Number 30 - Cat magic - Whitley Strieber

 

Added Grendel for cuteness to the normal picture of the book. Since this is the next in the cats on covers theme, it seems appropriate.

This book also has a really great dedication page (pictured below). Sadly after that, things went awry.

This is a real curates egg of a book.  I've read some Strieber before but not for a very long time and I remember really enjoying them.  His book Billy is a horror masterclass as is the Wolfen, but this is nowhere near those standards.

Amanda Walker returns to her childhood home town to illustrate a book of fairy tales by a local author and wiccan leader of a number of local covens. Amanda's uncle George is a scientist at the local college, working on experiments on resurrecting the dead. 

A local pastor is psychopathically opposed to both the witchcraft and the science (which are more closely linked than people suspect). He's also a minor league psychopath.

Added to all this, the mountains around the town are home to faery folk and demons, including one that typically manifests as a large black cat.

There's potential for a great horror story here, and Strieber is a very talented writer. 

But the book just didn't work for me. the back cover sells it as a Frankenstein type story with evil spirits attacking the town. Instead we get Amanda being manipulated by all sides to the point it's impossible to tell who the bad guys are. 

I'm all for morally grey characters, but this isn't morally grey as much as a bit of a mess. They're not well enough explored to make us side with them regardless of their behaviour and therefore I personally ceased to care about halfway through.

It's not helped by a preface that talks about how wiccans are misrepresented in literature and then the book proceeds to use most of the old clichés in not too positive a light.

The head witch at the start of the book is manipulating every side to coordinate events to her liking, regardless of who dies as a result. We're supposed to be on her side.

The mad scientist element is beyond daft. the scenes in the lab, despite starting strongly, soon descend into farcical stupidity.

There are hints in the text of a conspiracy against the witches and someone on the inside working against them.  That may have provided an interesting twist to the tale, but it comes to naught.

Instead the majority of the last two thirds of the book is Amanda's spiritual journey that she's been well and truly conned into embarking on.  As a chosen one narrative it falls flatter than my last attempt at a soufflé. 

There are good points to the book. There are sections that are very well written. There are disturbing elements.  The speculation on the nature of death, Heaven and Hell and all things in between is quite interesting. but the more I think about this book the less I'm liking it.

If this was the first Whitley Strieber novel I'd read, it would almost certainly be the last. It's a shame. The quotes on the cover from Charles Grant and Ramsey Campbell made me very excited for this book and it just didn't deliver. 

If you want to read a Strieber novel, read the Wolfen or Communion or Billy. Avoid this one.

Number 27a- Delicatus - SP Somtow

 

This was a review copy i was sent in exchange for the usual fair and unbiased review. 

This is 27a because I started this whist still reading book 27, partly because I realised i had to leave feedback before the end of the month, and partly because cat's Cradle was such a bad book, I needed some quality fiction at the same time.

Fortunately it still fits with my "cat on the cover" theme I've been using to select books this month - look between "Deli" and "Us" in the title...

I'm always happy to review a Somtow novel since he's been an absolute favourite writer of mine for decades.

This is part one of a new sequence and I hope the next part comes out soon.  It's based on the remarkable true story of a slave boy in ancient Rome who became Empress to two Emperors.

The story is told in flashback n a conversation between Sporus and a make up girl making him ready for a very public execution. This makes for an unusually dramatic framing device that made the book speed along at a rapid rate of knots.

We start his story with his kidnap from an unnamed village and his experiences on board the pirate ship transporting him to Rome. Once in Rome he finds a kindly master in the form of Petronius, writer of the Satyricon. We find out he bears a stunning similarity to one of the most beautiful women in the land, the Lady Poppea, the wife of Senator Otho. She has her own eyes on the position of Empress and Sporus quickly becomes a pawn in her game.

This is compulsive reading and all the more remarkable for being broadly speaking a true story. All the key players in this story are genuine and the story follows real events in their lives. The book feels very well researched but the research is used to fuel the story rather than slow it down.

Somtow's writing has rarely been more compulsive than this. It's a fast, and incredibly easy read despite the complexities of the politics woven into  the narrative. 

The only negative I have about this book is that it finishes on an enormous cliffhanger, both in the flashback storytelling, and the discussions with his make up artist. Book two needs to come out sooner rather than later... As well as the cliffhanger, there has been a lot of foreshadowing towards events in the next volume/s and I need to know what happens!

Number 29 - Blitzcat - Robert Westall

 And yet more moggies on the cover.

I've not read anything by Robert westall in nearly 40 years. He was one of my favourite writers when i was a teenager - The Scarecrows would have been just about my favourite book ever when I was 13 or so.

This is children's literature still but I found so much to love in it.

It's the story of a cat called Lord Gort (after a rather unpopular leader of the armed forces back in WWII) who is missing her first owner after he's sent off to help the war effort and sets off to find him.

along the way she finds rest and shelter (and new homes) with a wide variety of characters and we hear their stories and how Lord Gort  helps them find their own way in the confusing and disturbing slice of history that was the Second World War.

Westall wrote about WWII a lot. The first of his books I read was the Machine Gunners, and that led me to read everything of his available at the time.

Cats also pop up in a lot of his books.  It's good to see him mix his two favourite subjects.

For a children's book, this has surprisingly few child characters - indeed, apart from a passing mention of one child stroking Lord Gort, and some children escaping the Coventry Blitz, there are none. This makes it feel surprisingly grown up in themes.  Her first temporary owner is a lonely watchman on the cliffs of southern England, who finds newfound confidence after Gort helps him spot an incoming plane and sound the alarm early enough to ward off a bombing raid. 

She then has a brief stint at a railway station where Dunkirk evacuees stroke her for luck, before staying in Dover with a young housekeeper forced to billet 10 soldiers. We witness the blossoming romance between the housekeeper and the sergeant of the troops before Gort is separated from the sergeant  somewhere near Coventry and the next chapter of her life begins. 

This is more a series of linked vignettes than a true novel but each story is so well told, and the linking is so smooth with the travels of our feline hero that it doesn't feel patchy at any time.

Also for a children's book, some events are quite shocking. There are some descriptions of death and dying that certainly felt more powerful than you expect from a book for young people. There's also a smattering of minor swearing, so this is certainly for teens rather than very young children.

The last few chapters were genuinely emotional. I was wiping a small tear out of my eye by the end.

Despite being a children's book, this is certainly great writing, and more than good enough to entertain this particular adult reader. I may have to seek out a few more of his, see if I have any left from my childhood collection hidden in the back of a cupboard somewhere. 

It's good to reconnect to some of the writers that made you the reader you are today, to see if they still measure up. Robert Westall certainly does.

PS, I know book 28 is missing if anyone is watching the numbers... I'm writing that up later, I haven't finished it yet

Number 27 - Cat's cradle - William W Johnstone

 

Some books can be judged by their covers. Personally I loved this cover, which is why I bought the book. And the only reason it's staying in my collection. 

Because good god, this is a bad book. There's an imagination on display, but, other than the cover, that's the only positive about the entire thing.

I wish we'd had the story described on the back cover. that sounded like it could be interesting.  But instead of an evil girl and her cat being adopted into the life of the town and steadily spreading evil (something that's hinted at early on when she steals money from one of her victims) they spend the whole book in hiding while a bunch of random creatures start attacking the town.

The girl and her cat are responsible for some of the creatures but not all. The effects of their bite on victims is so random that any sense of logic vanishes from the narrative very early on. 

The imagination is on full display, but it's totally unfocussed on making a coherent narrative and more like a group of 10 year old children trying to tell the grossest story they can and going off at tangents with each child telling a different story.

This is before I even mention the style of the writing. It's terrible, overblown and nonsensical.

Any book that closes a chapter with "Anya and Pet laughed and laughed" is going to score badly with me. There's one point where a character has his head ripped off and is described as flopping about, nearly dead, a page later. The monster of the moment is running around with his head from the jaw upwards, but his body isn't quite dead yet???? This isn't even the worst part of the book.  That would be the closing few chapters. or maybe the bit where a woman, on finding the dead bodies of a bunch of local teens, pretends to faint, because she thinks that's what you're supposed to do in this situation.

The characters barely deserve the title of character, most of them struggling to rise to one dimensional. It's impossible to feel any sense of tension with the level of stupidity on display. The shreddies (characters with no purpose but to die horribly without affecting the central cast) are uninspired and their deaths aren't nasty enough.

I don't think I've read about as many characters losing their lunch in one book.  It must happen every three pages on average. At least 6 women genuinely faint at the sight of a dead body too, two in two pages at one point.

The only good thing about this book is that I now have a definite worst book I've read this year, and it will take some beating to lose the bottom spot. This is uninspired, cliched, badly written dreck.

File it under I read it so you don't have to.

Number 26 - Before the Coffee gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

 

The first book in my "Cats on the cover" theme for this month is this.

In a café in Tokyo, it's possible to go back in time to whenever you like.  However, there are a lot of rules attached. you cannot leave your seat, nothing you do will affect the present, and you must drink your coffee before it gets cold.

This book tells four stories about regulars at the café and their trips back. One last chance to see a dead relative, to speak to their spouse before the onset of Alzheimer's disease or confront a lover who left them.

It's a gentle and thoughtful novel dealing with some of the eternal themes of life. The central conceit and method of time travel is  uniquely Japanese and probably wouldn't work in any other culture.

No explanation is ever given, which is a good thing. It works, that's all we need to know.

The translation is smooth a very easy, even soothing, read. This is as far away in tone from many of my typical reads as it's possible to get, but I still enjoyed this book immensely. 

The characters are drawn nicely. The links between the stories are cleverly placed.  There are no surprises in the story, but that's not an issue. This is a moving and emotional set of vignettes around an interesting theme. I recommend it without any reservation. An easy 8/10.

Number 25 - Beasts of 42nd Street - Preston Fassel

 

The final book of my "New authors to me" theme i used for last month was this pretty looking offering from Cemetery Dance. I actually finished this on Tuesday, but life has gotten in the way and I've not had time to do the write up.

This is an intense and drug raddled, almost stream of consciousness, descent into the underworld of New York's 42nd Street. Andy Lew is a projectionist in a seedy cinema with a taste for extreme filmmaking.  He's a burnout with no soul any more. How much of that is the drugs, and how much is the film he watches obsessively every chance he gets featuring unspeakable acts of violence.

The book follows him over a few weeks in 1977 (and 65 in a flashback sequence) in which his life takes a nosedive from the depths it was already in. A crooked cop, small time thieves threatening his ownership of "Her" - the girl in his precious film - and the mysterious figure who gave him the film, all combine to drag him, and New York, into a maelstrom of violence and depravity. 

It's difficult to say much more about the plot without giving spoilers. The seedy underside of New York life is unflinchingly depicted in graphic detail. I've not read a book that dives this deep into this type of depravity since Stations of Shadow by J Daniel Stone.

There's not a single likeable character in this book, but that doesn't matter. Preston Fassel drags us through the dirty streets, shining his spotlight on the darkest corners of existence and we can't look away.  It's intense and unputdownable. He builds tension consistently and the third act is a suitably blood soaked and satisfying release.

I will certainly be tracking down more of his books.  Apparently Andy Lew is a minor character in his other works, given his own full novel here. I like when writers do worldbuilding of this type, and I want to learn more about this world in all its grime and violence.

Fassel is a hell of a writer. Rarely do I feel as repulsed and fascinated by the characters as I did in this book.

It's available through the Cemetery Dance website. Beasts of 42nd Street, by Preston Fassel: Cemetery Dance Publications

Number 24 - Bitters - Kaaron Warren

First things first - check out that gorgeous cover.  I read this as a preview file from Cemetery Dance but I'm definitely going to buy a hard copy for the cover alone.

Luckily, the story inside is just as good, and just as mind-blowing, as that cover.

The Man towers above the local area, at least 90 foot high. It's head is tilted back and the mouth is open. A staircase winds around the legs and torso and leads up to the mouth. Whenever a person dies and is declared pure, their body is carried up by a man who has known no other work and deposited into the Man.

At his feet, more specialist workers tap the residue from all these bodies and provide the Bitters of the title, a preventative medicine that keeps the town healthy and illness free. This book gives a whole new meaning to Toe-tapping...

One of the carriers has noticed a recent increase in dead girls who've suffered violent deaths to be fed to The Man. Will his conscience override his duty to the Man? 

This is high concept storytelling at its best. Warren's style is compelling and an easy read despite the sense of What-the-hell that permeates the first half of the book where we have learn what exactly the set up of this town is. She does an amazing job of building this surreal world and all its attendant quirks, whilst still moving the narrative at a cracking pace. And this is just a novella.  She doesn't have much time to build this world.  That it feels so complete and real is a masterclass in writing.

My only negative about this book is where we're told the girl on the bus is travelling without her parents, despite her mother being on the bus with her. That just needs one paragraph excising to fix the error and this book is almost perfect.

This is the second book I've read by Kaaron Warren (the first was Slights) and they're both easy 9 out of 10s.  I really need to track down anything else she's written.

This is available through Cemetery Dance website Bitters, by Kaaron Warren: Cemetery Dance Publications