tim, the narrator of the book, refers to his 15-year-old nephew's good looks.  Every single time he refers to Mark, the word beautiful, or a close synonym, will appear. I got the message that Tim thought his nephew was beautiful first time he said it, I didn't need the other 3987 references to it.

Another structural deficit is the way the book switches from third person to first person quite randomly. The segments from Tim's journal make sense, but in other places, suddenly a paragraph will be full of I's instead of he's.  This is in sections of third person narrative where Tim is referred to as Tim or he.  Then suddenly he remembers he's the narrator and says I.  And it's jarring. it makes no narrative point or sense.

Tim's reaction to his nephew's fate seems at odds with his character. Mark's fate, if we take it at face value from the book, is all kinds of icky and not in a good way. Tim's brother is allowed throughout to be a horrible racist and is never pulled up on it by any of the supposed nice people around him.

The style of writing, whilst it does have its inconsistencies, is always easily readable and grammatical.  One member of the book group said it was a page turner. that's probably the best I can find to say about it.

I went into this book with very high expectations and was hugely disappointed.  Maybe if I hadn't read it immediately after Foulsham I might have been more forgiving of it. 

This is one book that's getting donated to a charity shop rather than going back on my shelves.  I'm willing to try another of his books that I have on my shelves, since this had faint glimmers of quality. But this particular book rates a measly 4 out of 10 for me. 

Number 64 - Foulsham - Edward Carey

 The sequel to Heap House which i read at about this time last year, and sent me on a quest for as many of Carey's books as I could find. Warning - discussion of the plot on this book will give spoilers for book 1.

I'll say now that this is even better than Heap House, but you will need to read Heap House for this to make any sense at all. The world built in these books is truly unique. The starting point of this story would just seem very silly indeed if you hadn't read the first book. 

Heap House was a definite highlight of last year and this is almost certainly in my top 3 of the year this year.  it might even be at the number one spot.

I thought there was no such thing as a new story, but Edward Carey has proved me very wrong indeed. I can't think of anything similar to this series in anything I've read. 

It's 1876. Victoria is on the throne of England. The Iremonger family in Heap House are responsible for dealing with all the rubbish London produces. 

Foulsham is the London borough closest to Heap House. At the end of book one, Clod Iremonger was very different indeed and his object, James Henry Hayward, was human again.  Likewise, Lucy Pennant had changed and been thrown out onto the heaps to vanish amongst the rubbish.

Can they regain their humanity? Literally.

Can they avoid the ire of the Iremonger family?

Why are the heaps rising up and threatening to swamp the town?

What is the cause of the illness flooding the town and causing people to change?

All these questions and more might be answered in this book.

I can't remember any book this year so far that had this same effect on me. Not a chapter went by without a new shock or twist or mind-bending turn of phrase that made my jaw drop. It gives a whole new meaning to money talks.  Also to the phrase "he has a way with things". I would expand on those pointsbut... spoilers. 

This might be YA fiction, but it's the single most original and exciting piece of writing I've seen in years. The illustrations are pitch perfect and add another layer of surrealism to the proceedings. 

He expands on the history of the family and their relationship to the town, introducing new members of the family and new dangers. Characters who were briefly mentioned in book one come to centre stage here and form their own threats or alliances with our heroic leads.

It's all just brilliant.  This is as close to flawless as writing gets. Everyone needs to read this series. It's surreal, it's funny, it's exciting, it's disturbing. It's just amzing.

Read it.  it's brilliant!

Number 63 - The Dismembered - Jonathan Janz

 

I was sent a preview copy of this by the publishers in exchange for a fair review.

I'd never heard of Jonathan Janz before, but this sounded like good fun.  And by God I was right.

This is a grand guignol gothic novel with a more modern sensibility. Imagine if Edgar Poe hadn't been constrained by the mores of his time and had written a balls-to-the-floor all action-adventure novel packed with gore, gratuitous violence and occasional sex and you're pretty close to this book.

Written in a very good imitation of the gothic style, this tells the story of American writer Arthur Pearce, who encounters a beautiful young woman called Sarah Coyle on a train through rural England. He rescues her from an attempted assault and accepts an invitation to her stately home to assist her further.  Her younger sister, Violet, has been betrothed to a man she believes to be evil and possibly not completely human, and she thinks Arthur is just the man to help break his hold on her innocent younger sister. 

When he accompanies the family, including the third sister, the beguiling Elizabeth, to the castle of the dastardly Count Dunning, the action kicks in and the pace doesn't let up until the end of the book.

There are gruesome murders, shocking twists, surprise betrayals and excessive violence galore for the last two thirds of the book. One more thing that marks this as different to the books it pays tribute to is the fact that the women are not helpless young creatures who need to be saved by the big strong handsome hero. They're strong, independent and just as likely to help save the day as young Arthur.

I don't know if this is Janz's normal style of writing, but it works brilliantly. It genuinely reads like a gothic novel of the era, especially in the first third where the situation is set up. When all hell breaks loose in the last 60 odd percent, it somehow manages to keep the feel of the gothic style, whilst delivering some decidedly modern style violence.

 I've had a great time reading this and will be procuring a real copy when it's properly released. 

This is released in the very near future and can be purchased through the Cemetery dance website.

Number 62 - Silent Voices - Gary McMahon

 

Part two of Gary McMahon’s trilogy that I started last year with The Concrete Grove.

The tagline on the back of the book reads “IT’S CALLING YOU BACK…”

In my brain that tagline morphs into an earworm of the old Rainbow song “Light in the Black” which has the chorus “Something’s calling you back, like a, light in the black” and I did wonder, idly, whether you could rewrite the song lyrics to match this book.

However, “Something’s calling you back, like a nihilistic glimpse into a terrifying existential void” didn’t quite scan to the tune.

We are returned to the run-down council estate on the outskirts of Newcastle/Gateshead known as the Grove.  At the centre of the estate stands the Needle, a large tower block, and source of the energy that sucks out the soul of the area. 

Simon and his two friends went missing as young children in the Needle twenty years prior to the events in this book. They returned three days later with no memory of what had happened (and indeed thinking they’d only been a couple of hours), damaged and scared.

As adults, they lead vastly different lives, but are all still carrying the scars from the events of that weekend as ten-year-olds in the strange place hidden at the centre of the Needle. Simon has escaped the Grove completely. Or so he believes.  Something is waking and he finds himself drawn back to the North East to confront the events of his childhood. He seeks out his two friends who are facing their own weird happenings. Together they will face the strange forces gathering around them again.

I normally try not to compare with Stephen King but returning to the weird hometown to face up to the childhood trauma is such a King staple, it’s hard not to. In this book Gary McMahon seems to be channelling his inner King, with healthy dollops of Ramsey Campbell and a bit of Lovecraft for good measure.

And it works brilliantly.  There are some weird images that I know will stick with me for some time.  The plot propels itself along at a rattling pace. The characters are well drawn and totally believable. The steady encroachment of the supernatural is handled beautifully, and the characters’ responses are entirely plausible. Their growth from disbelief and rationalisation to acceptance is handled to perfection.

 I have book 3 ready and waiting in my TBR pile and I’m really looking forward to how this trilogy will come to a close.

This is written well enough that it would work well as a standalone novel, but there are obviously advantages to having read the first book in the series.

Whatever order you want to read them in, just read them.  You won’t regret it.

Number 61 - Monstress volume 7 - Devourer

 After the shocking betrayal at the end of volume 6, this volume is carried by teh supporting cast much more than some of the earlier volumes.

The artwork continues to outshine virtually every other comic book in existence.  Indeed, this volume features some of the best full page and double page spreads of the entire run so far.

The storyline is complex without being convoluted and continues to be as satisfying as most prose novels.  there is nothing lightweight about this story, despite the graphic format.

I have a feeling it's going to be a while before volume 8 appears.  I might need to start reading the individual comics as they come out...