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.