Number 12 - The Way Of the Worm - Ramsey Campbell

 

This month, I'm continuing, or in this case finishing, series I've been reading over the last two years.

This is the concluding part of Ramsey Campbell's Brichester mythos trilogy. Dominic Sheldrake, narrator of the first two books (The Searching Dead and Born to the Dark) is getting on in years.  Thirty years have passed since the events of BTTD and Dominic's son Toby is married with a daughter of his own.

Toby and his wife and daughter have recently become involved with a new (old) church in the city with all too familiar management.  The Nobles are back and their plans closer to completion than ever. Is there anything Dominic can do to prevent the approach of a cosmic horror?

No one writes paranoia quite the same way as Ramsey Campbell. His characters sense the horrors as often as they see them outright. They question what their own eyes and ears are telling them. The shadows contain half glimpsed visions, things that shouldn't exist. 

This builds to an unsettling sense of wrongness that is far more scary than any number of descriptions of dismemberment in medical detail that pass for horror in many other books in the genre.

The final chapters of this book drop the uncertainty into a definiteness that is scarier still. The paranoia wasn't paranoia. He gives us a nightmare vision that may well be the scariest sequence he's ever written.

This is a fine conclusion to an ambitious and frightening trilogy. The build up between the three books, and escalating stakes are deftly handled. The characters develop believably between the volumes. The time gaps between the volumes mean we've met Dominic and friends (and enemies) from childhood to old age. This is an unusual gambit which adds another layer of interest to the story.

If you like your horror to be cosmic and paranoid, there are very few writers to match Ramsey and this trilogy is one of his greatest achievements.

It's available direct from The PS Publishing website if you don't want to give your money to Mr Bezos.

Number 55 - Roth-Steyr - Simon Bestwick

 

I needed something to wash the bad taste of the Douglas warner book out of my mouth, so a quick cheat read from the ever-reliable Mr. Simon Bestwick was in order.

It follows the story of Valerie Varden, a pathology lab worker in a hospital in Manchester with a secret past.  When a pair of bodies, murdered with an unusual gun, show up on her slab, she has to confront the dark secrets she's hiding from her girlfriend, whilst facing off against dangerous enemies from her much longer past than anyone knows about.

Things take a turn for the weird in this book on about page 5 when it's revealed that she pre=dates the first world war. Indeed, she was an Austrian countess in the first part of her life.

There follows a winding tale of revolutions and revolutionaries and eternal soldiers (till you kill them).

I have to say, I didn't enjoy this one as much as his other books. Whilst the central story is excellent, and the modern-day sequences are tense and exciting, there are parts of the backstory that feel like so much info-dump about the politics of WWI era Austria which didn't feel completely necessary to the storyline.  This info-dump slowed the mid-section of the story down quite considerably for me. It's clear that he finds the politics of 1910s/20s Europe to be endlessly fascinating, but it felt a bit like a history lecture for a few pages rather than a tense thriller. 

Other than that, the book is actually great success.  The trip into cosmic horror close to the end is one of Simon's most effective horror sequences. Val is a mostly intriguing narrator, a complex and sympathetically drawn protagonist, and I didn't want anything bad to happen to her, which says something. 

Apparently there is a sequel in the works, and I will happily be reading that too. 

This book can be ordered from Black Shuck Books - order it direct so Bezos doesn't get a share of your hard-earned cash.

Number 50 - The Hollows - Daniel Church

 

This was a NetGalley read provided by the publisher for a fair and honest review.

Daniel Church is a new name in the horror scene and, with luck, it's going to be a big name. He certainly deserves it.

This book is a thrill ride of a horror novel. It starts with the local cop, Ellie, checking into the discovery of a frozen corpse on a hillside on the outskirts of her village.

The dead man is Tony Harper, a local drunk and troublemaker from a particularly nasty family of criminals, responsible for the majority of crime in the village. 

What Ellie doesn't know is that this is just the first of many.  As the winter storm moves in to cut the village off from civilisation, creatures are rising from the barrows beneath the hills to wreak havoc and pave the way for something else.

Church manages to keep the action moving at a cracking pace throughout, with minor pauses to allow the reader a welcome breath or two of relief, before the stakes are raised once more and the action begins again at an even more frenetic pace.

I could easily see this being adapted into one hell of a movie.  It's got everything you need, a cut off location under siege, human villains who are as nasty as the monsters, genuinely scary creatures ripping the townsfolk to shreds,  enough tension to build a dozen suspension bridges and enough action to keep the most jaded fan excited.

It's all written in an easy, unpretentious style. The lead characters are well drawn, even if some of the supporting cast come across as rough sketches.  There were a couple of times when I wondered about the decisions being made, but it's human nature not to get everything right first time, and this book is about a high pressure situation. Mistakes will be made.

The way he manages to up the stakes even more, just when you think the threat is as extreme as it's going to get is something to be applauded.

This is high octane entertainment with a walloping side order of gruesome nastiness and sheer terror. 

When it comes out in the shops, you need to buy it to experience it for yourself.

Number 40 - Born To The Dark - Ramsey Campbell

 The second book in Ramsey's Bricester Mythos trilogy and the follow up to The Searching Dead (which I wrote up here in February last year if you want to look up my thoughts on that volume)

Firstly, it has to be said that PS Publishing did an amazing job with these books, and Les Edwards (the cover artist and a bit of a legend in the horror field) is as great and eye-catching an artist as he ever was.

The story picks  up in the 80s, 30 years after the events of the Searching Dead.  Dominic Sheldrake is now a married university lecturer with a child of his own. He teaches film study, which allows Ramsey to ruminate on some of his favourite films and their meanings in the course of the book.

In the opening chapter he meets up briefly with Jim and Bobby, his friends from the first book for a long delayed reunion.  This is used to give a slightly clumsy recap of the first book as well as reintroducing us to the cast.

Unfortunately, in the political discussion that ensues in chapter one, we find that Dom is now a poster boy for Thatcherism, which made me dislike him quite intensely. I hope this is done to inject a feel of the 80's rather than further self insertion of the author into the text.

When he returns home to his wife and child (Lesley and Toby even though the blurb on the inside cover names his wife as Claudine who is actually one of Toby's friends). We find out that Toby suffers from seizures in his sleep and they've just been referred to a facility called Safe to Sleep. 

Of course, all is not well at safe to Sleep, and Dominic soon finds himself fighting to reveal the truth about the facility to his loved ones or anyone who will listen. The facility is run by Christian Noble, Dominic's ex-teacher, and the cult leader Dom faced in the first book. What is the Noble family doing in the clinic?  Can Dom do anything to fight?

The sense of paranoia that develops once the plot starts gathering momentum is masterfully done. How can he fight this evil if no one, including his nearest and dearest, believes a word he says?

It's all written in Ramsey's unmistakable style.  There's something insidious in the prose that slowly nibbles away at your sense of reality while reading a Ramsey Campbell novel. This one is no exception. despite my initial dislike of Dom in the early chapters, I soon sympathised with him and wanted to see him persuade the people around him what was really happening.

One of my pet hates in horror is when everyone just accepts what's happening without a problem. This book certainly doesn't suffer from that. It derives probably half the horror from the fact that only Dom knows what's happening and he just can't make anyone believe him.

It's not a perfect book. The opening chapter was a bit clumsy, and despite the number of times we're told Toby is advanced for his age, he never seemed to speak realistically as a 5 year old child. It was a damned good read nonetheless and those are minor quibbles.  

I have book 3 on my shelves, pulsating and calling out to be read. 

It shall wait it's turn.

Number 9 - Plunge - Joe Hill & Stuart Immonen

 Now this was good fun.

This is a throwback to all the old 80s horror movies, with some lovecraftian demons and the fate of the world at stake thrown in for good measure.

Mining ship The Derleth (see what he did there) vanishes in the early 80s.  Decades later the distress beacon starts sending out flares and salvage ship the McReady (See what he did there? if not, go watch The Thing) is on the case.

When they get there, they find the derleth has run aground and the crew may or may not be dead. Whatever they are, they're still up and about and talking to, and killing, the McReady's crew.

The artwork is amazingly good. The script is as god as anything else Joe Hill has written.  The aple certainly didn't fall far from the tree in this family.

There are a whole bunch of throwbacks to 80s horror,  the names of the ships, various crew member names etc.  It's going to be wortth a second read to pick up on more easter eggs.

It's surreal, it's gory, it's completely bonkers and a great little cheat read. There's not much else to say about it.  There's no deep hidden meanings or messages - unless try not to let Cthulu out is enough - and I wuldn't call that a particularly hidden message.

But let's go with that - DON'T LET CTHULU GO FREE! BAD IDEA.

Number 55 - The Book Club - Alan Baxter

And another prose cheat read - you can tell I'd tremporarily run out of Walking dead volumes last week.

If you take a look back to the early months of this year, you will see that I was very much impressed with The Roo -also by Alan Baxter - which was a balls to the wall creature feature about a demonic killer 9 foot kangaroo.

This is a different kettle of fish entirely.

Jason Wilkes's wife never returned from her book club on Wednesday night. The only contact Jason has with the club says she left at the normal time.  The police aren't doing their job fast enough for Jason, indeed they seem to suspect him in her disappearance, so he starts investigating for himself.

It's not long before he discovers that books were not the main focus of her Wednesday meetings.  The truth is far less mundane than that.

Whereas The Roo was very broad, written with tongue firmly planted in the cheek, this is a tight little thriller.  Jason's plight is realistically portrayed  (until the otherworldly elements become apparent) and he's a deeply sympathetic central character for us.  We really hope that he's going to get his wife back from whereever she's gone.

The supernatural elements are introduced well enough that we keep our suspension of disbelief perfectly willingly.

At a shade over 100 pages, this is a fast paced story that covers a hell of a lot in between the covers.  I don't want to say where the story winds up - spoilers-  but it's unexpected, scary and deeply weird.

Another excellent novella from Mr Baxter.  I really do need to find some more of his work.  The differences between this and The Roo show him to be a massively talented and versatile writer, capable of turning his hand to vastly disparate styles.

This is available through the PS Publishing website.

easy 8/10