Number 84 - Joe Hill's the Cape 1969 - Jason Ciaramellar, Nelson Daniel

Joe Hill actually had nothing to do with writing this one (or the first sequel either).  He's listed as a creative consultant on the credits page and as the author of the original short story this is the prequel to, but he has no writing credit. It's a shame his name appears on the front cover but not Ciaramellar who actually wrote this story from scratch.

How much more can there be to add to the story?  The original short story (and the graphic novel it spawned) is a self contained piece with a clear beginning, middle and end. That ending was pretty definitive too.

The first sequel was entertaining enough and filled in what happened when the cape wearing antihero/villain vanished for three days in the original story.

The only other place the story can go is backwards, and therefore this is a prequel. Back in 1969 we follow the father of our previous lead character  is in Vietnam.  He's on board that helicopter you can see on that cover and unsurprisingly he finds himself in the jungle pretty soon after trying to evade capture.

Quite how any of this is going to tie in with the original story is never made clear until almost the final page, despite a fair bit of human levitation related revenge happening.  When the reveal is made, i will admit that the first thing I did was pull the first graphic novel off my shelf to see if the detail was correct - which of course it was. 

I wasn't sure if this book was going to jump the shark a little but I'm happy to report that it doesn't.  it's a worthy addition to the Cape's history.  The story is exciting and occasionally gruesome.  despite being a prequel, I didn't see where the story was headed - a neat trick to pull off. The ending is genuinely clever.  The art is excellent throughout.

All in all, a good fun cheat read and well worth tracking down a copy.

Number 83 - Heap House - Edward Carey

 

I just discovered that I bought this book by mistake.  I found it in Poundland in their book section for only a pound.  That's both a great bargain and a damned shame. More on that statement later.

When I saw that illustration I thought that this was by the illustrator of that alphabet book with all the dead children so I snapped it up. As i just discovered, that alphabet book is called the Gashlycrumb Tinies and it's by Edward GOREY.  He died in 2000 and so is most definitely not the author of this book which was written in the mid 2010s.

Back to that statement about this being in Poundland being a damned shame... Poundland's basic business model is buying remaindered stock for any non food items and things that you would reasonably expect to pay more than a pound for.  That means that this book certainly didn't sell as many copies as it deserves to.

This might be a children's or Young Adult book, but it's one of the best things I've read this year. I've had so much fun reading this book. 

The storyline is kind of traditional - strange family, strange house,  in comes a stranger and things start to unravel. The most sympathetic member of the family faces a quandary regarding his loyalties... etc.

What makes this almost entirely unique is the plot details. The reason the family is so strange, the setting, and the characters set this book apart from pretty much anything else I've ever read.  I genuinely can't think of anything that this would compare directly to. Think Dickens trying to write Gormenghast with Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snickett with a dash of Roald Dahl and indeed the aforementioned Edward Gorey and you'd be somewhere in the ballpark.

Heap House is the home of the Iremonger family.  It's set in the middle of huge rubbish heaps imported from neighboring London. All the upstairs Iremongers have names almost but not quite like ordinary names.  Our hero is Clod Iremonger (short for Clodius), he has cousins called Moorcus and Timmus who also feature heavily in the story.  Our heroine is Lucy Pennant, a new servant in the house. All the servants are distant relatives too poor to live in the main house.  Once indentured they lose their London names and just become known as Iremonger. Lucy doesn't want to lose her name

Everyone who lives in the house has a birth object that they cannot be parted from. Clod's birth object is a bathplug, Timmus carries around a tap etc.  Clod has an almost unique abilty to hear all the birth objects talking. They all shout out names.  His bath plug, for example, always shouts James henry Hayward. 

The drama starts in the story when his great aunt Rosamud's door handle goes missing.  Clod and Lucy meet and form a forbidden friendship. Events quickly spiral out of control.  Items are moving by themselves.  Huge angry creatures are forming from the rubbish and a storm is gathering over the heaps.

There's a very blatant anti-capitalist metaphor at the heart of the story which adds whole layers of meaning to the proceedings.

The mock Victorian setting is brilliantly created and helped along by the mordantly funny illustrations that introduce every chapter. I didn't realise that this was part 1 of a trilogy when I bought it.  I'm very happy that it is because that means I have two more books in which to experience this world in. I've already ordered both of them.

This is still available in the usual outlets, although in paperback with not such a great looking cover.

It may be aimed at the younger generation but it entertained this adult enormously.  an easy 9/10 

By the way - here's the Edward Gorey thing if you've never seen it before

Animated Gashlycrumb Tinies Alphabet - Narrated by TDC - YouTube

 

Number 82 - Wytches - Snyder, Jock et al

 

My first foray into the October long reading of horror and nothing but (as if I need an excuse), is this rather excellent graphic novel.

This opens with a dictionary definition of witches.  On the following page, we see the same definitions but this time they've been scratched out.  The witches in this volume are nothing like we would expect.

Scott Snyder has created his own mythology around the traditional stories and it's a real feat of imagination.  The Wytches are truly scary creations, underground creatures with a horrible hold over people on the surface.

As with a lot of horror stories, we start with a family settling in to their new home, and the daughter settling in to her new school.  She has more reason than most to be nervous about joining a new school.  At her old school she was implicated in the disappearance of the school bully.  The truth is too bizarre for anyone to believe. 

Suffice to say, the move to a new town doesn't improve the situation.  Things get steadily worse instead.  

The artwork is stunning.  It's moody and evocative with things hiding and watching in many many panels, adding to the unease that the remarkably frightening script is rapidly generating.

The six issues of the comic are followed by notes from the writer, describing the writing process and the personal nature of this particular story.

My only complaint about this is that there is no volume 2.  I'm very late to the party on this.  It's over 5 years old and a continuation was promised... It's still not here, except for a Halloween special issue from 2018 which sells for silly prices.

Brilliantly written, beautifully drawn, scary as all hell.  I cant recommend this too highly.

Number 81 - Starship and Haiku - SP Somtow

Continuing in my quest to read Somtow's entire back catalogue, here's one of his earliest novels. In fact it won the the Locus award for best first novel, so it's his first.

You can tell this is a late 80s reprint from the fact that it has his shortened name on it instead of Somtow Sucharitkul. They knew how to put together a nice looking book cover in the 80s and this one is no exception.

The story has to score several points for originality. We're in the distant future (2022) and a plague is spreading across what's left of the world after the millennial wars.  The story is split between Japan and Hawaii.  

On Hawaii we meet Josh Nakamura and his little brother Didi who was born on the night that the moon was blasted out of the sky. People think Didi is simple but he has abilities that no one could guess.   They're desperate to leave for Japan, the last vestige of civilisation on the planet.

Japan has more than its fair share of problems too. Mass suicides are in progress at the behest of a mysterious figure calling himself the death Lord.  Ryoko Ishida, daughter of on of Japan's first ministers and blessed with the ability to talk to whales,  has other plans. 

This is a world ending apocalypse unlike any I've read before, and I doubt I will again.  I think maybe if I knew more about Japanese culture I might have picked up on some details that I've missed.

Somtow's prose is lush and lyrical.  He builds this bizarre end of times in broad strokes.  Where some writers would have used 210 pages just to set up the premise, Somtow trusts his readers to follow him on this headtrip and not lose track and tells the whole story in those 210 pages. And it's a trip well worth following him on.  There are world changing revelations about the nature of humanity and life itself.  They're thrown at us as casually as most writers will have a character decide on what coat to wear.

Like everything else he's written, this is a damned good read. Highly recommended.

Number 80 - Gideon Falls Book 2: Original Sins

 

The second volume, collecting issues 7 through 11 of this continuing series by Jeff Lemire and stunningly illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino

As per my comments on the first volume, this book is gorgeous to look at.  It has a truly mind-bending plot. The art is amazing and the way the layouts are used as an integral part of the storytelling is remarkable to say the least.

There are some hints towards an explanation, and the apparently separate storylines are now officially merged.  

I've ordered book 3 already.  These books show how graphic novels can be just as valid a writing form as prose.  And they demonstrate tricks in the storytelling - use of layout etc. - that prose novels could never hope to emulate.

Number 79 - Small Pleasures - Clare Chambers

 

This month's book group book - I will admit I would never have picked this up of my own volition.

There's always a danger in giving a book a title like Small Pleasures.  It leaves the door open to so many possible attacks from reviewers if they don't like it.  

However it also opens to "This was no small pleasure" types of reviews. Indeed this book opens with 10 full pages of glowing reviews of that sort. I can't remember the last time I saw so many at the start of the book.*

Anyhoo.. what did I think of it?

This is definitely another book that's out of my  normal genre choices.

In the 1950s, a single 40 year old female reporter at a local paper is tasked with looking into an alleged virgin birth.  Her relationship with the family of the "miracle" child leads to the possibility of escape from the drudgery of her home life.

This isn't a book of overplayed, highly strung emotion.  Jean is emotionally repressed, still living at home caring for her elderly mother.  Her relationship builds slowly and steadily. Most of the drama is kept off screen and everything seems very cozy. The only high passion relationship that develops is kept off screen and revealed not to be all it was hoped for.

The language used throughout the book is very restrained and somewhat dated.  However, this serves to cement the 50's setting with remarkable accuracy.  This being a modern novel though, there are other themes present and Jean's attitudes do seem to be a few decades out of their time.

By and large she's a sympathetic creation.  We have full sympathy for her drudgery and the tedium of looking after her elderly mother.  The glimpse into her possible future when she goes on holiday is probably the least subtle moment in the book

Near the end of the book though, I almost started to feel that Chambers was just piling misery on poor Jean for the sake of it. How many ways can you throw hope at a character and then grab it back?  The ending is a gut punch, but one that the attentive reader might guess from the opening chapters.

It held my interest throughout. I did actually feel sorry for Jean at times. The tedium is maybe too realistically portrayed. I kicked myself for not being quite attentive enough to realise the relevance of the opening of the book until the end.

I'm not sure I'll read another Clare Chambers again in a hurry, but this does what it sets out to do and provides more than small pleasure on the way.  

*Actually I believe my copy of the Wasp Factory has a similar number of reviews before the book starts.  However, it hilariously includes as many bad reviews as good, and the bad reviews it lists are full of hatred. It was one of the things that made me read the book - the fact that it inspired as much hate as love.  For the record I loved it.

Number 78 - Talk - Kathe Koja

Non-supernatural teen drama is not my thing. High school arguments and who wants to go out with who are sub plots.  Not the lead story.

That's my normal thoughts on the genre.  Then along comes Kathe Koja again and writes a compelling and utterly absorbing little book like this where the most out there thing that happens is a fight at a town rally.

Lindsay is the school's queen bitch. She's used to  getting what she wants.  Kit is a quiet kid hiding a secret about his sexuality.  He's persuaded to try out for the school play - Talk - and finds himself cast in the male lead opposite Lindsay.

Lindsay has just recently dumped her jock boyfriend and finds herself attracted to Kit. Things are not going to go well. As you might guess from that cleverly designed cover, the play attracts a fair amount of controversy. 

The chapters are told in almost stream of consciousness narration from the POV of Kit and Lindsay alternately.  There are also inserts of script from the play.

The voices telling us the story are clearly delineated, you can tell them apart easily from the rhythms and word choices.  The story races along at a great pace and the more Lindsay fixates on Kit, the more tense things become.  

The ending happily doesn't shut down all the storylines.  Life rarely does this so it's nice to see this reflected. I wondered if the ex boyfriend had a more accurate gaydar than a straight guy would normally have. of course we only have his actions to judge him by as told through the two narrators and there's no way to  know if there's more to my pondering on that.

We feel real sympathy for the two leads. Despite Lindsay being the queen of the school, we know her thought process and why she does and says the things she does. We know she's heading for a big fall and the inevitability of that is the lead source of tension in the book, even ahead of the "will the play go ahead" storyline.

As YA dramas about school life and regular normal people doing regular normal things go, this is really very good indeed. It left me wanting to know what happens next.  That's always a good thing.

Number 77 - Monster Town - Bruce Golden

 

Now this was a lot of fun.

Dirk Slade is a washed up ex cop working as a private eye (what else could he be with that name) in Monster Town. Monster Town is where the movie monsters go to live when work in the movies dries up. It's the 60's so they're in a particular slump. I'm not talking about the actors who played the monsters.  In this reality, the monsters are real and play themselves on the screen.

When Dirk is called to investigate the disappearance of the son of Vladimir Prince (aka Count Dracula), it starts a chain of events in progress that he would never have predicted. 

His best friend, a local journalist, is murdered whilst following up a Godzilla big story. As well as the missing boy, he needs to avenge his friend's death and uncover the story.

Along the way he runs into the wolfman, the invisible man, Quasimodo, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a vicious gargoyle and others, and starts up a new romance with the beautiful wasp Woman, She has a sting in her tail.

It's all told in classic hard boiled prose. All short and sweet as a short and sweet thing, with similes galore.

It kept a grin on my face the whole time I was reading it.  This is a comedy that doesn't rely on telling jokes (although  there are some gloriously convoluted puns to be found) but on telling the ridiculous story as straight as it could possibly be told.

At only 120 pages it's a quick and very easy read.  For fans of the old horror movies, there are a ton of Easter eggs and sneaky references. It's not particularly deep and meaningful.  It's not meant to be.

If you want a droll, surreal murder mystery in a brilliantly realised setting, this is the book for you.  And it's on special offer over at the PS Publishing discount site.

 

Number 76 - Something is Killing the Children vol 1 - Tynion/Dell'edera/Muerto

 Another cheat read I picked up purely for the title. 

It is almost as subtle as the title suggests.  The plot, surprisingly, revolves around a monster killing children in small town America.

Enter Erica Slaughter, a mysterious monster hunter with a toy octopus that advises her along the way - not always reliably...

It's good fun to read.  There are shades of the story of Grendel and Beowulf. There are hints at a secret society she works for who may or may not be entirely working for the public good (even though she certainly is on the side of stopping giant monster eating children herself). Misunderstandings with the locals make her job more complicated than it should be.

The artwork ranges from pretty damned good to  wild and wacky to purely functional to not very good in places (what is with the boy's nose in the flashback to the first set of killings at the end of chapter 1?).  

The layout is occasionally confusing, switching randomly from individual pages to having to read straight across the double page spread as if it was one page.  

However those are minor niggles and I will be seeking out volume 2 for some more uncomplicated violent fun.

Number 75 - Spontaneous Human Combustion - Richard Thomas

 

This book was a pleasant surprise.  A few weeks ago the ARC dropped through my front door. I have no recollection of requesting it and, until it arrived I'd never heard of the author.

I'll never complain about receiving a free book though - and this did look pretty damned good, especially with that killer quote from Chuck Palahniuk.

The next question is of course, were the contents of the book as nice a surprise as receiving it in the first place?

Happily, the answer to that is a definite yes. 

These are literate and well thought out stories and the horrors are subtler and more refined than a lot of collections I own.

There are 14 stories (despite the back cover saying 15...)  and even the least good is rather fine in its own way. There are definite stand outs in the collection.

Clown Face is a scary clown story unlike any other that I've experienced.  It was the first story in the book to give me that little frission at the end.  As it's only the second story, that's not a bad hit rate so far,

The next story - Requital - also gave me that delightful little shiver. A man awakes time and again in a shack in the middle of a desert and is faced with different dangers each time.  As the story progresses, it becomes more nightmarish and strange.  It feels like a good episode of Black Mirror transposed to the page.

Open Waters has a similar Black Mirror feel. A man stuck on an island that proves to be so much more and less than it appears. I loved the ending to this (and the fact that the lead character's cat is called Isabella which was my Nanna's name). 

Nodus Tollens meanwhile, feels like an exceptionally good Twilight Zone episode. Be careful what you accept as a prize in a poker game.  You might get more than you bargained for.

In his house takes the form of a letter from a follower of the great elder being Cthulu himself. It's an effective ploy to creep out the reader. Lovecraftian fiction can feel cliched but this manages to feel new despite the the use of an overfamiliar trope.

This is a common thread throughout the collection.  A lot of the ideas flying about aren't new in the slightest, but Thomas's style means they stay interesting and fresh enough to avoid the cliché.  

Undone has to be mentioned for the bravery of writing a story in only one extraordinarily long sentence, a gamble that pays off as this one achieves an immediacy and urgency that drags you through at breakneck pace - and throws out some really great imagery as well.

How Not to Come Undone is a cracking little story about the symbiotic relationship between a pair of twins which is disrupted when the boy twin gains unusual powers. 

Hiraeth was a good story till the last page.  I'm afraid that ending didn't really work for me although I can see what he was going for and it's a brave choice to end it the way he does.  In the afterword he admits that it could divide the audience.  

The final story is the longest and also possibly the best.  A man is alone in a testing station, with only the occasional visits from the enigmatic Rebecca to relieve the monotony (stranded people is quite a common theme in this collection).  Through some interesting narrative choices we find out that he's a test subject for... something.  

This is a great collection of stories by a writer with a truly distinctive style to his writing. It's weird, surreal and occasionally pretty damned chilling. 

The book comes out in February 2022 and my recommendation would be that you go out and buy it when you can.   

Number 74 - Gideon Falls - Lemire, Sorrentino, Stewart

 

I'll be honest and admit that I picked this up just for the cover.  I think I'm getting pretty good at accurately judging books by their covers because this is a stunningly good piece of work.

Graphic novels like this really break through the stereotype that they're for kids and they're just comics.

This is an intelligently written and beautifully drawn story. It's got horror. It's got mystery. It's got great characters.  Just a hint (so far) of a possible conspiracy, and was there some science fiction thrown into the mix later on? 

The artwork is absolutely stunning.  Sorrentino uses layouts better than any illustrator I've seen in the last few years. Unlike some graphic novels I've read where I just skim over the pictures with no words in, in this book I find myself studying every panel as they each feel like an integral part of the storytelling rather than something to fill the page.  There are effects on the reader caused by this artwork that would be almost impossible to replicate in a text based medium.

We're introduced to two very different characters. Norton is a reclusive character living in the streets of a dingy city, obsessively collecting bits of trash.  the only person he really talks to is his therapist.  Father Wilfred a priest struggling with his belief who's moved to the parish of Gideon falls when the old priest dies. There he quickly becomes embroiled in the strange events happening in the town, especially those surrounding the Black Barn. Their stories run parallel with only the barn as a connecting factor until very close to the end of this volume.

I won't say what suddenly connects their stories - that would be an unfair spoiler. 

Volume two of this series is very high on my to buy list.  This series may well be the first graphic novels that I say prefer to Locke and Key - and from me that is almost the highest level of praise there is. 

Number 73 - Playthings - Alex Pheby

 

As regular readers will spot, this is my third Alex Pheby novel in the past 12 months. 

This is his second novel, written in 2015 so I'm a few years late. 

It's his first with Galley Beggar Press.  I do like these very plain but distinctive covers. These editions are also printed on a very nice grade of paper which adds a whole tactile experience to the books.  This one i found second hand and has clearly been read a couple of times before.  The binding seems remarkably durable for a paperback edition.  It's probably not an issue for most people but I do think it's a good sign when the publishers put as much work as GBP into making the physical item itself as good quality as they do.

As for the content, GBP are normally reliable in finding good, interesting novels.  This one is no exception.  It follows Judge Paul Schreber when he suffers a mental health incident in the street and is institutionalised against his will. This is based on a true life story.  Schreber is a famous name in the world of psychoanalysis and several studies have been made of him.

This is a fictionalised account of his third out of mental illness and incarceration. It's beautifully written, as Pheby's other two book have been. It gives what feels like a disturbingly accurate depiction of a mental collapse. 

In the blurb on the inside of the front cover, it says that it "unearths the roots of the great ills in the twentieth century, the psychological structure of fascism, the cancer of anti-semitism, and the abuse of institutional power". I definitely got the abuse of power, that's a clear and present theme in the book. I'm not sure I got the other themes quite as powerfully.  It's certainly a very strong narrative on institutions abusing the power they have on the inmates, also on the impact of an abusive childhood, but I'm not sure that a delusional man with an imaginary companion in the shape of a Jewish man he briefly knew as a child- who fills him in on the reality of his situation on a regular basis whether he wants to hear it or not (mostly not)- counts as comment on antisemitism in the 20th century and beyond. The Fascism theme might be clearer when the book has had a chance to settle in my head.

The ending of the book is something of an emotional hammer blow.  This book is going to stay with me for a while.

It's available from Galley beggar press through their website, or though the usual suspects online.  If you want beautifully written historic fiction which tackles deeper themes, This is a good place to look.

Number 72 - Pretty Deadly Vol 1 - Deconnick/Rios

 

This was a bit of a punt from me just because of that remarkably cheap price tag (for a graphic novel) and the rather nice artwork on the cover.

It turns out it was a good choice.

The quality of the art and storytelling on display here really shows up how basic the Outcast volumes are in almost every aspect.  It's like comparing Ramsey Campbell's prose to Guy N Smith. 

The Outcast volumes are still entertaining, but they certainly don't qualify as art in the way that this does.

 This is a multi-layered, complex narrative, mixing weird western with high fantasy and magic realism. It's reminiscent of Neil Gaiman's work on the Sandman comics, but transplanted to the old west with an increased level of violence and nudity.

The story is narrated by a butterfly talking to a dead rabbit (opening two pages of each issue cover these two as they lope around the countryside and its curiously charming - the rabbit's naivety is rather funny)  and follows our lead characters in a dramatic chase across the wild west - one of whom is the actual daughter of Death. 

Initially a little confusing, as the details of the story fall into place it becomes an epic fantasy encompassing the nature of Death itself as at least one of its central themes. This will stand up to multiple reads. Knowing the full detail of what happens later will almost certainly give a different perspective on the earlier chapters. It's always good when a writer trusts to the patience of the reader and doesn't give the whole story in one dollop in order to make i easier to understand from the start.

The artwork is stunning throughout.  This might be one of the prettiest sagas of death and vengeance ever committed to paper. 

I've commented a few times in the outcast reviews about the artwork not being great,  This book brings into sharp focus how bad the art can be in Outcast.  

I'm definitely going to pick up the other two volumes of this. Storytelling of this quality doesn't happen often.  As cheat reads go, this is pretty damned good. 

Number 71 - The Gulp - Alan Baxter

 Stephen King has Castle Rock, Charles Grant had Oxrun Station, Ray Bradbury had Green Town Illinois, Ramsey Campbell has Brichester, Josh Malerman has Goblin,,, the history of the fictional creepy town where weird things happen is long and distinguished. 

The latest to join the list is Gulpepper, an out of the way coastal town in Australia with only one road out and a habit of swallowing visitors who stay too long. And too long can mean just a single night if you don't listen to advice.

As a result of this habit, it's known to the locals as The Gulp. It's the setting for this rather excellent collection of novellas by Alan Baxter.  

As regular readers of this blog will know, I raved highly about his novella The Roo (what's not to love about a 9 foot demonic killer kangaroo rampaging through small town Australia) and was equally impressed by his (entirely differently styled) novella The Book Club. 

I'm glad to say he's kept up the same high standards as those other books.  As you might guess from the cover, this book contains five stories set in the eponymous town.

Story 1 - Out on a Rim - I do love a good punny title and this certainly qualifies in that.  A pair of delivery drivers are stuck overnight in the town when they damage the wheel rim on their truck. The older driver sensibly chooses to stay in the cab.  The younger driver (Rich) decides to explore. This allows Baxter to introduce us to several important locations and characters which then recur in the other stories. Suffice to say, we get a very good taste of what is to come - including at least one scene that truly made me wince.  Also, we find out exactly how bad an idea it was for Rich to ignore the advice to stay in the cab.

Starting with a visitor exploring the town is an overused trope generally but Baxter does it so well here that I really don't care. If you want an object lesson in how to introduce your location and important characters, this is a great example. 

Story 2 - Mother in Bloom - Two teenage siblings fail to dispose of their dead mother's body in the most spectacular and unexpected way. What starts as a straightforward "how do we get rid of her so we keep the house" story rapidly turns into a surreal and gruesome nightmare. I don't want to say too much about this one.  It needs to be read cold for full impact. I bloody loved it though.

Story 3 - The Band Plays On - A group of back-packers make the mistake of staying with a local band when they're invited to the after-party. Again, I can't say too much for fear of spoilers.  The atmosphere is superbly built in this tale as Patrick steadily realises that something beyond their control is happening. Can he save himself and his friends? Will they want to be saved? A refreshing take on an old monster archetype.

Story 4 - 48 to go - After a drugs runner is robbed, his boss who we met in earlier stories orders him to refund the $60k in 48 hours or face the consequences. He learns of the one place locally where he might stand a chance of raising so much so quickly... This leads to an escalation of violence which is shocking, extreme and funny in equal measures. 

Story 5 - the Rock Fisher - A young man's life is changed for the Lovecraftian after he catches... something... on his early morning fishing trip. This story has stronger ties with the rest of the book, including some unexpected consequences from events in the earlier tales. This one builds brilliantly, but I wasn't a hundred percent convinced by the ending. It's only a minor quibble though and doesn't spoil the book.  

Baxter achieves the holy grail of storytelling that is creepy, graphic and laced with a demonic strain of jet black humour throughout. You could argue that there's a lack of originality when you look deeply at a couple of the stories, but there's enough general weirdness going on that it all feels fresh and new in any case. It's so well written that total originality is the last thing we're looking for.

The Easter eggs that build between the tales till they become an integral part of the final story are a joy to look out for. 

This book is a total blast from start to finish.  Any horror fans who haven't picked up an Alan Baxter book need to do it ASAP.  This is a great place to start.

Number 70 - Outcast Vol 7

 Now this is frustrating.  I checked in Forbidden planet when I went into town last week and the Outcast comic is still running and on issue 47 or thereabouts. This volume incorporates issues 37-42.  Therefore vol 8 isn't out for a considerable time. 

And this finished on one hell of a cliffhanger. 

The story is good fun, it's keeping up the standards of earlier volumes.  Problem is the artwork is barely functional in places.  there's an occasional really good full page spread, but in general the artwork seems to have really slumped in the last couple of volumes.

Now I need to decide whether to pick up the comics to continue the story...

Number 69 - The Discomfort of Evening - Marieke Lucas Rijneveld

 

This was this month's book group read. It's a debut novel so I had no idea what to expect.  Max Porter has very prominent quotes on the front and back covers so I wasn't expecting anything ordinary.

I wasn't expecting anything quite as bleak and utterly disturbing as this.  It may not be marketed as such, but this is the definition of character based psychological horror.

It's told from the point of view of Jas, a young girl who, aged 10, wishes for her brother to die instead of her rabbit.  He promptly dies in a skating accident on the river and the family shatters.  It was dysfunctional before, but with the death of Matthies, the total disintegration of the family unit sets in.

Jas has a very distinctive voice.  It's one you will either love or hate.  With the exception of a few observations that seem wise beyond her years and education level, it's actually quite a convincing  10 (and then 12) year old voice. It switches mid paragraph to a semi-related topic and back again on a regular basis, much in the same way that young children distract themselves from telling stories all the time. 

This can be a bit wearing and means you need to concentrate to follow the book in places.  It's not an easy read for that reason, or for the subject matter. This book made me feel more uncomfortable than anything else I've read since starting this blog. It goes to some very dark and nasty places.  Be warned that this is not for the faint hearted.

The book feels almost medieval despite the references to Google and Pokemon.  The old fashioned rituals of the family seem to actively combat the aspects of the modern world that appear.

The ending is traumatic.  I knew it wasn't likely to have a Hollywood-happy ending, but I didn't predict quite how deep into the pit of despair it was capable of going. The final chapters will be seared into my memory whether I want them there or not.

This book deserves to be read in as few sittings as possible.  Because the style takes a few pages to adjust to every time you pick it up, the steady accumulation of atmosphere is always lost when you put it down and pick it up hours later.  The longest reading sessions I had with this novel achieved levels of intensity I normally only dream about finding in a book. I wish I'd managed more of the long sessions.  I probably wouldn't have had the problems with the book that I had.

There are still some plot details that don't hang straight with me, but I can't really say what they are without leaving spoilers and this book is too good to do that to. 

Overall the positives outweigh the negatives.  I think this is the single most disturbing thing I've read in years and that - for me - is a good thing.  The writer wasn't aiming at giving us a comfortable read and they succeeded in not doing that.  I await their next book with distinct trepidation.

Number 68 - Tales From The Darkside - Hill & Rodrigues

 

Now this was a fun read.

Back in the mid 2010s, Joe Hill was asked to produce scripts for a revival of the old Tales From the Darkside TV show.  He wrote a selection of stories, and I believe they even filmed the pilot, but the network decided not to run with it.

The scripts have been adapted here for graphic novel purposes and illustrated by the illustrator for Locke and Key.  So the dream team of Hill and Rodrigues is reunited.

The producers were fools.  If they’d gone ahead with the series, based on the strength of these opening stories, it would have been an amazing show.

Hill has taken the basic idea of the anthology show and added to it. And I must say I think his plan, from the evidence here, was definitely touched by genius. The shows would have been linked in a very clever way.

In this book we have what would have been the first three stories for the TV show. 

In story 1 – Sleepwalkers – our lead character is an ex-lifeguard who was so engaged to his nightlife that he fell asleep at his post and allowed a woman to drown.  He finds himself at the centre of a Darkside event. A mysterious stranger appears to him and starts to warn him but falls asleep when he looks him in the face.  From that point on, everyone who sees him instantly falls asleep. This tends to lead to complications in life. Since this is only short, these complications aren’t explored as much as they could be, but it could have felt dragged out and repetitive if it had been any longer.  He gets his shot at redemption by the end of the story.

The second story, Black Box – introduces us to Brian Newman, the stranger in the first story.  We learn his backstory and the rather cool if convoluted reason he appeared and disappeared in the first story.  This is the longest story of the three and took up two issues of the original comic. This story more than hints at an ongoing backstory for the sadly defunct tv show.

The third story is batshit crazy.  A traditional enough concept - babysitter looking after demon kids.  The kids in this case have tablets that allow them to control the reality around them, allowing them to set assorted monsters on our beleaguered heroine and her boyfriend. The artwork in this was possibly the best in the whole book.  The parents' faces were so genuinely creepy... I had a total blast with this story.

It's a shame there's not a follow up book.  Apparently the scripts are available as actual scripts and I may have to invest.

He managed to capture the feel of the good episodes of TFTD and added to it with the hints of overarching storyline. I think this is my favourite graphic novel of the year so far.

Number 68 - Poppet - Mo Hayder

 

Mo Hayder sadly died on 27th July this year after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease in December 2020. 

The first of her books was The Treatment, one of the most disturbing thrillers I've ever read. The treatment is the second Caffery book so I bought the first book in the series (Birdman) very quickly.  That turned out to be equally disturbing with one revelation in particular that made me put the book down and go for a walk to get the image out of my head.

Since then I've collected each of her books as they were released,  I'm slightly behind in reading them and decided to pick up on the Jack Caffrey series where I left off when I heard the sad news.

While she's never reached the sheer disturbing heights of those two books since, she is still a guaranteed source of dark and gritty crime drama that hovers on the edge of true horror fiction.

This one is no exception.  A hysteria is spreading in an insane asylum about a dwarf that sits on the chests of the inmates and smothers them.

AJ is one of the chief nurses at the institute and is naturally concerned about the patients, especially when a spate of power cuts lead to an increase in the sightings, and a number of the patients self harming and worse. He contacts Jack Caffery for help  and the ensuing investigation forces both men to stand up to their internal demons.

For some reason the narration has turned to present tense, compared to the standard past tense of the previous 5 books in the series.  this lends the story a sense of immediacy and urgency. The story is gruesome and filled with unpredictable twists and turns.  The chapters are short and choppy, keeping the pace moving at a hectic rate. 

Luckily, Flea Marley is kept to the sub-plot in this book.  In the previous Caffery book I'd started to find her incredibly annoying. She basically went against all rules throughout and get herself into eminently avoidable danger as a result. Sidelining her from the main story in this one was a very good decision on Hayder's part.

This is an excellent addition to the Caffery series. It's best to read them in sequence since there is a strong continuity in place. However they do all also work well as standalones.

Once I've finished Wolf and hanging Hill I'll have read all the books she wrote as Mo Hayder.  She has a new book out posthumously next year - The Book of sand -  under the name Theo Clare.  It will certainly be on my to buy list.

Number 66 - Outcast volume 6; Invasion

The series may well be drawing to a close, I'm not sure... there's only maybe one or two volumes after this one, but they're very recently published. I don't know if the story is ongoing.  All will be revealed soon enough though.

It certainly seems to be building to a conclusion. The forces on both sides are gathering in strength, and after hiding out for the last two volumes, the good guys have been found.  

The storytelling is as good as ever, but the artwork feels sloppy in this volume. There are pages that seem very very basic. 

Hopefully it's just a glitch.  Meanwhile I'm on tenterhooks about how Kyle can prevent the merge and who the new big bad is that was introduced close to the end of this  volume.

 

Number 65 - Tumor Fruit - Carlton Mellick III

 It has to be said that this has an eye-catching cover. 

Carlton Mellick III is somewhat of a legend in the world of  bizarro fiction. On the strength of this book I completely understand why. 

A flight from earth to a new planet passing close by in the solar system is attacked by strange creatures, causing it to crash into the ocean.  The ocean is highly acidic and melts many of the survivors save for a small number who manage to float to "safety" on the acid-proof life rafts.

The survivors find themselves on an island with very few supplies. The air itself is toxic.  the flora is poisonous and the fauna has a taste for human flesh. Survival may prove to be an issue for the steadily reducing cast. By the time they realise that no rescue is coming, the only source of nutrition they have is the flower like tumors growing on one of the castaways (see cover picture).

I had zero idea what was going to happen next in this book.  Every page brought new surprises almost.  

That can be a good or a bad thing, depending on the skill of the writer.  A bad writer fails to keep any internal logic and the surprises are there for the sake of being shocking.  However, Carlton Mellick III is apparently a pretty damned good writer as everything that happens feels right for the book. He creates an internal logic and flow to the narrative that allows all the weirdness to exist as an organic part of the story. 

It's frequently laugh out loud funny.  It's frequently gross. It's frequently in horribly bad taste. it's frequently all those things at the same time. It's always entertaining. and is surprisingly moving when it wants to be.

This was my first taste of Carlton Mellick's particular brand of lunacy, and I want more of it.