Number 30- Pictures of You- Josh Malerman

 

Another ARC- this one of my most anticipated book of the year. I've been hugely lucky to be sent a copy of this and many many thanks indeed.

And check out my beautiful bookmark I'm using at the moment.

As usual from Josh Malerman, this is nothing like anything else he's written.

Emily and Jack are a young couple a few months into their relationship.  After a sublime night out in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan, Emily wakes up in strange bed, in a strange room, with a strange woman watching her through a picture frame. She is going to be the subject of this woman's art whether she wants to be or not.

The blurb calls this a Hitchcockian thriller and I cant think of a more appropriate description. This perfectly captures that atmosphere, with the steady build of tension on every new revelation.  The multiple storylines revolving around each other, and the well placed shocks are a masterpiece of suspense writing.

Not only does this work brilliantly well as a tense thriller, it's also a meditation on the nature of art itself. What is art and why do we need it in our lives? How far can an artist go to produce the perfect work?

I think we can probably agree that the antagonist is taking things a sight too far.

If I was forced to pick any fault with this, one of the parallel storylines does seem to be noticeably longer than the other by the point at which they intersect, but that's a minor issue. I was hooked from the first chapter and fairly raced through this book.

I mentioned in my review of Watching Evil Dead that there were shades of Bradbury in his prose in that book.  Those shades are here as well, fleshed out in more vivid colour.  If Bradbury and Hitchcock got together to write a mystery thriller about art induced insanity, the result wouldn't be much different from this.

I love how Josh writes such different material every time.  It really does make him one of the most exciting writers in the horror field today. This one feels old fashioned but completely modern at the same time. 

Number 29- Bad Things Happen Here- Mark Morris

 

As you can see from the picture , this is a review copy of the new Mark Morris novel, due out some time next month. 

Mark Morris is one of those writers who deserves to be a household name. His novels are consistently excellent and there are a lot of them.

This one is no exception.

A familiar set-up, 6 students meet with an evil force.  Bad things happen, they separate. Years later, the evil returns and starts trying to pick them off.  Can they team up and defeat the evil forces before it's too late?

The set up may be familiar but the execution is far from generic. The story jumps between the five survivors of their student days (this isn't a spoiler, it's on the back cover) as their lives are slowly torn apart by a mysterious force.

They don't instantly work out what's going on and get in touch which is the usual in this set up. Morris is a much better writer than that. The lucky ones doubt their own sanity as cracks appear in their very well drawn day to day existences. The others start to crack themselves. Their reactions to the events surrounding them seem real and grounded and completely believable. 

Morris is definitely channeling his inner Ramsey Campbell in this novel and creates some truly nightmarish sequences. This is one of the most atmospheric books I've read in a long while. It's a great example of how horror doesn't need to be blood soaked and violent.  The psychological impact is far greater than endless descriptions of gore would have been.

This is out next month and I recommend it to anyone who like character based, creepy as hell horror. 

Number 28- Polaris- Timothy Brown

Another cheat read- this time from the reliable stable that is PS Publishing.

I've never heard of Timothy Brown and I think this book was sent as part of one of their cut price bundles I ordered a while back. Science fiction isn't my genre of choice but then I find books like this and I realise it's not all Cowboys and Indians in space.

IN 2074. an old man sets out on a road trip through Death Valley in his highly advanced computerised car, complete with a robot drone "Fetch Unit" that does anything the car needs to do that would need hands- including processing food for the old man in the front seat to eat. 

What seem like inconsistencies in the story early on, quickly become important clues into what is happening.

This is a beautifully written and surprising little novella. You can almost feel the heat of the desert baking off the pages.

There's tragedy and comedy, and some hugely surprising plot turns. To say much more would be pointless as I think this is a book you need to go into pretty much blind.

If you can get hold of a copy, I highly recommend it.

Number 27- Blood On Snow- Jo Nesbo

         

A quick cheat read, and my first Jo Nesbo book.

Olav is a contract killer for a local crime lord- your classic killer with a conscience. He's contracted to kill his boss's wife because she's having an affair. However, he goes against those orders when he falls for her himself, and soon finds himself on the run with her, trying to survive the attentions of his now ex-boss and protect his new lover.

Although it sounds a bit cliched (and admittedly it is), this is an exciting and twist filled little thriller.

I really liked the characters, who rose above the stereotypes.  Nesbo's prose style (Neil Smith the translator's prose style) is classy and easily readable.

I'm normally good at seeing plot twists, but missed them in this book, which has to be a compliment.  The misdirection was performed admirably.

It packs a lot of action into its 180 pages. I am looking forward to my first full length Nesbo novel.

Number 26- We Are Always Tender With Our Dead- Eric LaRocca

 

Last year I read his short collection Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and dropped hints to all friends and family to buy me LaRocca books for Christmas, and they did.  this is one of them.

Eric gives good title on most of his books, and this is no exception. This is part one of a new trilogy set in the town of Burnt Sparrow.

Even by the standards of horror towns, Burnt Sparrow is a strange place. It's layered with strange rituals and traditions, not many of which are explained, they just add to the feeling of desperate unease that soaks through the pages of this book.

Rupert Cromwell has lived all 17 years of his life in Burnt Sparrow. When a tragedy strikes in the town leaving dozens of corpses in the streets, Rupert's father takes on the job of taking care of the bodies, and he drags Rupert along for the gruesome task as well.

Meanwhile, the perpetrators are captured and the town elders are persuaded into a cruel and unusual method of punishment.

The supernatural elements in the story are as unexplained as the traditions of the town. There are no easy explanations to be found here.  We need to take this on trust and it's a journey I'm all in for continuing.

There is some very shocking content in this book, but none of it ever feels unnecessary. This might be his best book that I've read so far and I can't wait for the next installment. 

With 30 pages to go I had no idea where he was going to go to find an ending, and I have to say there is no way I would possibly have guessed at it. It's an almost perfect ending to a volume 1 of a trilogy.  It closes off enough plotlines to feel like the end of the book, and leaves enough open that I need to know NOW what happens next.

This was a concentrated exercise in strangeness, unpleasantness and atmosphere. It's certainly a book that has lingered since I finished it last week and I think it's going to stick in my head for some time more.

Number 25- Feeding Time- Adam Biles

 

My first exposure to Adam Biles was the rather brilliant Beasts of England, a modern day version/update/sequel of/to George Orwell's Animal Farm. That is still one of my favourite books of the past several years.

This is his debut novel- also available from Galley Beggar Press. It's definitely one of the Press's first releases too, considering how short the list of names of the GBP buddies is at the end of the book.

I've been meaning to read this since I read Beasts of England. Indeed I bought it immediately after finishing that book. Has it been worth the wait?

This one is set more in the real world and is about a revolution in an absolutely horrific old folks home.

Dot is a new resident. She's just about given up on living since her husband contracted dementia and she could no longer look after him. Ruggles is convinced he's a wartime hero from the Boy's Own Adventure books he reads constantly. The other residents are in varying stages of waiting for death. The entire staff are either incompetent, insane, sadistic, or all three. 

This is not a nice place and, as you might have guessed, and, if it was real, would be closed in a week. That's probably one of the biggest issues with this book. despite being set in the real world, the setting is unrealistically grim. There's a line in there about it being somehow exempt from inspection to cover that, but it doesn't really hold water.

This was my choice this month for my book group, and it did not go down well in the slightest, with only me and one other finishing it. The fact that I'm the youngest in that group by at least a decade may have something to do with it considering the subject matter.

Things get very gruesome in places, and there are a few extremely graphic sexual scenes. The writing is excellent throughout. but the story is not a pleasant one and doesn't offer much hope at any point. Ruggles's sections are written in the style of the old style Boy's Own Adventures and don't always reference the real world story, leaving the reader to infer what's actually happening. In short, this is a book that requires effort to read and understand, and you need the constitution of a concrete elephant to digest some of the detail.

I enjoyed it throughout, but even for me this is a one and done. I graded it 7/10 at the book group, and I think that's fair.  Everyone else there scored it 2 or 3.  Whoops.