Number 61- Varjak Paw - SF Said

 You might be able to guess what drew me to this book. That picture of a cat on the front cover by none other than Dave McKean. There is a sequel too so it fits into this month’s continuing series theme. It’s about cats and it has a legendary illustrator – I’m in.

Varjak Paw is a Mesopotamian Blue kitten living in a big house on a hill with his family. However, his eyes are not the blue that marks his breed, so he is an outcast. His brothers bully him, and his parents ignore him. Only his grandfather, Elder Paw, is an ally. When their mistress dies and a mysterious stranger comes into the house with two dangerous and strange large black cats, Varjak is sent on a quest to find a dog to help rid the house of the strangers.

On the streets Varjak meets a selection of friendly and unfriendly cats and learns of the vanishings. Cats are disappearing all over the city. Varjak doesn’t know what a dog is even. He’s never hunted because of his sheltered upbringing behind the high walls of the house on the hill. He has no idea how to fight. How can he survive long enough to bring help for his family.

This is basically the Karate Kit. A bullied kitten finds itself on the streets and has to learn to fight. Luckily, he’s the great, great, many times grandkit of a fabled feline martial artist who visits him in his dreams and trains him. Even more luckily, his long dead, dream visiting ancestor trains him in exactly the skill he’s going to need for his challenge the next day every time.

It’s intrinsically silly, but it is a children’s book so that’s to be expected. The illustrations by McKean are to the usual high standard, and the greyscale pictures under the text in the dream sequences work much better than they should.

It’s all very simplistic and ties together too neatly at the end, but again, that’s par for the course with young fiction. Whether the cats behave convincingly as cats is up for debate in some places too. It all looks great, and, if you can allow for the demographic it’s aimed at, it’s actually pretty entertaining. 

There is a plot line left open for the sequel (which I bought as part of a bundle with this book) and I can find no reason not to read it at some point in the near future.

Number 60 - Beasts of England - Adam Biles

 Now this one is going to stay with me, and for all the right reasons.

The latest release from Galley Beggar Press is this follow up/modern day update to George Orwell's classic Animal Farm.

To take on a task like that takes some considerable chutzpah. Animal Farm is a classic for a reason, and you have an instant benchmark people will judge you by, and it's not an easy standard to hit. These are big farm issue wellington boots you're trying to fill.

Many years have passed since the animals took over Jones' farm, now called Manor Farm and a tourist attraction in its own right, with a petting zoo and other attractions. It has moved away from traditional income streams and is more of a service economy. 

It also sells electricity generated from the windmill. It has a fractious relationship with the Wealesdon Union of Farms (WUF) of which it is a member. When a flock of starlings move into the farm uninvited and start spreading stories and fake news, trouble is not far behind and some difficult truths are soon uncovered.

The quote on the front cover is absolutely typical of the standard of writing in the book. The parallels with the real world are strikingly obvious and frequently hilarious.  This book attacks all sides in the political spectrum. If you don't feel personally attacked at some point in this book, it's likely you've misunderstood it.

This is a dictionary definition of painfully funny. It completely eviscerates contemporary politics in the way that Orwell did in the 50s. There are some real belly laughs to be had too and some groan inducing puns. My favourite is when only a select set of birds are allowed to spread news, and the title they're given is a joyously awful joke. It's playful but with as dark a heart as comedy can bear.    

As the book marches towards its conclusion it turns from commentary on what has happened into a warning about what happens next, and it's not a pretty forecast. The final chapters, where most of the puzzling little details are explained give a truly bleak outlook, but with a faint glimmer of hope. 

This book picks its targets and hits them all with pinpoint accuracy.  A warning, a commentary and a laugh out loud painfully sharp satire. This is one of the best book I've read from GBP, and indeed one of the best things I've read this year/decade. Orwell must be cheering and applauding in his grave. 

I cannot recommend it highly enough.  I finished it a week ago and it's still high in my thoughts. 

Available from Galley Beggar press online, and from all good brick and mortar book shops. You have no excuse.  Go and buy it.

Number 59 - Homelands of the Heart - SP Somtow

 

Nearly 3 decades after the last of the Chronicles of the High Inquest, Somtow has returned to the Overcosm and the Dispersal of Man and the universe where delphinoid ships traverse the gaps between galaxies and the Inquest play games with the lives of entire civilisations.

In this new volume, we return to the childhood of one of the series' more important characters, the musician Sajit, whose music enchanted the inquestors themselves.

Although this is one of the longer entries in the series by page count, it's also a much more intimate storyline than the last 3 volumes. the action is confined to the world of Urna, which, due to the games of the Inquestors, has been "sent beyond" and is due to be merged with another world, a pleasure planet that was destroyed and relocated.

We see the impact of the Inquestor games more clearly than ever before in the series through the eyes of the young Sajit. 

There are surprises and revelations throughout. As ever with this series, the sheer scale of imagination on display is mind-blowing. There are some of Somtow's repeated themes that pop up, goddesses, twins, sexual awakenings, strange religions, just as a starter.

It's probably the best written of the four books.  Somtow's style has matured and improved over the years and there are few stylists who can touch him when he's on form as he is in this book.

It's an absolute pleasure to read. Some plot details would seem silly and overblown if written by almost anyone else, but in Somtow's gorgeous prose they seem like natural progressions of the storyline.

There's a fine villain who appears later on in the story, giving us a far more cruel and depraved version of the Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. A disgusting and truly deplorable character indeed. I hope he's back for the next volume. I need to see  him get his just punishment.

There are a couple of continuity errors. The villain's record in collection is said to be flawless, yet there's a flashback to a collection that went very badly indeed.  There are also quite a few grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.  The book does need to be thoroughly proofread (although I'm not sure if this wasn't a review copy that i disgracefully didn't get around to- in which case, they might have been corrected). It's testament to how much I enjoyed the book that the errors didn't pull me out of the story like they normally would. 

A worthy return to a classic and overlooked series. It's available through Diplodicus Press or the usual online retailers. Buy it.

Number 58 - Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch

 I'm starting to think Magical London is it's own specific subgenre of fantasy fiction. there's the Smallest things book i read recently, Un-Lun-Dun and King Rat by China Mieville, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, and the 8 books in this series to name a dozen off the top of my head.

This my first foray into this particular iteration on the theme and I have to say I'm impressed.

I was lead to believe that this was a Pratchett style high fantasy with a dozen laughs on each and every page. It's not that, but what it is is very good indeed.

Peter Grant is a young policeman just ending his two year probation and about to be posted into records rather than the excitement he wants on the streets.

He runs into an eyewitness to a recent brutal murder. The problem is that the eyewitness has been dead for 300 years.

This is the beginning of his awakening to the magic that surrounds his native city. 

He's recruited into a specialist unit instead, under Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, who heads up his own very exclusive unit. Peter finds out that the serial killer the met is looking for is not the usual run of the mill murderer. In the course of his investigation he meets several more ghosts, at least one vampire and the human forms of the eponymous rivers of London who are themselves in the middle of their own internal fights which could cause trouble for the city.

There's a great imagination on display here. While I did say it's not Pratchett style. a dozen laughs a page funny, it is still very funny.  The plot comes before the humour though, and there are some very dark elements going on. Peter's narration is suitably cynical and does lead to a few belly laughs.

Aaronovitch clearly loves the London and the historical details about the city seem entirely convincing without feeling like a history lecture. The characters are well drawn, especially Grant, Leslie, and Nightingale. 

I was lucky enough to find a box set of all 8 books in the series for only £20 online. I will certainly be reading the full series There's a definite mystery linked to Nightingale's past that feels like it will be great fun to explore in the later volumes.

Number 57 - Oblivion Song Vol 1- Kirkman & De Felici

 This month I will mainly be reading continuing series. Tying this month's theme and last month's theme of short books together is this- the first book in another series by Robert Kirkman, creator of the Walking Dead.

He's got a much more interesting concept to play with in this series. Ten years ago, a large section of Philadelphia and the hundreds of thousands of people that were there at the time vanished into an alternate dimension called Oblivion.

This dimension is inhabited by giant monsters with a taste for human flesh. As we discover in the course of this volume, the process was two way and some of the monsters ran rampage in our world.

Initially the government tried to retrieve the lost, but over time, their interest has waned. Now scientist Nathan Cole makes daily trips to Oblivion to try to rescue as many as he can for himself.  Of course, he has more reasons than pure altruism for his unending quest.  there are things and specific people he is searching for and he won't stop till he finds them.

This volume contains the first six issues of the comic and it's a promising start. The central cast is slowly expanding so plenty of monster fodder for later on. There's a slowly emerging conspiracy plot that could be an interesting storyline if handled correctly.

The artwork is good.  The monsters look pretty damned scary and the ruins of  Oblivion Philadelphia are very well realised. My only problem is that two of the lead characters, brothers, look too much alike and are difficult to tell apart in some panels.

This volume was quite cheap which was why I bought it.  I will be buying the rest of the series as I want to know where this one is going.

Number 56 - Spin a Black Yarn - Josh Malerman

 

Spin a Black Yarn is the new collection of novellas from Josh Malerman, released last week into the wilds of the USA, but not in the UK until next year for some reason. Amazon’s US site is good for something I suppose.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I am something of a fan of Mr Malerman, and he still hasn’t let me down with this collection. There are 5 very different novellas and all equally good.

Half The House is Haunted – first off, that has to be one of my favourite titles of all time. Robin and Stephanie live in a huge house in Samhattan. They’re 6 and 8 years old respectively at the start of the story and Stephanie takes great delight in telling her little brother that “Half the house is haunted” but won’t tell him which half.

Is she just torturing her brother because she can, or is there really something in the house?

This is told in alternating sequences from the points of view of both siblings and quickly builds up an almost unbearable atmosphere. We revisit the siblings and the house at two later stages in their lives, and the house is no less scary.

Argyle – The back cover states “a dying man confesses to homicides he never committed”. Until I read this story, I never realised that that statement is deeply ambiguous and that one of the meanings, despite not sounding scary, is actually pretty damned disturbing if used correctly. And boy does Josh use the idea correctly. One of the more psychologically disturbing stories I’ve read from any author for a long time.

Doug and Judy Buy the House Washer – Josh’s warped sense of humour is on full display in this slice of science fantasy weirdness. This is the sort of plot idea I would have expected from Ray Bradbury at his wildest.

Doug and Judy are Assholes. We can be quite certain about that. The story opens with a full page list of all the people who think they’re assholes, and there’s not many people in existence missing from the list. They’ve just bought a new gadget that washes the whole house from top to bottom. While the house is being washed, they have to sit in a large glass tube in the middle of the living room and watch as the miracle liquid fills the house. They soon find their own pasts and personalities are due for a spring clean as well.

This is probably my favourite story in the collection.

The Jupiter Drop – We now take the leap into full blown science fiction as Steve Ringwald goes on the ultimate sightseeing trip and is dropped in a see-through capsule through the atmosphere of Jupiter itself. His experiences in the capsule lead him on an odyssey through his own past. This is similar in theme to the previous story, but with a nice central character and without the grim humour. There are a few real scares in this story too.

It shouldn’t be surprising that Josh can write science fiction as well as this; after all, his breakthrough novel was an alien invasion apocalypse tale. But I was completely blown away by this story more so than anything in the Sturgeon collection I read earlier in August.

Egorov – the final story in the collection and we go back in time to the days before houses had electricity as standard. In the little Russia district of Samhattan, one of a set of identical triplets has been murdered. His brothers track down the killer and “haunt” him with the aim of driving him mad.

I was unfortunate enough to be eating my lunch when Egerov has his own special dinner on page 324/5. Not the best thing to read while you’re trying to eat.

Once this story really gets going it’s very good indeed, but it took me a while to get into this one. It’s still an excellent end to an excellent collection.

Josh Malerman once again shows how versatile he is as a writer, showcasing psychologically twisted horror, deliciously black humour, dastardly revenge plots and mind-bending science fiction. Each of these stories is radically different to the others, but all still recognisably Josh.

If you want this in the UK, you’ll need to go online for it so do that. If you’re in the US, just buy it.