Number 47- Grace - A.M. Shine

 

My regular readers out there will know that I am a big fan of AM Shine, even if I do get frustrated with some of his endings.

This was a NetGalley review copy of his new book, due out in October. 

This time around the horror is on an isolated island off the coast of Ireland - the Isle of Croaghnakeela- henceforth referred to as IoC.  I'm not typing that out more than once.

The eponymous Grace runs a rare book shop on the Irish mainland.  When she receives a phone call from a Catholic priest (Father Richard) on the IoC to tell her that her birth mother has died and left her her house, she drops everything to travel over to find out about her past.  She was adopted as an infant and has never known about her birth family.

Of course, the island has more than its fair share of secrets, some of them deadly, and these were the reason that her mother gave her up. When she returns to the island, it allows an old evil to rise up once more, breaking the stalemate that has existed on the island for the past 30 years.

As usual with Shine, this is incredibly atmospheric and has a number of twists and turns in the plot.  I thought one of them was sprung from left field until I realised he'd been dropping hints the whole time and, actually, this was one of the best hidden in plain sight plot twists I've seen for a good long while.

The monster at the heart of the story is truly terrifying.  It appears that Irish folklore has a lot of untapped horror potential, and AM Shine is an expert at mining those seams.

This is the least predictable of his books so far.  Before the book is halfway through, just when I thought I knew what was coming, the narrative moved in a wholly unforeseeable direction and never looked back. The second half of this book barely lets up the tension.  Some of the set pieces are among the scariest bits of writing I've seen outside of an Adam Nevill novel.

At a brief 221 pages, this packs in more atmosphere than a lot of books three times the length. The picture he paints of the island is so intense you can feel the fog creeping around you as you read it. The islanders are all well drawn characters and we understand their flaws and their actions.  

With horror ranging from the deeply personal to almost cosmic, and a truly terrifying creature at the heart of it all, this is island horror at its best.   (Is island horror a separate subgenre?  If it isn't, it probably should be.)

An easy 8.5/10.  I will definitely be buying a physical copy when it is released properly.

Number 46- Daisy Jones and the Six- Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

After 200 pages of walls of text with no paragraph breaks in the last book I read, the format of this book was a blessed relief.

This is written as snipets from interviews pieced together into a coherent story about the rise and fall of a Fleetwood Mac style rock band in the 60s and 70s.

Like a talking heads style documentary, the character name would be followed by mostly single paragraphs talking about the events under discussion at the time. Occasionally, someone would have a whole page talking about how they felt or why they did something, but it was rare.  There were frequent interjections of single short sentences.

The plot is slim. It's a rock and roll memoir from the POV of all the band members, management and their significant others. We know from the start that this is going to be a rise and fall story and the reasons for the fall are all too visible in the rise.

I thought this was a real page turner.  I read the whole thing in a matter of three days or so. It's fast paced, brilliantly evocative of the era and totally convincing.

The contradictory voices are a great way of suggesting deeper stories hidden below the surface and the character's truths hidden somewhere between what they actually say.

Daisy and Billy are a great pair of central characters and, as much as I hate will-they-won't-they narratives normally, I was invested in this one.

This is also the first time I've been able to listen to the soundtrack of a book as i read it.  The music from the TV series was released as the Aurora album that we read about. It's noticeable that the lyrics are quite different in the actual songs but I really quite enjoyed it. I normally like heavier fare, but this was a genuinely good album.  I probably need to watch the tv show now to see if the changes for tv explain the different emphasis in the lyrics.

Highly recommended.

Number 45- Satantango - Lazlo Krasznahorkai

 

This was a DNF for several reasons.

The main one is that after 200 pages I still had no inkling of any type of story and there has been at most 500 sentences in all those pages.  Very few pages had more than three very long run on sentences.

There were no paragraph breaks, just massive walls of text on every page. It was wearying to try to read it.

I never realised how much paragraphs improve the reading experience.  I can thank this book for that insight but not much more.

The plot seemed to centre around a bunch of very similar characters in a village and someone they thought was dead returning to said village for reasons too buried in walls of text to be interesting.

Apparently there is a film of this book that's 8 hours long with verrrrrryyyyyy long sloooowwww shots.  that's exactly what this felt like.

Not a fan.

Number 44- Fever Beach- Carl Hiaasen

 

Florida's greatest satirist returns with one of his most polemical novels to date. I can't imagine any Trump supporters reading this and enjoying it.  The depiction of the MAGA crowd is somewhat less than complimentary. 

Twilly Spree, last seen rampaging the everglades with Skink, dishing out justice to those who defile the environment, is back.  This time he meets the beautiful Viva Morales and soon finds himself embroiled in a plot involving corrupt congressman, a white supremacist militia group who would struggle to find three brain cells in their entire membership, a fake charity exploiting children, and a pair of rich zealots funding the whole shebang.

Dale Figgo, leader of the Strokers for liberty, is one of the funniest creations in Hiaasen's entire catalogue. When I saw the name of his white supremacist group, I thought strokers must mean something different in American slang.  But it doesn't.  Figgo was kicked out of the Proud Boys for a feces related incident on January 6 and formed his group as a competitor. 

Hysterically, the Proud Boys genuinely have rules preventing their members from pleasuring their own members. In Figgo's group, his soldiers can play with their privates all they want, he even provides them with sex toys he steals from his day job. 

This book is not what you would call subtle.

What I would call it is brilliantly funny. I'm guessing that the congressman is a very easy to recognise interpretation of a genuine congressman if you know more about US politics than I do, so i am probably missing out on a few jokes, but it doesn't matter. Clure Boyette is one of the most memorable characters in the book.  His utter incompetence is rivalled only by Dale Figgo. 

Hiaasen's targets in this book are very easy to hit, but he scores bullseyes with every shot.  There is a lot of low hanging fruit here that Hiaasen has plucked and served as a gourmet meal. I don't normally find a book entertaining on the basis that it will make a lot of people angry, but this will annoy all the people that deserve to be annoyed. 

And that pleases me immensely.  It's the gravy on top of a veritable feast of top class comedy writing. Basically, if you take this book personally and feel offended by it, you probably are the intended object of the joke. 

This is easily the best thing he's written for a few years. Go out and buy it. 

Number 43- Coyotes Vol 2- Lewis & Yarsky

 

The second volume of this unusual feminist take on the werewolf legend.

I actually found this much more entertaining than volume 1.  Packed full of violence rendered in gorgeous artwork, combined with great thoughtful storytelling.

This manages to hammer home its messages without ever feeling preachy about it. 

So, thought provoking, beautiful to look at and entertaining, what else do you need from a graphic novel.

Number 42- Starship Titanic- Terry Jones

Book 42 as ever has to be Hitchhikers related. 

This is one of the few that I'd not already read.  Based on one line from HHTTG (about the Starship Titanic undergoing a Sudden Massive Existence Failure (SMEF) a mere ten minutes out of space dock), Douglas Adams took the idea and used it for a computer game.  The novel of the game was handed over to Monty Python's very own Terry Jones.

So story by Adams, words by Jones, should be a recipe for success...

Sadly, the most remarkable thing about this book is that it was written entirely in the nude. This was the condition Jones made when he was offered the writing task.

It starts extremely well.  We are introduced to a cast of aliens involved in the building of the ship, including the genius architect behind the design. Also the corrupt politicians who've been cutting corners and planning an insurance job.

The problem with the book starts once the ship has suffered the SMEF. At this point the action switched to Earth and a cast of tedious humans.  The Starship suddenly appears in the atmosphere and crashes into a building they've just bought and they're taken on board as passengers while the genius architect is left on Earth. This is a third of the way through the book and a sudden complete change of cast.  A couple of the original characters pop up but not for a long while.

The biggest problem with this book is that it isn't really all that funny. It also doesn't fit in with the HHTTG universe since the Babel Fish isn't a thing and translation from alien to human is done through the ship's computers. The humour is very broad and nowhere near as clever as Adams's writing. 

It's very readable.  I can't say I was ever bored reading it, but it never rose to the ranks of classic like the original series.  It also falls into the same trap as many novelisations of games, where the characters keep getting moved onto side quests before returning to the main plot.

I think this one is for completists only.

Number 41- Memoriae- SP Somtow

 

At long last, the fourth book in Somtow's remarkable trilogy about the real life slave boy who became Empress of Rome under  Emperor Nero (quite literally).

Book 3 finished with Nero and Sporus returning to Rome after their eventful trip to Greece. Nero has lost support of the Senate and his time as Emperor is now limited.

Is there anything Sporus can do to help himself in the Post-Nero Rome?  From the entire structure of these books, with Sporus telling his story to his make up artist before being sent into the Coliseum to be viciously murdered, we know the answer is probably a resounding No, but this book manages to remain compulsive as it moves to the inevitable conclusion.

The research that's gone into this series feels meticulous, but rather than feeling like info-dump which can be a danger, it feels like atmospheric world-building. The city of Rome is so well portrayed you can almost smell it.  

The complex politics of the Senate are described in an easily accessible and understandable way.  

It's sad to see the nd of this series, and that's always a sign of a good book. It's impossible to feel anything but sympathy for Sporus.  He really has had a tragic existence, even if he was revered as a Goddess at one point.

A fitting end to a great series. 

Number 40- BRZRKR vol 2- Keanu Reeves et al

 

More of Keanu Reeves imagining himself as an eternal assassin with more blood lust than the entire Mongol hordes.

The artwork is pretty damned good and suits the megaviolence of the story.

Everything I said about volume one still applies here.  From reading China Mieville's novelisation of this series, I have a good idea where it's headed and I'm looking forward to continuing.

Number 39- A Song for Quiet- Cassandra Khaw

 

This is the follow up to Hammers On Bone which I read last year and greatly enjoyed.

This one is even better. 

Deacon James is a blues musician travelling across America in search of gigs. He also has something inside him that could be very dangerous indeed.  He produces music that can change the world around him and not for the better, music that produces visions of empty and melting faces, gaping mouths and grasping tendrils rising from the pits of some hell dimension.

He's being followed by an apparent madman called Jim Persons- who we the reader will recognise as the narrator of Hammers and Bone.

Will Jim be able to help Deacon and maybe even save the world as we know it?

The way Khaw writes about his music is almost physical.  I could almost hear the discordant melodies Deacon was playing. His visions were equally evocative and nightmarish.

I raced through this book in one day, partly because it's short, but mainly because Khaw's prose grabs you by the throat and rags you at breakneck pace through to the end of the story. This is almost a flawless novella.  I am in the process of gathering all her back catalogue into my collection, and enjoying every minute of it.  I might give Nothing but Blackened Teeth a reread to see if I enjoy it more now I'm more used to Khaw's writing style.

Number 38- Miss Benson's Beetle- Rachel Joyce

 

Talk about a change of pace.  From the dark gritty historical horror of Otessa Moshfegh, to the whimsical ramblings of Rachel Joyce

When my book group suggested this book I was convinced I was going to hate it. The reviews on the back cover using all the phrases that make my stomach churn in entirely the wrong way.  this sounded like the literary equivalent of a diabetic coma.

However, once I started reading it, I found it an object lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

Miss Benson is a teacher in 1950s England.  When she catches her class passing around a distinctly uncomplimentary picture of her, she experiences a moment of clarity about how much she hates her job and her life, and she walks out on it all to try to fulfil a childhood ambition- to find an almost legendary golden beetle in the remotest part of the remote land of New Caledonia on the opposite end of the world. 

She advertises for a companion to come with her on the journey, but due to circumstances, takes the distinctly unpromising Enid Pretty with her.  Enid is everything Marjorie Benson isn't. At first they clash, but as is the way in these things, they find unexpected depths of friendship on their voyage of mutual self discovery.

Normally this is the type of thing to make my eyes roll far enough to see the back of my own skull and dislocate the optic nerve into the bargain. But Joyce's writing is sublime.  She has a lovely turn of phrase and I can only describe this book as delightful.  I've never used that word to describe a book before, but it's easily the best I can think of for this one.

There is a dark(ish) heart to the story.  Miss Benson has sad reasons for being so obsessed with beetles, while Miss Pretty has a dark secret of her own. Also, Miss Benson is being followed by an ex-soldier with PTSD and a dangerous obsession of his own after Marjorie refused his application for the role of her companion. The ending of the book is a genuine emotional rollercoaster.

This is an easy contender for the best book of the year so far.  I never expected that when I picked it up and read the reviews on the back cover. I am now going to have to add her back catalogue to my ever expanding TBR pile.

Number 37- McGlue - Otessa Moshfegh

It's 1851 and McGlue wakes up from an alcoholic bender in the brig of a cargo ship.  He's told he murdered his friend and colleague (and possibly much more) Johnson.  He has no recollection of having done so because of his drinking problem.

With enforced sobriety, McGlue finds himself reliving the worst parts of his history. He needs a drink more than anything to stop the stream of memory.

This is another historical almost horror novel from the author of Lapvona which so impressed me last year. I'm not sure this one is quite as successful.  It didn't have the same visceral impact on me that Lapvona did.

It's still an excellent read and I fully understand how it was shortlisted for the Booker in 2016. Moshfegh is an unusual writer and she very successfully manages to portray all McGlue's internal conflicts through the fractured nature of the writing.

She makes no attempt to sanitise 19th century attitudes for a 21st century audience, so some readers will take offence to some content in this book.  However, it would be a much lesser book if she  had tried to do so, and the character would have felt much less realised.

It's not her masterpiece- so far I think that's Lapvona- but an excellent character study of a deeply flawed person in a convincing historical context. A strong stomach is required at times, so don't say I didn't warn you.

Number 36- Cat Lover- Dan Spencer

No prizes to regular readers of this blog as to why I bought this book. Anything with a cute kitty on the cover :) 

Also it sounded more than a little intriguing. From the blurb, a woman living alone with her cat suddenly brings a man into the house.  The cat is not happy and plans to get rid of the intruder.

From the book itself, the spirit of a dead ex boyfriend sort of possesses the cat but doesn't have complete control.  He does indeed want to get rid of the new man in his woman's life, but, being a cat, can't actually do much about it. 

This is an interesting book. The concept is novel and the prose is just off kilter enough to still be readable and weird at the same time.

There are some odd narrative choices.  The switch to first person in the cat chapters in the third act was jarring and made very little sense till nearly the end.

I'm not 100% sure I liked it.  I kind of did, but it didn't quite deliver on the promise of the plot description.  It took itself entirely seriously whilst I was expecting some type of black comedy. 

I did like the prose. Clarity was not always the strong point though.  Once again in this book I found myself rereading passages, but mainly to try to work out what had just happened this time around. The ending was a bit of an anticlimax. 

Would I read a Dan Spencer novel again if he writes another?  Probably out of morbid curiosity, but it wouldn't be top of the TBR pile.

Number 35- Thornhedge- T Kingfisher

 

I read a Kingfisher novel last year and thought it was fairly good.  Enough to encourage me to read another.  This one has raised the bar considerably. Thanks to this one, she is now in my must read and collect everything she's written list of authors.

This is a dark take on a traditional fairytale. A princess sleeps in a tower and has done for hundreds of years.  When a handsome prince arrives on a quest to find the castle, now hidden behind a huge hedge of thorns as large as swords, will the curse be lifted? Not if Toadling, the changeling spirit guardian of the tower has anything to do with it.

This is of course Sleeping Beauty with a twist.  The princess should not under any circumstance be woken, she's the bad guy this time around and the sleeping curse is there to contain her.

Kingfisher truly excels in this book.  I raced through it in a day.  It's gorgeously well written and there were passages I read multiple times because of the lushness of her language.

Toadling is a fabulous creation, an utterly original character with a bizarre set of abilities which may or may not be able to help her with her assigned task.

I don't think I could have loved this book more. Kingfisher is attending an event at my local Waterstones in the very near future.  I foresee a spending spree after payday for that one.

Number 34 - Sweet tooth the Return- Jeff Lemire

 

Given the ending of the original Sweet Tooth series, I was surprised to discover that there was a sequel.

I really enjoyed this despite the fact that the premise directly contradicts the ending of the original series.

Lemire manages to not just replicate the beats from the original series, and gives us something new and original with the characters.  For that I'll let him off with the fact that the entire situation is impossible inside his own universe that he created.

The artwork is an improvement on the first books and Lemire's writing is every bit as convoluted and unpredictable as I've come to expect.  It might be a cash in on the Sweet Tooth name, but it's a good one.  

Number 33- Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury

 

Quite simply I think this is one of the most important and prescient novels of the 20th Century. This isn't the copy that I read, but it is one of the four editions I own of this book. It's somewhat fragile these days (it is more than 70 years old after all)

It's the not too distant future and ignorance is king. Entertainment is delivered through wall sized interactive tv screens. Independent thought is highly discouraged and reading is banned.

Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books when they are found in people's houses. He enjoys it. But what if he was to pick up a book himself and take it home?

From the first iconic line- "It was a pleasure to Burn"- onwards, this is a poetic and urgent plea against the dangers of ignorance, against the deliberate dumbing down of society.  I don't think this book has ever been more topical.

It's not a perfect novel. The timeframe seems a little off.  No one remembers when firemen were the people that stopped houses from burning, yet one of the characters at least used to teach literature in his dim and distant past. The dialogue is not always convincing. Most people in the book will monologue in very similar voices.

However, despite these flaws this is an essential novel and one I've read probably a dozen times now and it gets more scary every time I read it.  It's the only constant fixture in the 10 to 15 books or so that form my top 3 of all time.

 I find Bradbury's prose to be magical.  he's on top form in this book, and the writing manages that rare trick of combining beauty with a great story. The monologues that the characters come out with might all sound like the same voice, but they're telling us truths about the importance of literature.  He quite rightly points out that even with books, the evils of society exist, but points out that books and reading provide a level of protection that we can't afford to lose. 

There is power in his writing, and the mechanical house still haunts my nightmares as one of the most terrifying monsters ever committed to paper. The closing chapters manage to ratchet the tension to almost unbearable levels.

This is a book I believe everyone should read. So go out and read it. Or stay in and read it. But read it.

Spoiler

True story regarding this book

There was one day I was reading it, sitting in my 18th floor flat overlooking Manchester city centre.  I was close to the end, the section where the bombers fly over and release their payloads. Bradbury describes the collapse of the city. The next line of the book is "The sound of its death came after".  The second I read that line, there was an almighty bang, an explosion, and my windows rattled.  The first thought that went through my head was 'fuck me, this edition's got sound effects'.  I looked up and there was a plume of smoke rising over the city centre.  It was the day the IRA blew up Manchester and destroyed the Arndale centre.

Number 32- the Blunderer- Patricia Highsmith

 

Another reread from my teenage years. I wanted to be really clever and use the following plot description which you may recognise from my review for Wilt (indeed I would only have needed to change one letter. 

"Walt dreams of killing his overbearing wife.  When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death.  Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved."

Unfortunately, I picked the wrong Highsmith book.  The one where the lead character stages his wife's murder on the day she disappears for real is A Suspension of Mercy. So much for my mini themed read of the same storyline with vastly different treatment.

 

The Blunderer is a similar story of a man suspected of his wife's murder, but has a very different central plotline and no resemblance to the plot of Wilt in the slightest.

The book opens with a surprisingly brutal murder by Highsmith's standards, where a man follows the Greyhound bus his wife is riding, drags her off into the nearby bushes and beats her to death. 

Walt is going through marriage difficulties. They no longer love each other.  She has grown paranoid and suicidal. He has ceased to care about her. when he reads in the papers about the murder from the opening chapter, he follows the bus his wife was on with dreams of committing a copycat crime.  He's seen by several people at the rest stop, and drives home again. When his wife's battered body is found at the bottom of the cliff nearby, his lies to the police about his actions that night throw serious doubt on his innocence. When he crosses paths with the murderer from the book's opening, things get progressively worse.

One of the reviews on my copy of this book says "Highsmith writes about men like a spider writing about flies" and I can't think of a better description.

If you like characters who plan carefully and don't make mistakes, this is not the book for you.  The title should be a clue. Walt makes mistake after mistake.  He digs himself deeper and deeper into a world of pain. It's almost impossible to keep sympathy with him, but his story is compelling. The brutal cop chasing after both Walt and the murderer from the first chapter is more of a villain than the murderer. 

This is a chilling psychological thriller and one of my favourite of her books.  

Despite my mistaking the storyline, I'm really happy to have reread this one even if I didn't mean to. Her books are always densely written, full of psychological depth, and totally captivating.  Her word choice is always spot on.  The fraying of their relationship in the first few chapters is superbly and subtly portrayed. 

A masterclass in putting the reader directly in the heads of a cast of characters.  It's a train crash in slow motion almost.  As bad as things get, we're compelled to read on to see if it can possibly improve, or is the light at the end of the tunnel just a freight train about to mow everyone into bloody pulp on the tracks?

Number 31- Wilt- Tom Sharpe

 

A reread from my teenage years and I just have to say I was far too young when I first read this book.  

I remember thinking it was hysterically funny when I first read it, and that opinion has not changed on revisiting it 35 plus years later. 

Wilt dreams of killing his overbearing wife.  When she goes away on an unscheduled trip, he fakes her death.  Unfortunately. she fails to return from said trip, and the police get involved.

This is absolutely the funniest thing I've read in several years.  there were scenes I still remember from all those years ago. From the initial burial of the rubber sex doll to its eventual recovery, this is farce at its best.

Sharpe is/was a great writer and even a character as weak and worn down by life as Wilt is initially is eminently relatable. HIs journey of self discovery through the multiple indignities he's exposed to in the course of the story is a joy to read.

The side story of where his wife actually is- stuck on a barge in the Norfolk broads with an insane American lesbian and husband- is equally funny and leads to some of the funniest scenes in the book. 

Eva Wilt is a force of nature. Her character defies description. We can completely sympathise with Henry's dreams of ridding himself of her, but we still can understand how and why they're married.

It's always strange reading a book written and set in the early 80s.  When a restaurant is criticised by one of the charaters as being too expensive because they charge £0.95 for a prawn cocktail starter, it's now a culture shock.  When Wilt's salary of £3500 a year is enough for he and Eva to own their own rather large home in the suburbs and keep Eva in all her expensive hobbies, it really does drive home how much some things have changed.

Luckily, it's only the money talk that truly dates this book. Some people might say that some of the humour might not be considered de rigeur these days, but for the most part this has aged well and even the bits that some people would say haven't are still hysterical IMHO. 

This is a pitch perfect blend of satire (the internal workings of the college where Wilt teaches are brilliantly done) and bawdy farce. There is some complete filth in here (not explicit, but still filth) that I was far too young to be reading in the 80s, That makes me love it all the more that parents let me read this stuff.  As much as Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams helped formulate my sense of humour, Tom Sharpe definitely deserves a look in as another influence.

Number 30- the Buck Stops Here- Sean Seebach

 

This is the remaining book in the themed series started by Alan Baxter with the Roo.

This was the second one written, but due to the fact that they're all standalone novels and it doesn't matter what sequence they're read in, it's the final one I've bought and read.

It's probably not a surprise to learn that this one is about killer deer. Not just that, but killer Were-deers.  

When people start dying horribly in the town of Rockbridge, Sheriff Abigail Laine finds her peaceful life disturbed.  Normally she just has a couple of traffic tickets to write up in a typical week. Maybe dealing with the town drunk, nothing more.  Now she has an escalating number of bodies to investigate. And she knows the killer isn't fully human or animal.

This is a great fun read.  I loved the mention of the book that started this whole series when one of the characters is seen reading the Roo and Alan Baxter gets a big shout out.

The characters are fun and relatable. there are just the right number of Shreddies (tm) in the story and the deaths are suitable gory.

It manages the balance of keeping the plot silly enough to be funny but serious enough to actually build tension in the confrontations in the second half of the book.

This is the best of this mini series after the Roo.  It's a quick read with some not overdone social commentary built in. It's no contender for book of the year but if you want a simple fun book with zero pretentions, it's recommended. It does what it says on the tin and lives up to that cover.

Number 29- This House isn't Haunted but We Are- Stephen Howard

 

This was an impulse buy on the basis of that title, and the fact that it's very short.  Indeed I did finish it in just a couple of hours.

Simon and Priya have just moved to a dilapidated cottage on the North Yorkshire moors to try to renovate the house and their marriage.  Their young daughter has recently died in a tragic accident and their relationship is suffering as a result.

The third character in the book is the House itself. All three characters take turns narrating chapters.

This is a very clever take on the classic haunted house story. The chapters narrated by the House are told in an unusually effective second person POV. Simon and Priya sound different enough in their narrations that I have no complaints on that score.

My only quibble about this book is that the ending feels very rushed. Up until that point it was a well written and creepy tale of a couple dealing with extreme loss and the house that tries to fix them.  I would happily have read much more of this story if it existed.

There are shades of ghost story and cosmic horror in this small tale of personal grief and the need to be wanted. I will be keeping an eye out for more by Stephen Howard.  He is a talent to keep a sharp eye on.

Numbers 27 & 28- Sweet Tooth Books 2 & 3- Jeff Lemire

 

I'm playing a  bit of catch up here since I finished these about 2 weeks ago,

I read book one of this series late last year. This is one of several Jeff Lemire post apocalypse worlds and probably his most famous because of the Netflix series.

The basic set up is that hybrid children started being born, and at the same time a plague started wiping out regular fully human humanity.

We are following Gus- aka Sweet Tooth- who is part boy part deer.  In the first book, his father died of the Sick and he left his sheltered cabin in the woods. There he met and travelled with the Big Man who committed an act of complete betrayal.

Book 2 picks up immediately afterwards and delves into the Big Man's past, and the impact of the betrayal on poor Gus. We're also introduced to a brand new set of villains.

Book 3 becomes an emotional roller coaster as characters we've grown to love start leaving in distinctly unpleasant ways. We also learn more about the source of the issues facing the planet, and the scene is set for a final showdown.

I'm not ashamed to say that I was wiping tears away at the end of this series, something no graphic novel series has succeeded in doing to me since Locke and Key. This has a pitch perfect ending, bittersweet, and full of hope.  It also seems to negate any possible sequel, but I see that there is another book out called Sweet tooth The return... which I have of course ordered.

I'm still not 100% convinced by the artwork.  There are some amazingly well thought out tricks with layout etc and some undeniably beautiful pages, but Lemire's art is not as good for me as his writing. it's frequently quite ugly, which weirdly suits the story so what am I talking about? 

The first section of book three has a guest artist, for reasons explained in the afterword. It's probably some of the best art in the entire saga. 

I'm not sure if this has knocked Gideon Falls off the top of my list of best Lemire series, but it's close. the section in the Dam is brilliantly plotted. If I was to be exceptionally picky, I'd say that maybe the ending is quite similar to at least one of his other series. But this did come first, so I can't criticise its use in this case.

If you want an emotional rollercoaster, this is the series to read.

Number 26- Grendel- John Gardner

 

There are three principle reasons I chose this book- 1- that gorgeous cover, 2- the Marillion song, and 3- my cat is called Grendel. Not necessarily in that order of importance.

This book is actually the basis for the 17 minute long epic track by Marillion. If you've never heard it, I recommend it, I loved it enough to name my cat after it- my previous cat was called Balrog so I was pretty much continuing a theme. 

Grendel is the story of Beowulf told from the point of view of the monster. If you're not familiar with that, Beowulf is one of the oldest surviving written stories, an epic tale of Viking warriors getting torn to shreds by a vicious monster known as Grendel.

There's no attempt to make Grendel the hero of this story.  He is still a monster who kills for the sake of it. But the first person narration is almost enough to put me on his side.

He's a great literary creation. One of the oldest written monsters given depth and character at long last. I did find myself googling some of the human characters to see if they were invented for this book, but did all seem to be from the original story of Beowulf, although not painted quite so bravely.

It's all quite densely written and despite its brevity, still took me several days to get through.  But that's not a bad sign. it just means there's a lot to savour here. Gardner was one hell of a talent. This is poetic, brutal and quite beautiful in a weird ugly way.

If you're willing to put in the effort, this is a massively rewarding read. Highly recommended.

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.