Number 29 - How to Love a Minotaur - Steven Sherrill

Ever since I first read about M (aka the Minotaur) on his cigarette break a long time more than I care to think about ago, I've rated Steven Sherrill as one of my favourite writers.

 A Minotaur takes a Cigarette Break (2003) gave us a whole new outlook on the famed half Man half Bull. He survived his fight with Theseus all those lillenia ago, struck some unnamed deal, and is now living in the redneck belt of America, working as a chef in a steakhouse.  That book takes us deep into the minutae of his everyday life and was a fascinating study of loneliness and the life of the outcast.

The follow up - The Minotaur takes his Own sweet Time - was almost as good. M had moved on and was working for a civil war reenactment company. The levels of surrealism were increased, the story slightly more focussed.

This third book hasn't even been published yet.  I'm very glad that the esteemed Mr Sherrill allowed me to be a beta reader for this novella.

It's much more episodic than the two previous books.  This is surprising as this is a novella compared to a full novel. The file I was sent still contains some of Steven Sherrill's notes to himself so it is very clearly still a work in progress.

However, despite the episodic nature and the author's notes, this is still a fabulaous piece of writing.  It deserves to be read in one long session for the full impact.  The poetry in the prose is as evedent as it ever has been in the minotaur books.

M has moved on again and is operating a corn dog concession stand, touring it around various festivals in the state. Some characters appear just the once, others flit in and out of the narrative, giving us a hook to follow the story through.  As in the previous novels, the minotaur is up front and centre stage for the entire story. Other than some asides about the foundation of the assorted festivals (ranging from easter based religious festivals with the most tasteless imaginable attractions to festivals that celebrate mooning passing Amtrak trains or the throwing of fish and typewriters...) the entire story is told from M's point of view.

He has more company this time.  As the title (and subtitle) suggests, he gets a reasonable amount of carnal action in this one. At every festival he attends there is some type of sexual encounter, whether in his head or in the reality of the page. He has had encounters in the first two novels, but in this it's pretty much the main thrust of the story (so to speak). There are places where the book is laugh out loud funny, others where it is strangely erotic, occasionally creepy, sometimes creepy and starngely erotic at the same time, and elsewhere it shocks - and shocks deeply. The ending weirded me out more than anything I've read in many many years.

Subtlety does not appear to be a strong point here - lascivious is a good word to describe some sequences, particularly when he's asked to take part in a movie. That isn't a bad thing though, not by any stretch of the imagination. And imagination certainly gets a good workout in this book. This whole sequence of novels is as close to unique as I can think of. 

Sherrill's writing has evolved over the past 15 years and the writing here is a strange hybrid between the first book and Joy PA (my absolute favourite of his works to date) - veering from the poetic style of TMTACB to the short sharp repetitions that made Joy PA as compulsive a read as it was.

I hope this book does see the light of day in print form. I really want to see the finished product.

Thank you for the honour of reading the WIP Mr Sherrill.

Number 28 - How the Marqis Got his Coat Back - Neil Gaiman

My latest cheat read.  Once again by Neil Gaiman, and once again a link in with one of his other books - in this case Neverwhere. I think I've read Neverwhere but I'm not entirely sure. It's well over a decade ago if I have. I know the concept is a fantastic landscape and magical characters living beneath and paralleling the real London.

I don't recall any detail from Neverwhere if I have actually read it, but that makes no difference to this book. The Marquis is a real gem of a character and it's virtually impossible not to warm to him very quickly. He's lost his favourite coat  and he sets off on a quest to find it across assorted dangerous territories beneath London. 

That's pretty much it for the plot. In lesser hands this would just be slighhtly over five dozen pages of silliness. To be honest, that is a fair description on this book, but it's so much more than that.  It's inspired silliness.  It has the feel of the best fairy tales you read as a child, but with an adult edge (not a darker edge in this case, but certainly an adult feel to the proceedings).

The assorted characters we meet along the way are by turns threatening and hilariously funny. What seems like a throwaway gag near the beginning becomes a genius solution to later problems.  This is a stunningly clever little book.

It's a very short book, so this is a very short review.

I picked the book up for a gobsmackingly expensive £!.99 in Waterstones the other day and it was worth every penny and more. Read and enjoy.

The ultimate accolade you can pay to a book.  I wanted it to be longer.

Number 27 - Warhead by Guy N Smith

Guy N Smith is a writer whose reputation precedes him.  He's legendary in the horror genre.  The garish covers of his novels were easy to spot back in the horror boom of the 80s.  With such amazing titles as Night of the Crabs, and the Sucking Pit (oxford comma deliberate there for clarification) and covers almost as tasteful as the one pictured above, you certainly had more than an inkling of what might be contained within. Quality control was not one of the noted stremgths in his writing.

He was also the favourite writer of Charles L Grant, possibly one of the finest purveyors of the quiet atmospheric horror story that the genre has seen.  Charlie was a very good anthologist too. When you saw his name on the cover you knew that the stories inside would be excellent, whether he wrote them or not.  He had good taste.

So if GNS was his favourite writer, that must tell us something.

On the strength of this one, I'm not entirely sure what.

Basic storyline - Haitian voodoo gods and nuclear missiles and conspiracy theories and attempts to start world war three.

It started off entertaining enough. The style of writing was unremarkable, but the storytelling was fairly crisp and fast moving. There was an uncomfortable tinge of racism - a shreddie we meet in the opening chapter after the prologue is referred to almost exclusively as the Nigger in later chapters

For those who need to know, a shreddie is a character in a horror novel who normally only appears for one chapter whose sole purpose in the book is to be killed horribly.  This may be a death that advances the plot, it may not.  It might just be so the writer can pad the book out with more gruesome violence.  This is not always a bad thing.

There is also a touch of homophobia.  This and the racism could just be a symptom of the times they were written.  It could be that it's an attempt to portray some of his characters as racists and homophobes - all the examples in the text are as given from individual characters point of view. But with little or nothing to counterbalance the views (and the homophobia coming from one of the less repulsive characters - one of the ostensible good guys) it's difficult to say.  I would need to read more by Mr Smith to make that judgement call.

An issue with this book is too many shreddies. Overkill is an extraordinarily appropriate term here. It's not good to introduce brand new characters in your closing two or three chapters, especially s leaders of those chapters.  Especially if the dullest of those new characters takes three chap[ters to die. 

Another is that the plot makes little to no sense.

Another is the entire lack of a sympathetic character (not a prerequisite of a good book, but a definite advantage if you want us to feel sorry for at least one character in the book)

Another is the piling of coincidence upon coincidence.  Some of them can be explained by the influence of the old gods who are supposed to be running procedures, but others are just riduclous, not even tenuously linked to the old gods storyline. The fire bomb chapter in particular seems to be just shoehorning in a particularly silly plot development.

Another is that the timeline appears to be completely off. Days go by for some characters whilst months appear to have gone by for others. How long after the fire bomb chapter does the rest of the story occur.  If you decide to read this, pay attention to that detail... you may notice a discrepancy or three or four.

Another is that an apparently impregnable nuclear base has so many vantage points where various people can watch goings on.  Apparently there's one in the village playground nearby, however, when a group from the village decide they're going to show those damned Yanks what's what by deliberately throwing themselves against the  electric fences, it's descibed as being a real trek to get to.  Some judicious copy editing may have been called for.

So - does this book have anything to reccomend it?

It's got that lovely tasteful cover. And I did want to finish it.  It wasn't a struggle to read. And...

Erm I think that's it.

I want to be able to say this was a guilty pleasure.  But I don't think I can.

Not as poor as Noonspell. That's as high praise as I think I can give it.

Will I try a Crabs novel at some point?  Quite possibly.  Because I'm stupid like that.

Number 26 - One Word kill by Mark Lawrence

This is the longest book I've read this year in just one day.  I read the first 50 pages on my lunch break at the day job, and the rest of the book while I was not allowed to go to sleep during the night job. I finished it at about 4:30 ish this morning. 

This is my first Mark Lawrence book. And the second book I've ever been sent for the express purpose of review for this blog.

The story concerns Nick, a boy genius and keen D&D player, recently diagnosed with a virulent strain of leukaemia, who encounters a mysterious stranger who enlists his help to save his new friend Mia. The stranger knows a lot about Nick and friends, and his past, and his future? And his future with Mia...

The fact that I read it in one day is a clue to the fact that this is an easy read and an enjoyable book. It's a very well written and well paced Young Adult novel which delves into some quite complex territory. My knowledge of physics has taken a quantum leap forward after reading this book. It also deals with some fairly grown up themes, drugs, and gang violence, and knife wielding psychpaths.


In some ways the story is fairly predictable.  The identity of the mysterious stranger wasn't difficult to figure out not too long after he first appeared, but as a genre literate adult, it's probably a lot easier for me to spot the clues.  The target audience will certainly appreciate the twists and turns - as did I.  Spotting a clever plot twist is a pleasure and I certainly won't denigrate a book for not managing to fool me.

I don't like dumb plot twists, but this book is pretty clever. The storyline through the D&D games they play throughout parallels nicely with the real events taking place. This is another standard device in stories that involve D&D players, but here it's handled better than I've seen it done for a long time.

The emotional side of the story works very well too. The early chapters with him coming to terms with the diagnosis and the scene where he tells friends about the cancer are particularly good. His relationship with his mother could be explored more, but there are two more books to do that in. Having said that, the emotional distance between the two family members is well portrayed and another source of sympathy for young Nick.

I believe I have picked up on some clues to how the wider story will pan out in the next two books in the trilogy and I'm seriously looking forward to reading on and finding out how wrong I am. I get the feeling that Mark Lawrence is more than capable of wrong-footing most of his readers any time he wants to.

This is available through any good bookshop and online.

For more information about Mark Lawrence and his other books, check out his website

http://www.marklawrence.buzz/

The first sequel - Limited Wish - is due out any minute.

Number 25 - Larry 2 the Squeequel - by Adam Millard

There are times when a book revels in subtlety; sharp, inciisive interplay between the characters, witty repartee and intelligence abounding.

Then there's this. About as subtle as an axe in the head. Something which happens very frequently in this book.  After all, it's the sequel, the body count has to increase.

The first Larry was a laugh out loud funny pisstake of all the old (and new) slasher films with the oh so predictable final girl trope. It finished with Larry (Pigface) being decapitated, dismembered and burned to a crispy pork scratching.

So obviously he's back for another run at the final girl who despatched him. As the cover states, at least three people asked for a sequel so here it is.

They say you should never judge a book by it's cover.

Here that rule doesn't apply.  If you like this cover, if you think the quotes thereupon are funny, you will like this book.  And it's predecessor.  And probably the next inciting extallment as well.  But Io don't know about that one as I haven't read it yet.

But I fully intend to.  These books are not great works of literature.They're not inended to be. They don't pretend to be anything other than big, dumb, crude pisstakes.

Horror movie fans will love the abundant film references, snarks and outright insults - all done in glorious loving homage.  The easily offended will be - well quite easily offended by this book.

I'd love to know what Jack ketchum thought of his portrayal in this book.  And did Eric Roberts (you know - Julia's not as successul brother) ever read it?

Great fun. Insane and insanely easily readable. Occasionally laugh out loud funny, very often bloody stupid (that's a good thing in this context) and I read the whole thing with a grin plastered on my face.

This book is easily available online.

But i I think you put more dosh in his pocket if you buy direct from the man himself.

http://www.adammillard.co.uk/

 

Number 24 - Kink by Kathe Koja

Damn you Kathe Koja!

As anyone who cares to scan back through the books I've reviewed so far this year will see, I like quite a wide range of fiction. There may be a slight lean towards the horror genre, crime and fantasy stuff in general, but I tend to read a lot of different genres.

One genre I don't like is romance/love stories.  Who's sleeping with who is a sub plot, useful for character motivation.  A well written sex scene is always welcome but I really don't think that who's in whose bed is an interesting enough idea to be the centre of the plot. It's the stuff of soap opera, not a serious attempt at storytelling.

So then we come to Kink, by Kathe Koja -  a love story, a cautionary tale, a novel about sex, and who's in whose bed, with whom...

And it's an easy contender for the best book of the year.  I've enjoyed every word of this book. The prose is amazing. The story sucks you in and keeps hold.  I wish I'd had more time for long reading sessions these last few weeks as this book was so difficult to put down.

Koja doesn't write like anyone else I've ever read. Angela Carter is close, but I've nor read any of her long fiction yet to judge on this properly... Like Angela Carter, there is something disconcerting in Kathe's prose style.  Read it too long and you can find yourself feeling like you're vaguely intoxicated.

     She doesn't follow usual rules of grammar, run on sentences abound,  words cascade, like water rushing over you as the dam wall breaks, feelings intensify as her story pulls you under through sheer force of  narrative. Immediacy of language: rules ignored but it all works, stream of consiousness; we are in the narrators head, his thoughts, his feelings. We feel with him the intensity of his love for Sophie and his obsession's genesis for Lena - her dark beauty encapsulating his and our entire being. Paragraphs can run for whole pages, as well as whole sentences, switchback ride from action to thought to observation with no delineation; normal rules of writing gone by the wayside

     and it works so damned well, dragging us, the readers deeper into Jess's being and experiencing with him his fortunes and misfortunes and loving his loves then hating and suffering with him as the story moves through myriad combinations and convolutions.


I give up. I apologise for trying to ape the writing style and failing so miserably. Kathe Koja is an amazing writer.  Open the book at random and copy a paragraph for a taster


And the blending duet, Lena and Sophie trading stories and me in the middle content to listen, to look, Sophie effervescent with wine and hilarity, Lena chin on fist and smiling, those dark and shining eyes: as if we could tell her anything, everything, the trivial to the vast: from Sophie's passion for sourball candies to my own failed attempts at writing there was nothing off-limits, nothing that, once words were found, might not be said- and not only said, but without words understood: how rare is it, a friend like that?


This is a tale of obsession, set in an all too real backdrop of seedy clubs and night haunts. A complicated love triangle at the centre of the story. I guess I liked it as much, not just because of the prose, but because, despite the storyline being contained 100% within my most hated genre, it's a dark tale indeed. Love gives way to obesession. Obsession is rewarded with betrayal and hurt. Jess's head is not a comfortable place for we the readers to inhabit, but Kathe Koja plants us firmly in the middle of it. Seeing life through his kinks is maybe not for the faint of heart but is a rewarding experience in many a strange way. 

I seriously cannot reccommend this book highly enough. 9/10

It is available second hand on Amazon, or there is a chance that Ms Koja might have some in her own store

https://kathekoja.com/buy-books/

Number 23 - Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster

There are two types of readers in this world.  Those who think Paul Auster is a true genius, and those who are entirely wrong.

I have an issue with trying to review this book. I normally try to stay relatively spoiler free, not saying much more about the plot as you can glean from the back cover. Especially when I like the book.

However this is such a short book, and the reasons for its genius can't really be described without giving spoilers.  So consider yourself warned.

This is not a book for someone who has never read anything by Auster to pick up and read. If this is your first Auster novel, you will likely as not not understand anything that's going on, without a lot of associated google-fu.

The reason for that is how self referential this book is.

An old man wakes in a room with no memories.  He's visited by an array of people and finds a half written novel on the desk along with many photographs of people he cannot remember.  We learn that every action he takes, including all the most intimate and scatological, is being recorded by an unknown omniscient third person narrator who describes all this detail to us. The prose is clinical with occasional forays into the poetic.

The reader is referenced many times throughout the novel(la?). Nothing ever seems to exist to the old man until it is desribed in detail in the text. He never finds the closet, although Anna Bloom, the first of two nurses to visit him lays out his change of clothes for him from somewhere while he is busy elsewhere. All items visible in the room have been labelled with their names. Wall.  desk.  Bathroom.  etc.

These are switched mysteriously later on in the narrative, causing our Mr Blank to panic. Words are things of power and should be applied correctly. This is as good a visual metaphor for that as I think I've ever seen.

The names of the various visitors seem familiar to te long time reader of Auster's work. The missing Mr Fanshawe is the same Fanshawe who is missing in New york Trilogy. Anna Bloom is the lead character from In The Country of Last Things, and so on. The title itself is actually quite a big clue to the answers to all the questions raised in this book. The closing pages show the creation of a metafictional and existential nightmare.

Some would argue that Auster has vanished up his own rear end and currently resides somewhere near his own ileum after reading this and I can actually understand why. However I derived so much pleasure from this book that I really don't care if he's gone so far up his rear end that he's set up a granny flat in his tonsils.

This is vintage Auster. If you like him, you'll probably love it as much as I did.  If you've not read him before, read some of his other books first. Start with New York trilogy, move on to Leviathan and Mr Vertigo and maybe a couple of others before you read this one. If you don't like him, why are you reading this review?

An easy 8.5 maybe 9 out of 10.

Number 22 - The Winter Chaser by Christopher Holt

This month's book group book. This was a quick read. There were some good ideas, and in places the prose was actually quite good. The opening section was reasonably amusing.

That's the good part over with.

This book was clearly self published and never given to an editor to tidy it up. The layout of the book is dreadful. the grammar throughout is questionable and occasionally completely wrong. The very first paragraph has missing commas.  This was not a good sign and sadly an accurate one.

The good ideas previously mentioned were filched wholesale from many other much better books and authors. For example - one section that was praised at tonight's book group was where the lead character uses a home made electronic gizmo to silence all the noise making devices on a tube train. Ray Bradbury wrote exactly that story in 1953.  Check out The Murderer from his Golden Apples of the Sun collection.
  http://www.sediment.uni-goettingen.de/staff/dunkl/zips/The-Murderer.pdf

The satire on modern times is clunky and heavy-handed.  Although it starts off reasonably amusing, it becomes wearisome. The whole novel is about as subtle as a sledgehammer in the face. He should either have eschewed the humour for a more disturbing take on the idea (which could have worked well) or learned how to write comedy.  Instead he falls squarely between the two stools.

The prose is mainly bland. I've eaten rich tea biscuits that have more intrinsic excitement than Holt manages to inspire for the most part. Where the prose isn't bland, it's mainly pretty bad and ungrammatical. One or two paragraphs here and there demonstrate that there may be a writing ability hidden somewhere in Holt's head, but it's very well hidden indeed.

The author has no idea how to integrate ideas subtly into the narrative. One of the joys of Inspection (the Malerman novel I just finished prior to starting this book) was the way the world the boys inhabited was introduced so brilliantly in the opening chapters.  It was done through the character's actions and inner voices, steadily and cleverly drip-fed into the narrative. Not so in this book.  "Show don't tell" does not apply in this book.  Christopher Holt tends to introduce ideas with the worst expositional dialogue I think I have encountered in many many years.

As for the storyline - what there is of it is vague, unfocused, lacking any kind of pace and entirely predictable. A couple of half decent action scenes apart, the story just meanders around a badly realised version of a possible future Britain.  The title makes no sense whatsoever, as he never actually goes chasing after the source of the Chyll - a mysterious cold snap which descends randomly because of something or other that Holt doesn't really go into any detail about.

Despite the far flung future setting, despite the science fiction devices scattered through the narrative, despite the fact that this is clearly a genre novel, Christopher Holt takes a leaf from Atwood, Ishiguro and McEwan in proclaiming that he has NOT written a science fiction novel. While this is a minor irritant when Margaret, Kazuo and Ian say it, it's bloody annoying here. The three big name genre refuseniks have talent to spare. Their writing is good enough that we can nod and say "yeah, yeah, whatever" and enjoy their books in any case.

Not only has Christopher Holt written a science fiction novel that borrows from Ray Bradbury, Douglas Adams, Gene Wolfe and countless other SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS, he's done it without a fraction of the talent of any of the people he's borrowed from.

I assume, from the way the story just kind of grinds to a halt, that this is part of a continuing story. Well I for one will certainly not be following up on it.

One last point.  On the badly formatted back cover, it proudly proclaims the book was shortlisted in the novel category for a literature award. I googled the award in question.  It's a very local prize for very local people. Entrants pay a whole £12 to enter their novel on the shortlist.

It's like me calling myself a prize winning playwright.  I genuinely did once win best original play for a play I wrote and starred in.  The fact that it was at a local one act play festival with only two original plays performed (out of 20 plays overall - all the rest were off the shelf plays) - and the other was by a junior group who couldn't remember their lines...

It also claims to have won another award, but this one is so obscure I can't find it on google.

This book is available through Amazon, but save your time and money.

Number 21 - Inspection by Josh Malerman

Some authors automatically bypass my entire TBR pile completely when they put out a new book.  Since reading Bird Box two years ago, Josh Malerman has been one of those. This is my third Josh Malerman read of the year - and not the last.  His follow on to Bird Box is due out in a few months and I can't wait.

The only review I'd seen of this book online wasn't the most enthusiastic I've ever seen.  But it was reviewing this book as if it was a full-pelt, pedal-to-the-metal, all-out horror novel (Like Bird box and On This The Day of the Pig were). And that is why they were lukewarm about it IMHO.

If you were to review The wizard of Oz as if it was a western - after all it opens and closes on a ranch in western America -  you'd say it was a piss poor western.  Review it as the fantasy novel/film it actually is and it's superlative.

This book is a diffeent beast from JM's pure horror novels. Like Unbury Carol, it defies easy pigeonholing.  It contains horror elements, that is for definite. But it also contains elements of science fiction, some fantastic elements.  It could even be read as a mega twisted crime novel, about abduction, incarceration and murder of children and adults.

The basic story - the Alphabet Boys live in a tower in the middle of nowhere. They have been deliberately kept separate from society, and particularly from the opposite sex. They are being raised as prodigies and geniuses, schooled in the arts and the sciences to superlative heights. A few miles through the woods is a similar tower containing the Letter Girls.  All this is part of an inhuman experiment. When J from the Alphabet Boys meets K from the Letter girls.... all hell breaks loose.

The style of writing is the usual efficient and atmospheric prose I've come to expect from Mr Malerman. There's a clinical effectiveness in this book which truly suits the subject matter. The world building is excellent.  The drip feed of information in the opening chapters is very skillfully done and the enclosed world of J and his twenty three surving brothers feels entirely real by the end of chapter 3.

The tension builds nicely throughout as the children discover more and more. As the most developed of the adults, Warren/Laurence and Richard are great characters. The guilt of one and the megalomania of the other shine through the pages and set up a nice rivalry at the heart of the story, but not one that pans out in any predictable form. 

In any good thriller - because that's a category this could also fall into - there should be THAT point in the story.  THAT page you get to where THAT happens and you know you will finish this book in this sitting regardless of how many pages are left, or what time of day it is.  In this book, THAT occurs about 100 pages from the end, and I can honestly say that if I was a heart surgeon with a fully prepped patient on the table who'd just been opened by my assistant, waiting for me to perform the most complex part of the surgery, I would have told them to hold on for a while and I'd be with them after  I finished the book.

You can take two things from that.  Number 1 - when THAT happens in this book, it really is bloody effective and this book is a page turner of immense quality.  Number 2 - heart surgery should not be on my list of career choices, I am a horrible person with poor prioritisation skills.

Slight spoiler ahead.

It's not an absolutely perfect book. There is a basic flaw at the heart of the story, but that same basic flaw applies to Lord of the Flies (one of my favourite novels of all time). I once heard William Golding talking about the reason there were no girls on the island.  It was so that "sex wouldn't rear its ugly head".  Even at age 15 when I heard him say that, I did wonder if he'd heard of the different variations in sexuality.

Removing the opposite sex is not going to remove the distractions inherent in the "delicate years", it could just switch it into a same sex distraction. It may not even be a switch. However, in this book I chose to ignore this as just an (extreme) oversight on the part of D.A.D. and M.O.M..

Theoretically the Burt papers could have referenced the possibility, and it wouldn't have felt like a plot hole. However, it didn't impact on my enjoyment of the book in the slightest.    

If you're going to have a narrative flaw, it might as well be one shared with one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

This is available from alll good book shops, quite a few bad bookshops and anywhere online that sells books, so you have no excuse to ignore my advice and go out and buy this now.

An easy 8.5/10 - read it.