Number 25- Cosmic detective- Lemire & Kindt

 

This is possibly the most psychadelic thing I've read from Jeff Lemire so far, perfectly set off by Matt Kindt's basically insane artwork.

When a God is murdered, our detective who I only realised in hindsight when glancing through the book for this review, is never named, is on the case. He follows a series of ever weirder leads into the final showdown to keep reality itself intact.

Lemire's imagination is in full flow in this bizarre and rather delightfully violent tale of creatures beyond our human understanding.

As usual with Lemire, we see the page layouts themselves used as part of the storytelling as much as the artwork and the script. 

It's one of the most original pieces of writing I've seen from Lemire. I love that the race of creatures is never named, a solid block overlaid across the name to censor it every time they're mentioned.  I love the little touches like that in a story big enough to take in interspecies romance, murder and the possible death of reality itself.

With full frontal nudity and some gruesome scenes, this probably isn't one for younger readers, but more mature readers should love it.

Number 24- Piranesi- Susanna Clarke

 

Many years ago, I read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell and really enjoyed it.  However, since then I haven't gotten around to any more of hers until a book group I'm in chose this.

This is a weird one- which is a good thing IMHO

Piranesi lives in a big house with cavernous rooms and hundreds maybe thousands of them.  The house is so big it has at least 4 tidal flows that fill the lower caverns completely at high tide. when they coincide, even the upper rooms are flooded.

He is one of only 15 people ever to live -as far as he knows.  Certainly he's one of only two people alive. Himself and the Other are the only inhabitants of this House. So who is it that's started leaving messages?

This and other questions form the central mystery of the House. Piranesi finds his sense of reality fracturing. The House that provides so much and is so good to him becomes a strange and troubling place.

I struggled a little with this book to start with.  the prose is quite dry, and nothing much happens in the first fifty something pages except for Clarke building up the strange world of the House through Piranesi's diaries.

However, the story reaches a point where things start happening, Piranesi starts to question what the Other is telling him, and suddenly the tension starts to build. From that point on, I was pretty much hooked. There was no way I was going to not finish.

This book is an object lesson on how to tell the reader more than the narrator knows simply through what's left out of the narrative. The answers to the mystery are probably quite obvious to the savvy reader.  I guessed most of the plot turns well in advance but I think that's probably intentional on Clarke's part. The cast list is too small to give any real surprises or plot twists. The pleasure lies in the gradual lifting of the veils from Piranesi's eyes. When will he work out for himself what the motivation of the Other and the mysterious figure are?

Once the tension began the book shifts to a new gear and became quite compulsive for me. 

It's not a perfect book, but I thought it was very good indeed. I kind of want to find my own way to the House.  it sounds like a nice break from reality.

Number 23- Small Things Like These- Claire Keegan

Christmas week 1985, in a small town in Ireland, timber merchant Bill Furlong is facing his busiest week of the year. When he visits the local nunnery/laundry to make a delivery, he finds a girl in need of help.  What is he going to do?

This is an intense and multi layered story which tells a much bigger story than the 114 pages would suggest at first glance.

Keegan manages to build the whole town and the community in minimalist yet extremely effective prose. We understand the hold the nunnery has over the town and the impact that crossing them might have.

Some prior knowledge of the Magdelen laundries is necessary to fully comprehend the story, but there is an afterword to explain for those who have not heard of this particular stain on the history of the Church.

Keegan has crafted  a remarkable short novel here that stays with the reader after finishing it. Well recommended.

number 22- Snow Angels Vol 2- Lemire & Jock

 

The mysteries posed in volume 1 find themselves mostly answered in this second volume. The origin of the Trench, and the history of the residents are explained more than satisfactorily.

An excellent ending to the series.  The artwork is excellent as is the writing. 

Go out and beg borrow or steal it.

Maybe don't steal it. But if you do, and you get caught, don't tell them I told you to.

Number 21- A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World- C A Fletcher

A couple of years back, I read Dead Water by CA Fletcher, found it appropriately creepy so I went out and bought this.  To be honest, I would have been tempted to pick this up on the strength of that title if I'd seen it before knowing anything about his writing. 

Apparently he also writes as Charlie Fletcher, so I have a few more books to seek out for my ever expanding TBR mountain.

This is every bit as good as the title promises.  

100 years after humanity has all but died out after something happened to make 99.999% of the population infertile, the last few settlements of humans are scattered far and wide.

There are a couple of families on the Scottish Isles.  When a smooth talking thief visits our narrator Griz's family on their island, it sets off a chain of events.  The stranger leaves early in the morning, taking Griz's dog Jess with him.  Griz sets off on a journey across a deserted Britain to get her back.

This is my second real contender for best book of the year so far. Griz makes for a remarkable narrator. I was thoroughly invested in the quest to retrieve poor Jess. I'm a cat person not a dog person, but this book made me feel for that dog as strongly as Griz did.

Fletcher's depiction of a landscape abandoned for decades and reclaimed by nature is stunning.  The pacing and characterisation are spot on.  I'd worked out one of the surprises near the end of the book at least 100 pages early, but there was at least one other that took me completely unawares.

I can't really say much else in case of spoilers.  This is a beautifully written book that pushed all the right buttons for me and I recommend it unreservedly.

Number 20- Our Wives Under the Sea- Julia Armfield

 

A new author to me, and another book group choice.

Sorry, there will be quite a big spoiler in this review so if you want to read the book before coming back and reading this review, feel free, but I don't recommend it.

Miri's wife Leah is an underseas researcher. Leah was stuck at the bottom of the ocean for months when her vessel developed a fault.  Now she's back and behaving very strangely.

The book is told in alternating chapters from each of the two lead's POV. This leads to the first of the big problems with this book.  Both first person narratives sound exactly the same. If it wasn't for the chapter titles telling us who was talking, on the occasional pages where either Miri doesn't talk about Leah or Leah doesn't mention the sea, it is impossible to tell the narration apart.

It should be more than subject matter that separates the voices of your characters when writing multiple POV.

The writing feels nice.  I'm not sure there's anything objectively wrong with the prose (other than the aforementioned uniformity of voice across multiple first person POV). SPOILER!!!! The story has a really interesting concept.  There's submarine drama, there's body horror, there's a woman metapmorphosing into a fish. I'm not sure how any writer could take the ideas on display here, and with nice prose, write a book as tedious and uninteresting as this was.  But Julia Armfield has managed it.

There are ways of making your story ambiguous and mysterious and not answering the audience questions that work, that fill the reader with a sense of wonder and mystery.  There are ways of making your story ambiguous and mysterious and not answering the audience questions that feel pretentious and lazy and like you don't know the answers yourself but you thought you'd write it anyway. This book feels like the latter to me.

More spoilers

The fact that the submarine crew do nothing at all to help their situation makes their story anticlimactic. The fact that they try nothing in their time at the bottom of the sea makes their story lack drama. Their eventual escape feels like the writer just trying for that lazy air of mystery by not explaining why it happens. 

When I read the Deep by Nick Cutter at the end of last year, there was a palpable sense of claustrophobia in the deep sea setting.  There was a sense of awe at the surroundings. In this, there's three not exactly fleshed out characters who occasionally get on each other's nerves in the dark. then one snaps and does something silly. There's really no comparison between the two books for dramatic stakes.

This was sold in the horror section of at least one local Waterstones.  Even by my wide ranging definitions of horror, this one was mis-shelved.

A book this short should not feel as long as this did. Just as an example of how enthused I was to continue reading this book, how much the storytelling had me hooked, there was one night last week where I had a spare hour to sit reading, and I chose to clean the bathroom instead.

The whole book can be summed up by the last sentence on page 203.  "For a long time, nothing happened."

Not recommended.

Number 19- Intermezzo- Sally Rooney

Prior to my book club choosing this book, I was dead set against reading anything by Sally Rooney- merely because her most famous book is called Normal People.  That is IMHO, possibly the most bland and uninteresting book title I have ever heard.  However, even I am willing to admit that that is a weak excuse to write an author off.

Now I've given this one a go and I'm happy to announce that I will never read a Sally Rooney novel again because I read half of this one and gave up.

I now have a good excuse for not wanting to read her.

This is told from alternating viewpoints of two brothers.  One is Peter, a 32 year old womanising solicitor, and the other is Ivan, is a 23 year old chess prodigy who barely knows how to talk to another human, let alone a woman.

Peter is still in love with his first long term girlfriend but is currently involved with a student in her early 20s. Ivan is desperate for anyone who'll look at him twice.

Ivan falls for Barbara, a woman in her late thirties/early forties, when he meets her at a chess display in a social club in the arse end of nowhere.  She's not a chess player, she's there to move the chairs and lock up.  She provides the third narrative voice of the book, doubling up in Ivan's chapters.

The chapters with Ivan and Barbara are ok to read but nothing special, and the sex scenes are cringe inducing. The biggest problem with the book is Peter's chapters.

Yoda it feels like they were written by. Object and subject of sentences transposed. Constantly. Sentences without verbs. Irritating as hell I found it. Boring his character is. Nothing he seems to have done by halfway through the book.

Ivan, although on the surface, the character that should be most sympathetic, the introvert being pulled out of his shell by his first real relationship, seems more of an incel and a complete stereotypical nerd, the further the book wears on. Barbara didn't seem to have much of a personality other than wondering what people would think of her shagging a guy half her age.

In the two hundred pages of this tedious and poorly written dross that I dragged myself through, I found zero of interest, and no characters worthy of sympathy. I had no compulsion to continue reading at the end of part one of the book.  When part two opened with the most Yoda speak so far, I gave up. 

At least I know my suspicions about her writing skills were on point.

Number 18- Ghost recall - Alan Baxter

 

The final part of the Eli Carver thrillers provides a balls to the wall action finale.

If you've ever wondered what you'd get if you crossed Jason Bourne with Randall and Hopkirk (deceased) and threw in a smattering of John Wick style ultraviolence, look no further.

Eli Carver is a hitman literally haunted by five of his victims. In the previous two volumes, it's been kept ambiguous as to whether the ghosts were real or if he was slightly off his rocker.  In this volume we learn the truth.

After he's jumped by a gang of thugs and steals a mysterious ring from one of their unconscious bodies, Eli finds himself caught up in battle to the death with a secret society of moon worshippers.

There are very few writers can write a fight scene quite as convincingly as Alan Baxter. When you learn that he is a martial arts instructor when not writing, it comes as no real surprise. 

Even the most over the top action scenes in this series have felt feasible because of the clarity and detail. 

This series would make for an excellent trilogy of films. It's action packed, fast moving and occasionally gory fun. The ghosts provide a surreal humour and horror overtones. Eli is an entertaining narrator and this is a great way to kill a couple of hours. Highly recommended.  Possibly the most fun I've had with a book so far this year.

The whole trilogy has just been released in a single volume just called Recall.  It's available through Alan Baxter's website - Books By Alan - Alan Baxter - now you've got no excuse not to buy it.

Number 17- Supporting Roles- Stephen Volk

 

A pair of short stories/novellas by the very talented Mr Stephen Volk. This is possibly one of the best looking books so far from PS publishing.  The art and the design of the pages is gorgeous and adds to the reading experience.

It turns out I'd read one of these before.  The three Hunchbacks is one of the Holmes meets Poe/Dupin stories in Under a Raven's Wing. 

It was still as excellent as it was in that collection. the rats sequence was equally nightmarish.

The House that moved Next Door is a superbly creepy story.  It's hard to say much about the story without leaving spoilers so I'll stick with a strange childhood encounter in the house next door has repercussions throughout a man's life.

There are no easy explanations offered and the afterword tells us that this was initially written for an anthology of Aickmanesque stories.

if this is what Aickmanesque is, I need to read myself some Aickman, 

Overall a great little book that killed an hour in an exceedingly spineshiversome way.

Number 16- Waterblack- Alex Pheby

 

The long awaited final part of trilogy was finally released earlier this year.  here's my handsome GBP black edition, although I am tempted to buy the set in hardback too since they have beautifully illustrated covers.

I'm every glad the first thing in this book is a summary of the first two as this would have been impossible to understand in places.

In this book, we pick up on the tale of Nathan Treeves, now taking his place as Master of Waterblack, the third city of the Weft. We also catch up on his assorted friends, the ghosts of the two magical dogs, and an assassin who we've met briefly in the past, but whose backstory takes up nearly the first half of the book at least.

There is the usual luscious prose that I've come to expect from Alex Pheby, and the imagination on display is immense. However this is the least satisfying of the trilogy.

There are pros and cons to characters who are basically gods and can do anything.  On the one hand, it means there are no limits to what they can do. The imagination can fly anywhere.  On the other hand, there are no limits on what they can do. It means the stakes seem trivial. Death becomes immaterial. Time and space, causality and all that wibbly wobbly stuff don't seem to matter any more.

This book does seem to fall victim to that. Plus, there seems to be less story and more musing and asking questions directly to the reader than there was in the other volumes.  The 60 page interlude with the ghost dogs was particularly flawed. I found myself skim reading a couple of the appendices for similar reasons.

I'd love to say that this was a magnificent conclusion to the series but I will have to stop short of that.  It's still a very good book indeed, Once everything hits the fan in the closing stages of the book (prior to the appendices) it's almost unputdownable.  The section with Sharli's backstory was similarly brilliant. There are just a couple of lulls in the narrative, where style rules over substance and that's a real shame. 

Number 15- Little Monsters- Charles Lambert

I wonder if you can spot the theme with the previous read...

I read a couple of Lambert's books last year and was impressed enough to buy more, including this one.

Carol Foxe's mother was murdered by her father when she was only 13.  She was sent to live with her aunt and uncle (and cousin Nicholas) above a pub in a small village, much against her aunt's wishes.  Her uncle Joszef is much nicer though and her relationship with her cousin, though it starts on shaky ground, solidifies into a real friendship.

The novel operates on two timelines, one in her painful childhood, and the other in a more current day setting.  She is now living with Joszef and working in a refugee camp on the Italian coast. When she pulls a young teenage girl from the sea, she forms an obsession, and her carefully structured life starts to crumble around her again, just like it did in her teens.

This is the first real contender this year for my book of the year. Lambert's prose is cool and sparse, telling us just enough that we can guess the rest. There are subtly disturbing undertones throughout.  

The slow build of her damaging obsession with saving the girl is masterfully done. The reveal of the secrets of her past is just as good. 

I'm struggling to think of any negative points about this book. Some may find her relationship with Joey in the modern segments to be uncomfortable, but that's deliberately so. Despite this not being a horror novel, there's a definite sense of unease that oozes from the pages.

This is certainly the best book of the year so far.  I recommend it unreservedly.

Number 14- Little Monsters Vol 2- Lemire & Nguyen

 

The first book in a mini themed read.  See if you can guess the theme on the next book.

The second and final part of this Lemire scripted post apoc is every bit as weird and wonderful as the first.

The explanations are satisfying, and whilst the conclusion isn't exactly balls to the wall excitement, it left this particular reader deeply satisfied. 

This mini series is well worth your time. For basic storyline, see my review of volume 1. the situation has moved on but the basic facts I would give are exactly the same.

The artwork is similarly just as brilliant for all the same reasons.

Number 13- the Memory Police- Yoko Ogawa

This was last months' choice for a book group read.  I'd never heard of it before despite it being the sort of thing that I seek out.  One of the very good reasons for being in a book group.

This is one of the more original ideas for a dystopian societies that I know of.  In this world, things are forgotten by decree.  Roses, birds, hats, ribbons, basically objects at random, one morning, you wake up and they mean nothing.  Any that you own are taken out and destroyed.  The memory police will visit to deal with those who remember.

I remember reading a quote from Ray Bradbury where he said that in his books rocket ships go to the stars. that's what they do.  You don't need to know how they work, just that they do. What fuels them is not relevant. 

That frame of mind is essential for this book.  The mechanics of the situation are unexplainable, especially from a POV of one of those who does forget. This is a book where you just need to go along with it.

Our narrator is a novelist. When she realises her editor is one who can remember, she decides to protect him from the Memory Police who are on a hunt. For the rest of the book their relationship forms the emotional heart of the story whilst more and more items are forgotten.

This is beautifully translated into English by Stephen Snyder. The storyline is intriguing, sad and genuinely emotional.  This is an excellent book on most metrics.

However, the internal logic is inconsistent. As much as I wanted to just go with the flow, if all birds are forgotten, why are they always eating chicken? Is that not a bird? if all fruit has been forgotten and destroyed, tomatoes would no longer be on the menu (they eat tomatoes on a regular basis along with the chickens) and she would not mourn the loss of strawberries to make a cake several months later. these are minor points but enough to pull me out of the story. 

I can't bring myself to add this to my own personal pantheon of dystopian greats on that basis. If you're going for such a high fantasy base for your concept, it needs to keep its internal logic intact. 

It really is a good book, it's beautiful and well worth the read.  I just wish the copy editor had ironed out the flaws.

Number 12- Phantom Road Vol 2- Lemire et al

I thought this was a two part series of graphic novels.  It isn't. That's a good and a bad thing.  Good because it means that this intriguing story is going to get more in depth and intriguinger.  Bad because it's ongoing and the next volume isn't out for a long while yet so I've got ages to wait.

The more answers we get to the questions thrown up in volume one, the more new questions sprang up in their place.

This trip down the mysterious Phantom Road is one that fans of the graphic form should be rushing to take. Lemire's usual quality writing is matched by Walta's distinctive artwork.

I can't wait for book 3

Number 11- Karla's Choice- Nick Harkaway

The second full novel in a row where I would have benefited from knowing something about Le Carre.  

This one is much more direct a link and much more definite. Le Carre's son, Nick Harkaway has taken up the mantle and written a Smiley novel that apparently fits into a 10 year gap in the narrative from the original books by his dad.

I have never read a Smiley novel, nor seen a film so I have no idea who any of the characters are.

Sadly, that seems to have left me at a huge disadvantage where this is concerned. This was a book group read. Those who know the Smiley books in my book group (everyone but me) loved it.

I was just perpetually confused.  Smiley was looking for some Russian sleeper agent who'd just left London after his son was arrested in eastern Europe. I have no idea why this character might have been  of importance.

This just seemed like a low stakes, low speed follow around Europe with endless info-dumps and cameos from characters I had no idea about.  Sadly, none of the info-dumps managed to assign any importance to the chase. No one in the book knew the importance of the character they were chasing, therefore neither did this particular reader.

I found the end of the chase was spectacularly anti-climatic and IMHO it failed to provide any answers. Again, to people who knew the franchise, this was a brilliant close to the book.  

This is not a standalone book clearly.  The writing is very nice. It flows well. It just flows into either a sea of brilliance if you know the characters and surrounding story, or into an abyss of who gives a damn for people like me.

Apparently, Mr Harkaway has pulled off a perfect imitation of his late father's prose style.  I couldn't possibly comment whether he has or not. 

I scored it 5/10 because it's certainly a well written book from a prose perspective. Unless you're already intimately knowledgeable about the rest of the series, it's going to fall down very flat.

Number 10- Cleaning The Gold- Karin Slaughter and Lee Child

Will Trent meets Jack Reacher for apparently twice the excitement...

It might have been twice the excitement if this was a full sized novel, but this barely reaches novella length.  At a mere 80 pages, there really isn't any space to build relationships between the two heroes.

Instead we get them both being assigned undercover to Fort Knox on different cases, Trent is there deliberately to catch Reacher as the lead suspect in a 20 year old murder case, Reacher is there to investigate corruption in the higher ranks.

We get brief initial distrust, followed by working together briefly, an action sequence, a resolution to Trent's case, and an epilogue. 

It's all fairly entertaining, but it's far from the best thing that Ms Slaughter has written, I can't judge on the Lee Child since I don't recall reading any of his before.

The machismo runs rampant in this brief little tale. The credibility scores several points lower.

This killed an hour quite effectively.  Would I read it again?  Probably not.

Numbers 8 & 9- Phantom Road & The Beauty

 

Another new series (to me at least) from Jeff Lemire.  This time he has Gabriel Walta on the rather distinctive artwork.

Dom is a trucker, just going about his usual business when he accidentally picks up a hitch-hiker and a strange cargo.  It appears to be  a rock but when he and his new passenger touch it, they're somehow joined psychically to it and moved onto the Phantom Road of the title- an in-between space inhabited by monsters.  their only way back to normality is to deliver the cargo.

This is a fun mash-up of some fairly common tropes.  It feels a lot more original and new than it actually is due to Lemire's script with it's twists and rather surreal turns.

The supporting characters in the real world are just as compelling, and with their own links to the road. |

I've already bought and read volume 2- but I'm playing catch up. these were a cheat read over a week ago. And a very good cheat read it is too,

Highly recommended, as is anything by Jeff Lemire.

 

My next cheat read was this little beauty. This features one of the best high concepts I've seen in any fiction recently.

What if Beauty was an STD.  No matter what you look like, your perfect figure, and tightened youthful skin could be yours after one sexual encounter?

Who could resist?

That's the basis for this story. Unfortunately, the long term effects for the disease have started to make themselves known with some very public and very dramatic deaths.

A pair of police officers detectives Vaughn and Foster are drawn into the conspiracy surrounding the disease as they investigate the first spate of deaths. They soon find themselves facing corrupt politicians to the top levels of society, and trying to escape a terrifying bounty hunter.

Jeremy Haun and Jason Hurley's script is perfectly complemented by Haun's artwork John Raugh's vivid colours.

This is a one shot novel as far as I can tell.  It certainly reached an effective conclusion, but I know |I would be intrigued to know what happened next. 

This is a great mash up of conspiracy theory, cop work and full blown horror with a brilliant concept underpinning it all.  Well worth a few quid of anyone's hard earned cash.

It's fairly explicit with some full nudity and some graphic violence so this definitely isn't one for the kids.  As far as I can tell this is

Number 7- The Constant Rabbit- Jasper Fforde

I'm playing catch up with Jasper Fforde's novels.  I'm nearly there now.  I have a full set and only three left unread since I finished this one. 

Of his books that I have read to date, this is unique in that it's a standalone. I've not read Early Riser yet so I don't know if that is a planned series or not. I do know that he would have some work to do to make a sequel to this one. 

Which is a shame because this is such a fantastic idea with a lot of potential.

50 odd years ago there was an event and a number of small animals became human sized and sentient. There were dozens of rabbits in the original event, and now there are 1.2 million living in the UK.

When Constance moves into the small village of Much Hemlock, next door to her old university chum Peter Knox, small town politics are about to get nasty. To quote the blurb on the dustjacket, Peter finds he can be friends with rabbits or with humans, but not both.

Fforde is taking on some heavy subject matter here in an almost whimsical manner. Every manner of bigotry is displayed in this book with Rabbits as the targets. He also throws in the most terrifying villain I've read in any genre recently in the form of Mr Foxe.

In short I loved this book from start to finish. It's laugh out loud funny.  It's tense, it's thought provoking. I've not read enough LeCarre to know if the title is a deliberate little aim at the Constant Gardner but there's more than enough in the book to make me laugh, to make me think and to sympathise with the protagonists, as unlikely as their situation (or even existence) might be.

What could be a very silly book, and is indeed a very silly book, manages to be simultaneously a painfully accurate satire on some of the worst traits of humanity. 

This might be my favourite Fforde to date.

5 & 6- Something Is Killing the Children Vol 8, House of Slaughter Alabaster- James Tynion IV et al

 

A double bill of the most recent entries in these two continuing series.

Last time we saw Erica Slaughter she'd been severely compromised in her abilities as a monster slayer.  i was kind of hoping for a continuation of that storyline.  Instead this volume is 5 standalone issues that flash back to events prior to the beginning of the series.

The first two felt very similar in content, but then Tynion started to make clever variations on the theme.  The issue set in a therapist's office is probably the best individual issue of the entire run.

The artwork continues to be uninspiring except for occasional full page panels. It all finishes with Erica heading off on the first mission we met her on.

I seriously question the review on the back of one of these that states SIKTC reinvented the comic.  As good as it is, it ahs never quite stopped feeling like a companion piece to Buffy with an entirely amoral watcher's council.

Which brings me neatly to...  

This is the weakest artwork so far in the HoS run.

The story this time involves a white mask called Bait- a young boy whose arms were ripped off by the monster that killed his family. 

However, he's still able to kick these giant creatures to death.  Of all the unlikely twists this series might have taken, the fact that a skinny boy with missing arms can apparently take on the same monsters that the heavily armed Erica struggles with (I managed not to use the 'armless joke! yippee) has to be the most extreme.

They do call him Bait I suppose, so his fighting ability is as much of a surprise to the House of Slaughter as it is to the reader.

We learn yet more about the inner workings of the House and how rotten it is at its core. The ending is particularly downbeat.  That's a good thing IMHO. I'm not having a dig. 

These were a very good way to kill an hour or so.  I don't find them groundbreaking in the slightest but they are solidly entertaining and haven't lost my interest yet.

Number 4- Bunny- Mona Awad

 

I could just put the phrase "What the actual fuck did I read?" and that would be an accurate summation of this book. It was certainly one of the most common phrases that went through my mind while I was reading it. 

Samantha Mackie is a student in an exclusive writing school.  In her regular workshop session she is teamed up with "the Bunnies", a group of 4 rich young women who do everything together and call each other Bunny.

Sam's hatred for these vapid self obsessed women knows no bounds.  But when she receives an invite to a Bunny social she finds herself going, against the advice of her best (only) friend Ava.

She soon finds herself completely embraced by th Bunny way of being, and that's where things turn from an older version of Mean Girls into something a lot darker. 

The first time I said "What the actual fuck" would have been around chapter 12 (they're short chapters)  and it was almost a continuous refrain from that point onwards.

The book has a hallucinatory feel that it never loses.  I found myself constantly questioning how much of what was described was actually happening. The writing is top notch.  Awad can write a great sentence with more layers than you could possibly suspect.  I suspect this is one of those books that would read entirely differently second time around once in full possession of the facts.

t's a quick and easy read despite the nearly 400 pages and has layers inside its layers. It's shocking and gruesome in places and utterly surreal throughout. I really enjoyed it and will be checking out her other books in due course. 

Number 3- Little Monsters- Lemire & Nguyen

 

Jeff Lemire really does love his weird apocalypses. 

In this mini series, the brilliant team behind the Ascender./Descender series have reunited for another fantastical vision of the distant future.

This time it's set on earth a few centuries from now. A group of child vampires have been waiting in an unnamed city, living off vermin and passing small animals for three hundred years since something happened that has seen the city deserted of human life ever since.

When a nomadic group of humans wander within range, things change.  The dynamic in the group shifts and their comfortable but boring existence will never bee the same again.

Lemire's writing and characters are up to the usual high standard, and one character death really did evoke a strong emotional reaction from me.

The artwork is absolutely top notch.  This time around, it's mostly greyscale, but with some colours thrown in, particularly red for blood.

After finishing this (a week ago) the first thing I did was order the second and final volume.

If you're a Lemire fan, you can't go wrong with this one.  If you're not a Lemire fan yet, this is as good a place as any to start. You won't regret it.

Number 2- The Goldfinch- Donna Tartt

 

This time last year I was on book number 9.  This year my word count is almost certainly up, but book count is down by 7.

The first thing to say about this is it's long. It's easily one of the three longest books I've read since I started this blog however many years ago it was. It feels like the longest though by a clear distance and has taken me 3 weeks to complete.

Theo Decker is 13 when he's caught up in an explosion in a museum in New York. Two results from the explosion are the death of his mother and his theft of a priceless small painting called the Goldfinch.

This theft underpins much of his existence from then on, eventually entangling him with a  European crime ring and risking his life.

His childhood is spent shuttling between friends and the remains of his family. The rich friends who take him in immediately after the explosion introduce him to  a life of riches and privilege, a life he's forced to leave behind when his deadbeat dad whisks him across the country.

I finished this yesterday and it hasn't quite settled in yet. It is certainly well written and held my interest effortlessly while I had this house brick of a book  But, when I put it down, I struggled to motivate myself to pick it up again on occasion for reasons I can't quite work out.  

Tartt created some compelling characters.  The supporting cast mostly felt very real and sympathetic- Hobie in particular feels like a real person. One offstage death quite upset me so Tartt was doing her job right. The character of Theo is less convincing though.  He undergoes a few character reversals when needed to progress the plot. He also does very little of his own volition to move the plot along. Most of the major events and resolutions to his many problems come through the supporting characters' actions rather than anything Theo does for himself.

There are odd threads from the start of the book left hanging. The dying man in the museum who is responsible for him taking the picture asks him to warn Hobie about something- but this is never followed up on.  Hobie tells Theo about a pair of con artists in great detail (including physical description), but then fails to recognise the one he described in a long one to one conversation.  

Tarrtt's prose is occasionally gorgeous.  She's undoubtedly a very talented writer, but I don't think I loved this book. It's a very good book indeed. Some of the insights she gives into art and the human condition are spot on but there are flaws as I've mentioned above. I'm definitely glad I read it, and will certainly be checking out others from her back catalogue.  All in all, a bit of a curates egg. The other two very long books I've read since I started this were pageturners and I read them in under 2 weeks.  I can't say this ever had that type of energy.

Number 1- Cold Snap- Lindy Ryan

 

This time last year I was writing up bonk number 5. This year it's only number 1. I did finish it more than a week ago to be fair.  But book 2 is an absolute housebrick  that's going to take another week at least at the pace I've managed so far.

On to the important detail though.  I bought this as an impulse buy when I found myself in the city centre with 2 hours to kill and no book. It seemed appropriate for the weather at the time.

Christine Sinclaire was widowed two weeks before Christmas when her husband slipped while fitting lights to the roof. She takes her 15 year old son Billy and their pet cat to the remote cabin that she'd planned with her husband for Christmas. It's a way to avoid reality for a few days over the festive period, and to get away from all the concerned neighbours.

Billy is not happy with the arrangements. He is coping with his father's death almost as well as Christine is dealing with it.

They find they have more than grief and blame to contend with at the cabin.  A creature is stalking the frozen woods. A creature with horns and hooves like a moose, hut that seems to stand on two legs.  A creature that calls to Christine with her husband's voice. Events move from tragic to scary in short order.

This is a beautifully written examination of the impact of guilt, blame and grief on a family. It''s also a pretty scary creature feature.  Christine's response to her husband's death feels genuinely heartbreaking.  She constantly relives his last moments. The author's use of repetition with this is masterfully done. The half descriptions of the creature, so we're never quite certain what this thing is, are equally well done.

The final couple of chapters really get the pulse pounding. There is some proper nightmare fuel present here. Lindy Ryan builds a cloying and oppressive atmosphere. These are two very realistically damaged humans under threat. 

I would certainly recommend this.  An excellent start to the year's reading.

2025 book number 0.5- The Deep- Nick Cutter

 

I started this on 30th December but only finished on 5th of this month so to solve issues on numbering for the year, it's a half. 

I read The Troop a couple of years back and it pretty much set the bar for body horror in literature for me.  This is my second outing into his world of horror.

A pandemic is sweeping the world.  Called the 'gets, it's like dementia on steroids. in it's end stages, people forget everything including how to eat and breathe and just die.

In an attempt to find a cure a team of scientists are working 8 miles below the surface of the Pacific, trying to harness a miraculous new substance they call Ambrosia.

Dr Luke Nelson is a vet. His brother is one of the scientists in the deep sea lab. When all contact s lost with the lab shortly after his brother sends a message asking to see him, Luke takes the perilous trip to the bottom of the ocean. He will soon come to regret that decision.

Things have gone very wrong indeed in the Trieste lab. In the darkest and deepest part of the ocean, something is emerging that is more terrifying than any disease.

Cutter manages to create the most cloying atmosphere of claustrophobia I think I've seen in a book. The sense of dread is palpable.

It's nowhere near as gruesome as The Troop but it is a lot more atmospheric. You can almost feel the walls pressing in and smell the stale air. 

 The Troop was a great ensemble piece, where this one sticks to Luke's POV almost continuously throughout. Luke is a good character and well drawn but I did find myself wanting the POV from  some of the other characters.  This only happened briefly in a section where he reads the diaries of one of the scientists.

This is an impressively bleak novel. Hope is a hard thing to come by eight miles under the sea facing a Lovecraftian entity. The body horror, when it comes, is effectively gruesome and mainly concerning the lab specimens so if that's a trigger, maybe avoid this. 

One of the blurbs on my copy says how this book gives you a reason to be scared of the dark, and I have to say I agree with that statement.

Overall this was a good end/start to the year's reading.

2024 picks of the year

 This (last year) has been a good year for reading for me.  I've completed 107 books and got a good start on number 108. I've read a good mix of genres and have really enjoyed the vast majority. There were 4 that I managed to finish despite hating (they were shortish) and my first DNF since I started the blog.  All my full reviews are a simple scroll away.

In the order that I read them, my top 10 for the year are

A very short but satisfying tale of supernatural detectives.  A great start to the year

Another novella, this one told from the point of view of a mountain lion living above LA. I love that weirdness like this is now available in mainstream book shops.

Paul Auster's final novel is as good as anything else he's written.  A beautiful and moving character study.

Adam Nevill's All the Fiends of Hell is one of the two most terrifying reads of the year.  Possibly the scariest book he's written to date, with some truly hair-raising set pieces

I expected to hate this but loved it.  A gorgeously told story of Shakespeare's son's death.

The other one of the most terrifying books I read this year.  It had me jumping at shadows looking for Other Mommy.

This one is genuinely disturbing. Great writing and needs to be experienced to be believed.

Based on the true story of a medical hoax where a woman was allegedly giving birth to rabbits.  This is an odd one, brilliantly told.  The eponymous Mary might be the most mistreated character I've read about all year. 

Cthulu, mysterious corporations, black magic detectives in the big city.  This book has it all.  One of the most mind-bending things I've read in years.

Finally, this one- a crime story without cops. Brilliantly written.  It turned my internal narrator into the cast of Father Ted. A multi-layered story of small town secrets in Ireland.

So there we have it, the 10 best books I read last year.

The DNF was Almost White by Simon Thirsk. The worst book I finished by an absolute country mile was The Breast by Philip Roth.  How that guy has a career in literature is an absolute mystery to me if that is typical of his work.

Number 107- House of Slaughter vol 3- The Butcher's Return- Tynion et al

Jake Boucher the Butcher is back to wreak havoc on the various monster houses. 

Last seen in volume 1 of the HoS spin off, he's been off grid, saving children and trying to keep them safe from the houses.  Of course, it can't last forever and his old house, the House of Butchers, picks up one of his young proteges.

The scene is set for a violent clash of ideologies.

The script by Brombal is very good indeed, building the mythos of the houses and the interrelationships nicely. The artwork is the best to date.

This series is highly recommended.

Numbers 103 a,b and c- Ghost stories for Christmas- Galley beggar pocket books

 

These were my Christmas day read (I said I was playing catch up). They arrived in early November but were far too pretty to open, so I waited till Christmas day to unwrap them  and the books were just as pretty inside the packaging.

They're all famous enough that I probably don't need to describe the stories (although they're all very slight in terms of plot and I'd end up giving more spoilers than I normally like to give). These are traditional tales of hauntings and premonition. They're all told in very a formal, and arguably quite dated, style. I certainly didn't get chills down my spine from any of them.

However groundbreaking or scary they were at the time, they feel quite cliched and predictable now. That's not to say that they're not worth reading, they certainly are. The stories have hung around for a reason.

The packaging and binding of the books is absolutely top notch and these are perfect stocking fillers for next year if you know someone who loves their old school ghost stories.

I know it's a me problem that I didn't find them more than mildly creepy. 

Number 103- All My Precious Madness- Mark Bowles

 

Quick bit of housekeeping, need to post the last few books from last year. Starting with this-

From that minimalist cover, regular readers of this blog will know this  is a Galley Beggar Press book.

This is Bowles's first novel and I have to say he knows how to string a sentence together.  Whether he knows how to plot a novel is up for question.

In this book, the narrator rails against modern society and all the ills he perceives.  We follow him back and forward through his life in a series of flashbacks and digressions. He becomes more and more annoyed by a particular man he sees as being the symbol of all that's wrong until he snaps and takes violent action.

It's frequently very funny and he does make some valid points. But it is a bit rambly and didn't always hold my interest. 

The final section was certainly the most compulsive in the book.

It's beautifully written, as are all GBP books, but this one didn't completely hit the mark for me. 

6/10 - less ramble, more plot please.