Number 18- The Night eaters Book 2 Her Little Reapers- Liu & Takeda

 Milly and Billy Ting are back.

In the previous volume they discovered their parents weren't quite as human as they'd always assumed, and, as a result, neither were they. They found this out while battling evil dolls and vile creatures from a hell dimension in the house across the street from their mother.

They have a lot more to learn about themselves.  they know they have powers but not necessarily what those powers are or how strong they might be.

In this volume, the evil doll is back, this time bringing a ghost in tow that begs the twins for help to avenge her killing and to save the lives of all possible future victims of her killer.

Ipo and Keon, their parents, advise against helping, even while they themselves are being drawn back into the world of the supernatural.

We learn a lot more about the family and their background. It turns out the events of the previous book were only a herald of things to come.

Strange secret societies and vicious monsters abound. The worldbuilding is every bit as good as the Monstress series. The scale of the story is much wider than the first volume, and this time the threat is world-threatening. There's a cliffhanger ending that has me on tenterhooks for volume three.

The artwork is stunning, reminiscent of Manga but distinctly Takeda's work.  The detail on every page is incredible. Liu's script is equally good, providing laughs along with the gruesome deaths.

This is a great little series.  I can't recommend it highly enough.

Number 17- The Assault- Harry Mulisch

 This was this month's book group read. I'd never heard of it before but it sounded interesting and that's an intriguing cover.

In wartime Holland, a local police chief and collaborator is shot dead in the street outside a row of houses. The owner of the house he died in front of runs out and moves it down the road to the front of Anton's house, Anton is 12 and lives with his family. 

When the Nazis arrive shortly after the shooting, Anton and his family are dragged out of the house and, not long afterwards, Anton is the the only survivor and the house is razed to the ground.

The story follows Anton into his middle age with the last section being set in 1981, 36 years after the events of that fateful night.

I'd love to say that this was a great book, but I can't.  Something in the writing just didn't gel with me. It started well, the story of the shooting and subsequent events of that night are well told and believable.  I felt real sympathy for young Anton as his world crumbled around him. 

But as the book progresses the story loses all cohesiveness, there isn't much of a story.  we revisit Anton at random times through his life at various times that remind him of that night, or shed light on some things he didn't know about. The selections seem random and, in all cases where he learns new information about that night, it's due to amazing coincidences that stretch all creduly.

I don't like to criticise the prose in a translated novel since it's the translator not the original author who's responsible. But in this case I will say that the prose is not great. There are pages of quite dull philosophical musings that either were not good in the original, or have translated really badly.

It took me over a week to read this 200 page novel. It was difficult for me to pull together the enthusiasm to continue with the book after the first time jump.

The last chapter did manage to pull off a true surprise revelation, which obviously I won't share here. Although this revelation came after the biggest coincicidental meeting in the book, which lessens the impact somewhat. There were a million better ways he could have met the person in question.

So overall, this book was a disappointment. It started well, but its lights faded rather quickly despite the occasional bon mot. Too much tedious philosophising and the author talking direct to the reader.

Not one I would recommend, unless you're fanatical about post war Holland.

Number 16- Horrorstor - Grady Hendrix

It has taken me far too long to get around to reading this.  The only other Hendrix I'd read was My Best Friend's Exorcism, which was a highlight of the year I read it. I ran out and bought this one, only to let it languish on my shelves.

The design of the book is pure genius and really adds to the experience. Obviously it's designed to look like an IKEA style catalogue. What's not immediately obvious until you start reading is the level of detail they've gone to. 

If you look close you can see the sofa is labeled "Brooka - see page 8", and the shelves behind "Kjerring see page 78". If you turn to those pages, you'll see the catalogue listings for that piece of furniture (as per the second picture below).
 

Each chapter starts with a picture of this type, but as the book moves on, these become more disturbing and funny.

Those two words- disturbing and funny are a pretty good guide to the whole book.

Amy works for Orsk- a down-market ripoff version of Ikea. She hates her job and her manager and has applied for a transfer to another store, as much to get away from her Orsk obsessed boss Basil as anything else. Strange acts of vandalism have been happening overnight in their store, and with a corporate inspection due, Basil recruits Amy and another member of staff, Ruth-Anne, to assist with an overnight watch in the store to get to the bottom of it.  Two other members of staff have decided to hold an unauthorised ghost hunt in the store the same night. The stage is set for a night of terror.

The early part of the book takes its leisurely time to set up the situation and the characters.  The corporate hellscape that is Orsk is a nightmare incarnate before any of the supernatural kicks in properly. Once the ghostly stuff really starts (with one of the most original and vile séance scenes I can remember reading) the pace never lets up for a second and we're treated to a rollercoaster of terror as the nightly inhabitants start on the offensive.

I loved every page of this book.  The gimmick of the catalogue and corporate forms inserted into proceedings just add to the whole sense of surrealism and fun

Amy is a totally relatable and sympathetic lead character.  One of the other characters undergoes one of the best asshole to hero arcs I can think of.

This book is funny, scary, exciting, often all at the same time. It's beautifully paced and a very quick and easy read. An easy 9/10 from me for this one.

Numbers 13-15- Family Tree- Jeff Lemire et all

This is a short series by Jeff Lemire (Gideon Falls, Descender, Sweet Tooth) who has rapidly become one of my go to names for graphic novels.I fully intended to only read volume 1 and leave it till next month, but once I started, I had to see it through to the end. It's that good. The story starts with Loretta Hayes, a harassed checkout worker at a small town supermarket, being called to her son Josh's school by the  principal.  Her 8 year old daughter Meg has a nasty looking rash on her arm. 

While Loretta is facing ritual humiliation from the principal, a mysterious old man with a wooden hand gives Meg something for her "rash" and leaves. 

That sentence accidentally works in both possible meanings. the old man has left, and at home in the evening, Loretta discovers Meg has leaves growing out of her back and is slowly turning into a tree.

The old man turns out to be her father in law who has news for her about the real reason her husband left two years earlier.

Lemire writes weirdness rather brilliantly and this is no exception. From this distinctly bizarre setup, the story spins into an apocalyptic fantasy centred on a strong family drama,

Lemire manages to juggle 3 or 4 different timelines in the narrative without ever putting a foot wrong.  The future segments are foreshadowing at its best for the present day narration. The past secments provide clarification of what's going on at just the right time.

The artwork by Phil Hester is top notch too. Lemire likes to play with layout to add extra depth and meaning to the story, or just to look cool, and, once again,  this is no exception.  This below is one of my favourites in the three volumes. 

It's a unique story, mixing genres and timelines and heartfelt family drama. The pacing is nigh on perfect. The villains are suitably nasty,  yet relatable. There are enough shades of grey to keep them multi-dimensional. 

It was compulsive reading and i was so glad I had all three volumes close at hand.  It would have been too frustrating to try to find the follow ups if I'd had to leave the story after either of those cliffhangers. collecting the 12 volumes of the original comic must have been a special type of purgatory with the wait between each issue.

 

Number 12- True Confessions of Adrian Mole etc- Sue Townsend

 

The first two Adrian Mole books are amongst my all time favourite reads, but somehow I had never quite got round to reading any of the others.

So here is volume 3.

As far as story goes, it's more of the same.  Adrian is now 18 years old and working his first job.

It starts promisingly enough with some good laughs in the first segment. However, the format changes from the usual diary entries not far into the book and for me, the change of format doesn't quite work.

There's also an issue that, as a child, Adrian can be excused his behaviour to a large extent, but he hasn't changed or matured in the slightest in this volume, and the same childish self-centred assholery (my god, the autocorrect isn't flagging that, it's an official word apparently) comes across as just him being an asshole and all-round unpleasant tosser.

His snobbery doesn't feel funny once the format of the book changes. It just comes across as a guy with a superior attitude and he becomes more irritating than amusing. A lot of the humour in the first two books comes from how blissfully unaware he is of what is actually happening around him. That's been replaced by a disdain for everything and that just isn't as funny or appealing.

We hear monologues he apparently made on Radio 4 and see letters sent to Barry Kent before we return briefly to the diary entries. 

It has its moments but I found the Mole section of the book to be disappointing.

The Mole section is followed by snippets from the POV of one Susan Lilian Townsend. Specifically, a travel diary of a trip she takes to Majorca, and a trio of essays.  The Majorca section and the writing for TV essay are wryly amusing. The description of her trip to Russia feels like a what-I-did-in-the-summer type essay rather than a short story and, whilst it was an ok read with a couple of laughs, I was not enamored with it.  Her final essay is quite poor.

The third section of the book is a fictitious diary of a real person- Margaret Hilda Roberts- better known by her married name of Thatcher. This is an all out snark attack on Thatcher, who definitely deserved it.  There are very few figures in politics I despise more than her. but the humour didn't land for me other than a few wry grins. I don't know if that's because this section isn't particularly witty- replacing wit and cleverness with snark- or because I'm not as up to date with 1989 politics as I was back then and I'm missing a lot of references.

I should have loved a vicious takedown of Thatcher, but I didn't.  It could also be that such a direct piece of political satire doesn't feel like it belongs here. I know the Mole books contain plenty of political comment, but it's folded neatly into the story in the first two volumes. This just feels like a bad fit to me.

Overall I was disappointed with this. there were a few laughs and it was never less than readable. but it's a far cry from the comic heights of the first two books.  Is it diminishing returns setting in? If so, I'm not sure I want to venture as far as book 8... I will read the next one and hope it's a return to the successful format of the first books, and that she allows Adrian to actually grow as a person, rather than keeping him in this adolescent mindset his whole life.

Number 11- Phobia - Thomas Luke- aka Graham Masterton

If only Graham Masterton was as popular as Stephen King.  This book would be the equivalent value of a Richard Bachman copy of Rage.  Sadly, he’s not and this isn’t. But check out that glorious cover.

Thomas Luke is a pen name for the aforementioned Mr Masterton and this is his novelisation of an almost forgotten film in the very early 80s.

Graham Masterton is not an author you read if you’re looking for subtlety, depth of meaning and high literature. He does however produce some rather entertaining low budget horror based on assorted demons of world mythologies. He can be very formulaic, but some of his ideas are good and he can be depended on for some well thought out shreddie goodness (see my post on the noble art of the shreddie here)

In this case his hands would have been somewhat tied in that the plot was handed to him with all the twists and turns and character deaths already written by the screenwriters. So any failings I found story wise are not his fault. And there are some serious story failings.

The ending is particularly bad, I’ll detail the reason for that at the end so spoiler alert if you read the final paragraph of this review.

Basic story- Dr Ross is apparently a brilliant psychotherapist with a radical new treatment to help people overcome their phobias.  He’s working with a group of five convicts who each committed crimes because of their phobias. One by one, his test subjects start dying in ways related to their phobias.  That’s what the back cover says.  I’d argue that the first death is not connected to that character’s fear, or death number 3 for that matter. But, as previously mentioned, that’s the fault of one of the 5 people listed as being responsible for the story/screenplay rather than the novelist.

It’s written in Masterton’s usual no nonsense style. There’s no attempts at high literature, and he does well to obfuscate the truth of events and not making it all too obvious.

 The characters struggle to gain more than one dimension.  They’re literally defined by either their fear, their job, or if they’re attracted to Dr Ross. The cops are particularly cartoonish (although Masterton does call their behaviour out and makes the point that the rest of the cops in the station don’t behave that way any more). 

Ross's alleged expertise is one of the less credible parts of the story. There is no way that Ross's techniques would gain any traction, let alone millions in grant funding. It makes the therapy scenes particularly silly.

The deaths are suitably nasty but tame by Masterton’s standards. Again, not really his fault. It’s a quick fun read despite the flaws in the story.

SLIGHT SPOILER- In the last two pages, we have to wonder how someone can swim strongly while holding a gun in their left hand out of the water to keep it dry. That’s an image that seriously does not compute in my brain. And is particularly egregious as it’s one of the final scenes and supposed to be deadly serious.