Number 24- A Matter of Death and Life- Andrey Kurkov

 

Another cheat read to get the numbers up, and more proof that short books can be just as satisfying as epic volumes spanning thousands of pages.

The second book in a row starting with a suicidal man deciding to end it all.  This time, however, our narrator decides to go for something dramatic, and to ensure people remember him.  He hires a hit-man to murder him.

Unfortunately, he soon decides that he actually wants to live. This leaves him with a predicament since the contract killer is on his trail.

This didn't take any of the narrative paths I thought it would from the plot description, and I loved it for feeling so original despite being over 30 years old.

George Bird's translation from the Russian reads very nicely. There's a lovely sense of black humour running through the narrative along with some real tension in places.

This is my second Kurkov novel and I will be buying more. I noticed in the By the Same Author bit that there is a sequel to Death And The Penguin, and that is now high up on my to be bought list.

 

Number 23- Coup De Grace - Sofia Ajram

 

A cheat read to catch up after taking 2 weeks to read Catch 22. 

This was my first Ajram book and probably wont be my last.

Vick is a depressed man who has decided to end it all by drowning himself.  However, when he gets off the metro train, he finds he's not in the station he expected but a cavernous labyrinthine station with no exits.

I really loved this book and tore trough it in one day.  I felt for poor Vick and his increasingly strange predicament. 

The prose definitely reminded me of Eric LaRocca and Wretch that I read earlier this year. However, there is a truly original switch up in narrative style with about 40 pages to go that caught me completely by surprise and raised this book to another level completely.

The sequence in the elevator is one of the weirdest things I've read this year so far. 

I recommend this unreservedly.

Number 22- Catch 22- Joseph Heller

 

Continuing my occasional theme of matching the number to the book, here we are with one of the most famous books ever written.

Not many books introduce entire new phrases to the language, but this one obviously did.

Yossarian is a cowardly bombardier in WWII, and the book basically follows his misadventures over the course of a year as he tries to avoid flying any more missions.

It's packed full of odd characters and violence. 

It's frequently laugh out loud funny, but I struggled to get through it. It felt like I was being shouted at the whole time I was reading it and I could rarely manage long sessions reading it without feeling mentally drained.  Despite that I was actually enjoying it almost the whole time.

It's very much a product of its time.  The humour is occasionally extremely rapey and there's not a single sympathetic character in the book except for possibly Major Major Major Major who does the sensible thing and avoids contact with everyone as much as possible.

I'm glad I read it, but I do think it's a one and done, and I'm not really tempted to read the sequel.

Number 21- Reality Check- Dave McReery

 

The self publishing world is a bit of a crap shoot.  For every Adam Nevill with his beautifully produced carefully packaged work, you get 100 books like this which I wouldn't touch with a bargepole and refuse to post a cover like that on this page.

This one here falls somewhere in the middle.

It's clearly been edited nicely, it looks generic but work has clearly gone into it.

Some years after World War Three decimated the planet and all countries decided to work together, Ryan is a sim racer, he takes part in remote motorcycle races via virtual links. He's recruited by the military when a threat from beyond the stars is identified.  Can he tame his reckless nature to become a valuable tool in the fight against the alien invaders?

Of course he can.

This is decently written, but is as generic as that cover. Take a bit of Enders Game, a bit of Starship Troopers, a bit of Star wars, a bit of Trek and stir it all together and you'd get something like this.

It's not a bad book by any stretch.  It just doesn't do anything special with the very familiar ingredients.

Dave (the writer) is a nice guy though. This was his first novel and it's an achievement to put out something this readable. The rest of the book group I read this with were all won over by it, whether or not they were sci-fi fans. 

Number 20- Rose/House- Arkady Martine

 

Another cheat read for me to get my numbers up by the end of March (I finished this last week but life has been distracting me from doing the write ups).

I'd never heard of Arkady Martine before, this just sounded interesting, and it's short.

As per that Guardian quote, this is a smart mix of science fiction, gothic horror and crime.

Rose House is a house haunted by it's almost omniscient AI. Only the original architect Basit Deniau and Dr Selene Gisil, the woman he named in his will to inherit the house when he died a year ago, can enter the house.

Detective Maritza Smith is notified that there is a dead body in Rose House, probably murdered. How can she gain access, and can she solve the crime? 

This is an entertaining slice of fiction, a new take on the locked door mystery. In it's short number of pages it manages to pack in an awful lot of good ideas, all well executed. There are some genuinely creepy ideas, and even if the end payoff isn't the best, the trip to get there was satisfying enough that I don't really care.

Martine's writing is a real pleasure to read, stylised but still easily readable. The characters are believable and act as you would expect them to. The plot is convoluted but makes overall sense. I thought the AI was plausible enough to be quite disturbing.

I'd give this an easy 7/10. Recommended if you're looking for a quick read with a bit of bite.

Number 19- Engines Beneath Us- Malcolm Devlin

 

Another cheat read to get my numbers up last month. 

I bought this for two reasons, the length, and that intriguing cover. And the plot sounded offbeat enough to be interesting. Alright, that's three reasons.

I'd never heard of Devlin before, but I will be checking out to see if he has anything else I can get my grubby paws on.

This is how you do a story that's mysterious, and doesn't explain everything without making it feel like you have no idea what's happening (looking at you Murakami and Armfeld).

Rob is a boy living in The Crescent, a suburb of an unnamed city. The Crescent is where the people who work at the City Works live. They're not liked much outside of the Crescent for reasons that aren't stated, but we can guess at by the end of this short book.

The engines thrumming beneath the houses have been the soundtrack to Rob's entire life. When a new boy, Lee, moves onto the Crescent, an outsider in this strange close knit community, Rob starts to discover how odd his life has always been whether he knew it or not.

One of he things this succeeds amazingly well in is that it reverses the usual role of the outsider coming in to a strange subculture/society.  normally the outsider becomes the stand in for the audience and has everything explained to them. In this, Lee basically shows Rob how the world normally is and provides the catalyst for the story rather than the usual almost passive observer.

Devlin's prose is polished, spare and evocative. At no point in this book did it ever feel like Devlin couldn't answer the questions that abound in the story. He is in complete control of his narrative and revealing subtle glimpses into his world. I loved this unreservedly and read it in just two hours or so.

well worth seeking out a copy.