Number 7 - Mr Breakfast - Jonathan Carroll

 

I know my theme for books this month is supposed to be biographies, but a new book by Jonathan Carroll trumps any rules I've set for myself.

Having said that, this doesn't deviate too far from my themed reading.

Biographies are books about lives.  This, although fictional, and fantastical, and magical, is about lives. It's about choices and the paths we go down. It's about what makes a person who they are.

Graham Patterson is, or rather was, a stand up comedian.  He's just realised he wasn't up to it though, and has recently quit. he also recently split with his soulmate and long time love. he's not on a good ebb at the moment.

On a whim he has a tattoo done which turns out not to be the most normal piece of ink ever drawn on someone's arm. As a result of the tattoo, he can now view his different lifelines, lifelines where the things dragging him down never happened. At some point he must choose which of the three lives he wants to live in permanently, at which point the tattoo will vanish and he'll have no memory of the choice.

He soon finds there are other side effects too... but that would be spoilers.

He returns to some old themes from his old books, but from a different perspective. There were definite shades of Black Cocktail in there a few times. There are Easter eggs for many of his previous books.  the Midnight films of Philip Strayhorn ore namechecked.  A character lives in a building designed by the architect lead character from Outside the Dog Museum. the writer from land of Laughs is referenced, we return to Cranes View... and so on.  he's built a full Stephen King type universe where everything is linked.

It's written in Carroll's usual elegant and hugely readable style, filled with observations and philosophical asides that add to rather than distract from the story.  It's totally unpredictable - and after 18 books, the fact that he still blindsides me every time is somewhat astounding - filled with wonder and magic and probably his best book in the last decade at least. I felt a little underwhelmed with the endings of his last two novels, but this one has no such flaws. It deserves a second reading already and would no doubt be equally rewarding, possibly more so.

I loved this unreservedly and I insist you all read it NOW!

It's available from all good booksellers so you have no excuse.

Number 6 - Things The Grandchildren Should Know - Mark Oliver Everett

 

Book 2 in my theme for this month of Biographies, and a massive improvement on the dullness that was the Years.

Mark Everett (aka E) is the son of Hugh Everett III the man who postulated the many-worlds theory of quantum physics. E is also the lead singer of one of my all time favourite bands - Eels.

This book details his life up to and including Eels's 5th album Blinking Lights.

It's a fascinating look into a life packed with more tragedy than you might expect to be possible. Yet E never asks for sympathy from the reader - but this particular reader found myself upset along with him as he described the deaths of his family.

He tells his story in a refreshing, no nonsense way. There are no bells and whistles to the writing.  He just tells us the key moments in his life that formed the man he has become, from his far from perfect childhood, through grief and loss as an adult, and his battle with depression. 

The story behind the writing of Electro Shock Blues was truly heartbreaking and that album has a whole new set of resonances since I read this book.

This is far from a misery memoir though. It's frequently funny and the whole book is shot through with life affirmation and hope for the future.

This was a reread for me. When I first bought it many years ago, i read 70 pages on the bus home from the shops, and finished it the next day.  This time around, I've read it in 2 days again.  It's one of the easiest and fastest reads I know. 

Yet despite the easiness of the reading (and easy reading is hard writing), this book will move you. It will make you laugh. it will make you cry and it will give you hope for your future.

Mark Everett has always written great lyrics.  In this book he proves he's a great writer.

Number 5 - The Years - Annie Ernaux

 

After three GBP books back to back, I needed to read something lowbrow. However my bookgroup[ choice was this. I'm not sure if it was this book that won the Nobel prize, or whether she just won it in general. But it certainly doesn't make for the lowbrow I needed.

This is Annie Ernaux's memoir of her life in France from birth in 1041 do the date of publication in  2006. Alongside her own life she also gives impressions and descriptions of France itself, it's politics and sociological movements.

All in all it could be fascinating, and many people think it is. two members of the book group agree with the quote on the back saying it's the greatest book they've ever read.

Personally, the subject matter didn't strike me intellectually, neither did the style of writing. It's written in a very removed manner. So far removed that there's zero emotional impact to the writing.  Combine that with my lack of intellectual engagement with this book and I found it all just a bit dull. At times it just seems to devolve into list after endless list of things, none of which I found intriguing or engaging.

There are a few books I've reviewed on this blog where I say how much I loved a book, but I could see how and why other people would hate it.  In this case, it's the other way around.  I will never pick up another book that she's written. I was so glad when I finished this.  it was one of those books where, when you put it down, you can't pick it up again. But i understand why other people rate it as highly as they do.

I can appreciate the skill in the writing, the occasional nice turn of phrase, and I understand the point of the book and where she was aiming with the way she wrote it. It just didn't resonate with me. A literary equivalent of "it's not you, it's me".

So, too sum up, skillfully written, but dull (IMHO - many people disagree).

Number 4 - After Sappho - Selby Wynn Schwartz

 

Number three in my Galley beggar Press themed month. There is one (now two) more but ehy may have to wait.

I've had this in my TBR for nearly a year and I have to admit to not being too keen on it from the description.  It really didn't sound like my kind of book - a feminist LGBTQ tract (with emphasis on the L) detailing the lives of assorted early campaigners.

However, it's always good to move out of your comfort zone - one of the reasons I decided to theme books this year, to deliberately force myself to read some I might not have read otherwise.

After the florid writing in the last two books, the return to short sentences and a simple vocabulary was a really welcome change of pace.

This is one of the most eye-opening books  I've read in many many years. Told in short segments, rarely if ever more than one page long (very rarely more than three paragraphs), each segment headed with the relevant name/date/title, it gives us glimpses into the lives of dozens of real life campaigners for women's rights.

With this structure it does feel very bitty, and there's not much of a n obvious central story to hang your attention to. However this doesn't stop it from being an engrossing read throughout. The struggle for recognition is the central character/theme of the book.

Schwartz manages to celebrate the women in the history without blaming ALL men for the problems, just the men in charge. And those women she celebrates had to put up with far more than I ever imagined. The details of the law that meant a man could rape a teen girl and she would be forced to marry him were shocking. Along with this, Schwartz makes it clear how women weren't even citizens of turn of the 20th century Italy (and elsewhere).

The title comes from the unifying factor in the early segments that the women are inspired by the writings of Sappho, and extracts from Sappho's surviving works are scattered throughout. We read of their efforts to emancipate themselves (in some cases through sheer disregard of the rules society expects them to adhere to) from the systems holding them back and the eventual formation of the Bloomsbury Group.

I did have some minor annoyances with this book. The style gets a little grating after a while, and I'm sure I missed a lot of references that any feminist would see a mile away. The writer admits in the text late on that she has deliberately excised any men from the narrative -and even names a few of the allies to the cause that she has removed from the story. The segment that bemoaned the number of women who died in World War 1 was the most annoying part. Not a mention of the generation of young men dying in the fields.  

I suppose male centered histories have erased women's contributions, but is it maybe a little bit petty to not only excise men from the story and then admit to doing it deliberately? 

These are minor quibbles though. This book was so much more than I thought it would be, and has changed my way of thinking on several fronts. On that level, this is a definite success.

Number 3 - My Mind To Me A Kingdom Is - Paul Stanbridge

 

Secomd book in my Galley Beggar Press themed month...

This is an odd one. 

It's a book about distraction. It's about an awfui lot of things, but they're all distractions.

In 2015, Paul Stanbridge's brother hanged himself. This book is a sort of a journal/biography of Paul and his attempts to deal with the loss.

And he does that through distraction.  There are a mountain of facts and figures about a myriad of topics.  It starts off with his research into how and when the Germanic Sea was renamed the North Sea, complete with diagrams and digressions and mini-biogs of noted historical cartographers (also some obscure and hitherto un-noted cartographers).

At the heart of it all is his not wanting to deal with his loss.  The various rabbit holes of research he throws himself into, all the obsessions he creates for himself are shields against his feelings.  The only thing he never researches directly is the suicide that lies at the heart of the book like an unwashed and festering sore.

The style of writing is longwinded, never using one word when an entire lexicographer's toolkit of thesauruses thesaurii) will supply alternative extraneous clauses and sub-clauses to suffice in its place, and run on sentences are common, sometimes taking up entire pages with complex and occasionally almost incomprehensible additional verbiage.

However, this doesn't stop the book from being a fascinating read.  The endless stream of facts and figures and random trivia is really interesting to read. There's something almost soothing about the rhythms of the writing. 

It's possibly a bit too emotionally distanced from the source of his grief. As much as I'm aware how traumatic the event must have been, there was never the palpable sense of loss that I've felt in other books dealing with similar subject matter.

Back to my fist point, it's an odd one. Is it a beautifully written book despite its long-windedness? Yes. Did I enjoy reading it?  Yes. Is it intellectually engaging? Yes. Did it emotionally engage me - I'm not sure.  Probably not.  Would I read it again?  I don't think so. Was it worth reading? A definite yes.

Your mileage may vary. 

2023 Number 1 - Malarkoi - Alex Pheby

 

The first book I started this year, but the second one I finished... These things happen.

This is the first of a themed set of books for this month. I will be doing a few Theme months this year. This month it's Galley Beggar Press books. Expect to see a few more of these understated yet rather handsome black covers.

This is the sequel to Mordew which I read when it came out in November 2020 and I've been waiting impatiently for this ever since, Mordew ended on one hell of a cliffhanger and this has been one of my most highly anticipated books.

It doesn't pick up the action immediately. It starts by recapping the story so far (with some expansions) from the points of view of several of the secondary characters from book 1. It does this for a whole 150 pages until it moves on with the story properly.

It also introduces a lot of complex ideas into the story and it's fair to say that some sections (especially in the recap) were quite confusing.

However, I've never felt so entertained by a novel where I had no idea what was going on as I did in the opening section of this.

Pheby's prose is an absolute delight to read. And when he eventually does move on with the stories of the survivors from the ending of Mordew, the book moves at a cracking pace and it was a struggle to put this down at night.  I've had more 2am finishes where I can barely keep my eyes open and I absolutely have to put the book down with this book than anything I read last year (or the year before).

Imagine if Mervin Peake wrote a high fantasy set in an alternate Earth - possibly far future - with an exceptionally complex magical system, twisted realities, buried dead gods, talking dogs, and bull headed men and human headed snakes thrown in just to add to the general surrealism and you're partway to this book. I genuinely don't think there's anything quite like it.

This is not a standalone novel. You absolutely have to have read Mordew for this to make a lick of sense. I think the character of Nathan's mother might have had a bit of an unplanned retcon in this book, but it's so skillfully done I forgive Alex Pheby completely. 

This is one of those books that will divide opinion. The prose will be too verbose for many, but I love the rhythms of it and the moods he creates. The dark heart of the first book continues to beat through this one. There are character deaths I would never have guessed and that hit me right where it hurts. Some of them may be reversed in the next book, as the magic system does allow for that, but these books are hugely unpredictable.

The ending on this one isn't as much of a hammer blow as the first book's was, but it's a great set up for the final book in the trilogy.  Sadly, I now have possibly another two years before I can read how he's going to tie up all the floating threads.

I'm still annoyed that I never saw the pun in the title of Mordew until it was pointed out at the end of the that book. A city built over the body of a dead god. OK so the pun is in French, but I still should have spotted it. There are a couple of explanations for the title of Malarkoi offered on the final pages. They're not quite as satisfying as the Mordew pun, but amusing enough. 

Edit - after a quick look at the glossary from Mordew, the expansion on the character of Nathan's mother was planned all along and it's my faulty memory that made it seem like she had been retconned for this book. 

2023 Number 1.5 - The Dunnie - Keith Thomas

 

This is number 1.5 not 1 because I found myself with a few hours to kill, book 1 was at home but I had this novella lined up on NetGalley so I could read it on my phone.

Asher is a 12 year old boy going to stay at his senile grandfather's (known to him and his mother as Pa) house till his mother finds a suitable care facility to move Pa to.

In one of Pa's more lucid moments he tells Asher about the thing living in the vents in the walls. It's the Dunnie, and Asher can see it too, Asher also witnesses his Pa dragging a sheep into the house in the middle of the night.to feed it. he's been forgetful lately and its getting hungry. Who knows what or who it's going to eat next...

The ideas in this book are a lot more effective than the the writing. There's a really scary book to be made out of the ideas in this, but this book isn't it.

It's a clever twist on an old Cronenburg movie plot that should have worked much better than it did, 

The main reason for that is the workmanlike prose.  there's no atmosphere built at any stage. Asher doesn't ring quite true as a 12 year old,  Pa's Alzheimer's seems to switch on and off as is convenient for the story and the big finale doesn't feel as dramatic or tense as it should be.

The book starts with three full chapters set more than a decade before the events of the main narrative to give some explanation for later events.  The resulting shift forwards in time, and the switch of central character felt like an awkward leap after three chapters.  Maybe it would have felt less awkward as one long prologue (which is what it actually is), or even inserted as flashback chapters later on... As chapters 1,2 and 3, it felt wrong.

Having said all that, I'm probably overanalysing it. since my actual book 1 is very heavily stylised and in depth, while this is a quick easy read.  I was never bored while I was reading it so it did its job in entertaining me while I was reading it and I can't fault that. At only 120 pages it certainly doesn't outstay its welcome.

If you're looking for a quick and easy read, there's no reason not to go for this. It has some genuinely good scary ideas floating around even if they're not given the oomph they should have. Maybe it should be marketed more as a YA book, then people are more likely to overlook the flaws (I know I would be).

Number 75 - Chasing Spirits - John Llewellyn Probert

 

75 books seems to be a nice figure to end the year on. 

I've reviewed a few of Mr Probert's books so far.  His Dr Valentine books are must reads.  Dr Valentine is one of the most fun serial killers you'll read about.

In this book, we're introduced to John Glory, a screen writer who keeps running into various supernatural entities and finds himself saddled with a reputation as a psychic detective.  Think of an unwilling, unemployed alcoholic British version of Kolchak with a great line in sarcasm and you're pretty close.

There are three stories, all interlinked, and they detail Glory's first three cases.  From the quick throwbacks in the second and third stories to the details of the previous tales, it seems like these may have been published separately at some time and collected here for the first time.  

Glory is a brilliantly funny character.  After the shitty time I've had this week, this book gave me the first good laugh I've had in days.

It's only short. Each story is only about 40 pages and I blasted through each of them in no time. 

If you need a quick and easy read, with a sick sense of humour and the occasional bit of gore thrown in for good measure, this is ideal.

I still want to know what the rude mnemonic for the external branches of the carotid artery is though.  

This has been a great last book to wind the year up with.  I have his other new book - How Grim was ny Valley positioned very high up in the TBR for early next year.

Number 74 - A refrigerator full of heads - Rio Youers et al

 

This is the follow up to Jo Hill's rather fun A Basketful of Heads from a couple of years back.

The story of basketful of heads revolved around an ancient Norse axe that left its victims still alive and able to talk regardless of how many pieces they happened to be in.  Given that our plucky heroine had a tendency to aim for the neck, she managed to solve the mystery around her with an ever growing collection of talking heads in a basket.

The axe is back again in this equally fun follow up. This manages to increase the insanity levels by a factor of 10 with the introduction of three more weapons, a dagger, a sword and a belt, each with their own powers which I'll not spoil for you.

There's a much bigger head count, necessitating the titular fridge for storage. It's not just humans that get chopped either. 

There are bad guys trying to collect the full set, and they'll stop at nothing to get it. 

This is big, daft, gory, violent and totally unnecessary. I loved it. 

Number 73 - Billy Summers - Stephen King

 

No it's not horror.  Get over it.

Yes King is still a horror writer, even if he does branch out.

OK, mini rant nearly over with.  I hate when people complain that King has written something other than a flat out horror novel or that he's not a horror writer any more.

He can write what he wants to.  He doesn't owe any readers anything. As long as he keeps up his regular standards, that's all we should expect.

This is a crime novel  An assassin for hire on his "one last job" that goes horribly wrong. King even mentions very early on how the "one last job" is practically a sub-genre of its own. And his contribution to the sub genre is vintage King.

Billy Summers only kills bad people. he's known for his ability to blend in, get the job done and escape into the shadows. He wants to retire but the offer of $2m is too much to resist so he takes the infamous one last job. 

Once on the job, waiting in his temporary assumed identity, he suspects that something is not quite right on this one. After the hit, things turn bad quickly and he finds himself evading justice and his ex employers and seeking vengeance on a very bad man indeed. 

This is a book of two halves.  The first half leading up to the hit, and the second half is the fallout. He finds himself teamed up with an unexpected companion and the second half is part buddy movie (with a difference) along with the revenge story.

As per usual, King takes his sweet time in telling the story. He builds the characters and their relationships intricately and convincingly.  By the end of the book we know nearly all there is to know about the eponymous Billy. There are emotional highs and lows throughout and we (this reader for definite) really want him to succeed with his shot at redemption.

Despite the genre, this is unmistakably Stephen King, and (as previously mentioned) vintage King at that. The plot unfurls at a leisurely pace and picks up momentum as it goes.  It's a challenge to put the book down for any reason in the last 150 pages.

There's a nice couple of Easter Eggs for the constant readers, with some non-too-subtle references to other King novels.

If you like King's writing, you'll like this. I like him.  I have 70 of his books on my shelves. and this ranks in with the best of them.

Number 73 - The Summer Book - Tove Jansson

 

I can't think of a more appropriate book to read during the recent bout of minus 6 degree weather. This month's book group book and one I was looking forward to.

I knew Tove Jansson from the Moomins. One of my most magical memories from childhood was the Moomins on TV. I was a bookworm even back in those days and no doubt will have read any of the books that were available.

Sadly, I just didn't particularly like this book. It's not badly written. The prose is actually very good. It's lyrical and poetic and all very nice. It's just not very interesting to this reader.

It's not what I would call a novel.  It's a series of very short anecdotes about a little girl and her Grandmother living on an island off the coast of Norway in the summer months. There's no single story, no real continuity, not even any call backs to previous events. It all feels very choppy and episodic.

It's all very prettily written and lots of metaphors for life happen to the characters and it's all very meaningful and lovely. It has a deep ecological message from well before such things were fashionable. But this is one book where I have to admit that it wasn't written for me. 

Sophia doesn't always ring true as a character. She's a preteen child but has chapters where she talks like a university lecturer. 

For such a short book it took me a week to read it.  I think if it had been close to 200 pages I would have given up. For all the nice writing, it's just too cloying and sentimental. There are a few laughs, but few and far between for me and the book never hooked my interest or made me care for Sophia or her Grandmother. 

Number 71 - Holy Ghost Road - John Mantooth

 

This was a NetGalley read and another brand new author for me.

Some books take their time in establishing a setting and the characters and the plot will slowly develop as the location etc become clearer.

This doesn't. we're plunged into the action on page one and it never lets up.

When we meet our central character Forest, she's on the run. She needs to get to her Gran's house.  her Gran can help her, she always has done in the past. Surely her dreamwalking powers will save Forest now. What is she running from? She's not sure herself.  It's scary though. It has something to do with the strange preacher Nesmith who has an uncanny influence on everyone in the county, and indeed has shacked up with Forest's mother.

The only thing worse than Nesmith, is his sister Ruby Jewel, a blind old woman who still seems more alert and aware than any human should be. Or maybe the goat-headed thing that is following Nesmith as he searches for Forest to deliver her into a fate possibly worse than death.

Together with a friend she meets on her dangerous run, Forest must travel the Holy Ghost Road to her Granny's house and her only hope of salvation.

This is gorgeously written southern-gothic horror. The atmosphere of dread and mystery is sustained through every word of the book. 

There are familiar elements to the story but they feel fresh under Mantooth's restrained prose and perfectly nuanced storytelling. 

There are layers upon layers to the story and this will certainly reward a reread sometime. There are dark themes running through the book, loss and grief, the negative side of family, the power of belief vs logic.  These make for a compelling coming of age story as Forest travels her own spiritual journey as well as the grueling physical trek down the eponymous highway.  All the while she needs to avoid the grasps of the villainous trio who dog her footsteps the whole distance.

I will certainly be buying a physical copy of this for my reread, whenever that might happen. Mantooth is a major talent. By all the gods and demons, he can spin a damned scary yarn.

Number 70 - Free Country, A Tale of the Children's Crusade

 

This is the book I needed to buy after the incomplete story in the big Books of Magic omnibus.

The story in that book told how Timmy was persuaded to travel to the Free Country, which was part of a big Vertigo Comics crossover event in the early 90s. 

This book follows the Dead Boy Detectives as they investigate the disappearance of an entire village worth of children. As well as this village of missing children, all the children of power are being kidnapped from our world too. there is a dastardly plan in action and only the two dead children have any inkling that anything untoward is happening.

Eventually they cross paths with Tim and all the plotlines are resolved satisfactorily. 

There are a whole host of writers and artists in the mix here. Surprisingly it still makes for a coherent and consistent experience, both in terms of artwork and writing.

This is partly due to some story tinkering that Gaiman talks about in the introduction. We don't get the full details of all the kidnappings, or indeed three of the children of power being returned to the real world. these were  details that were fleshed out in the individual issues of the assorted comics at the time. It seems a shame that more of those details weren't incorporated here, but I suppose pages were limited. there is still a feeling of incompleteness left behind though.

What remains of the story (including a new middle section, written specifically for this volume) is still very good and thought provoking. There are some disturbing concepts flying around and the identity of the true villain surprised me, even though it was more than signposted from fairly early on (plus I think I probably read the comics beck in the day so it's doubly annoying).

It's a good and entertaining read, and made me realise that my first experience of reading Toby Litt was several years earlier than I thought...

Number 70 - The Ladybird book of the Zombie Apocalypse

 After the Alice Sebold, I needed a palate cleanser.

This was ideal.  Short, pithy, masterful understatement in the humour. The first page suggests that, in a zombie apocalypse, there's a chance that shops may offer reduced services and stock. That's the level of the humour here and I liked it a lot.

Anyone who grew up with the old Ladybird Books will recognise the format and style of this one. Every page is accompanied by a picture in the style of, or taken from, an old Ladybird book, but with horribly inappropriate text on the page opposite. As pisstakes go, this is really quite effective. 

It kills 10 minutes easily enough. 20 if  you stop to examine the pictures in detail.

Nothing more to say- it was only 20 pages of text.

Number 68 - Lucky - Alice Sebold

I try to read at least one biography a year to shake things up a little. I realised I was nearly in December and hadn't read one yet so I grabbed this one off my shelves where it's been sat for many many moons.

When Alice Sebold was a student, she was viciously attacked in a local park. The attack formed the basis of The Lovely Bones. However, while she was writing that book, she realised she needed to put the true story out there as well and she stopped her work on The Lovely Bones to write this.

I have to say that this was a very difficult read. Not because of the prose, the language used is clear and concise, with no flourishes.  It couldn't be easier to read on that level. Indeed, it's a compulsive read on that level.

What makes it difficult is the subject matter. As previously mentioned, this is about a violent sexual attack and its aftermath.

The attack is described in vivid detail with nothing left to the imagination. She keeps the writing cool and dispassionate. This makes the horror of what happened to her so much more acute.

The rest of the book deals with the aftermath, including family and friend reactions (none of which are good enough or can be), the trial and conviction of the rapist, and a seeringly honest description of her life with PTSD even after her allegedly successful outcome of the story.

It's a long time since a book put me through the emotional threshing machine quite as much as this one did. Her description of the trial made me physically angry and the cross examination she was given regarding her identifying her attacker - particularly since they had samples of his hair in evidence which proved it was him almost beyond doubt. At the end of the trial chapters I had to put the book down and cry.

Thankfully, there is a thread of hope running through the book, or this would have been a truly unbearable read. As it is, this is emotionally tough, but compulsive and one of the most heartfelt biographies I've had the "pleasure" of reading.

I can't recommend this book too highly. It doesn't come across as a misery memoir.  It's far too well written for that. There's nothing sensationalised about any of the details of her life. It's a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Number 67 - The Grave - Charles L Grant

 Charles Grant is one of a handful of writers for whom I own 50 plus books. This is one of his earlier books but one of the more recent additions to my shelves.

It's an Oxrun Station novel. Oxrun Station is the Charlie Grant version of King's Castle Rock or Derry, a small town in the USA where weird things happen. (I just checked the dates and castle Rock does predate Oxrun so i do have it the right way around)

Personally, I think I'd prefer to live in Castle Rock because it's not as creepy. Pennywise would probably be too scared to live there to be honest.

You can normally depend on Grant to build a weird and dreamlike atmosphere where reality is debatable. This book is no exception.

Josh Miller is an investigator in Oxrun Station.  he specialises in finding weird and rare objects for people (this was before the days of Google and EBay). While he's out searching for his latest assigned item, he finds the police at the site of a nasty car crash. One of the occupants of the car has vanished, leaving his arm behind, but not even a trail of blood. 

This is the first in a sequence of events that lead Josh to realise he's being followed by something not quite natural. 

As per normal for Grant, he takes his time building up the atmosphere. Every chapter ends on a minor cliffhanger (sometimes quite a major one), so I did a lot of finishing reading mid-page in this book, at a point where I didn't feel I needed to keep going.

Some aspects of this book do feel a bit dated. Josh is very sexist as a boss by today's standards. But this book wasn't written now so it's a much better reflection of the time it was written than any bowlderised vision of it would be. I do feel it's important to look at when a book was written before you criticise, and, by the standards of the time, Josh is a nice guy.

There are a number of other disappearances before the end of the book, and a lot of weirdness that josh has to face. 

I loved that the supernatural is the last thing to occur to him as an explanation for the increasing weirdness.  it grounded the character in reality much more.

The final chapters in this book contain some of the most concentrated horror I've read from Grant. Almost from when we discover the reason for the book's title up until the conclusion, the pace never lets up. Josh's reality is fracturing, and we have no idea if he's going to actually survive to the end of the book. 

The sense of his disintegrating mental state is palpable. His fear radiates from the page. 

I will admit that I figured out what was going on fairly early, but that increased the tension in the final sequence because I knew what he was walking into even if he didn't.

If you can track down a copy of this, do it. The prose is dripping in atmosphere. There's a constant sense of unease that's almost unmatched in modern horror fiction. Whilst his plotting wasn't always the strongest, at his best he was one of the scariest writers out there. Considering the lack of overt violence in any of his books, that's a hell of an achievement. 

This book is a great example of what he was capable of. the set pieces are genuinely scary and the final act is up there with the best he's written.

Number 66 - The Books of Magic Vol 1 - John Ney Reiber + artists

 It'a a complicated thing to try to collect the Books of magic graphic novels. There's a newish iteration which pops up with similar names to the original series every time you search the assorted book sites.

To make it easy i went for this omnibus which contains the first two years of John Ney Reiber's version of the story.

This of course also contains the storyline I read not too long ago, but being a graphic novel, the reread doesn't take too long.

One thing that becomes very clear when reading this number of the stories back-to-back is how often Tim doesn't need to do anything because a protector he doesn't know he has will pop up and save the day on his behalf. He becomes a very passive character in his own story.

The protectors vary from a unicorn he accidentally revived, to the wife and child of a chained-up angel, to a demonically controlled future version of himself to his childhood imaginary friends come to life. 

It's never less than entertaining and there is a great imagination on display, but I found myself wanting Tim to be a more active feature of the plot. It's very rare he does anything for himself.

That said, he does help other people semi-regularly, in particular his Dad and a succubus who moves in next door. 

There's also a prologue i hadn't read before from a crossover event called the Children's crusade that happened in the 90s at vertigo comics.  Unfortunately, it only contains one section of that story and tells the reader that his voyage back from the land he was transported to can only be read by buying another graphic novel (which I have done, but under duress).

It's fairly weird reading this now, when the "future" version of Tim Hunter lives in the year 2012... It really hammers home how old I am since I used to have the original comics when they came out.

I will be seeking out volume 2 rather than trying to figure out which of the individual storyline graphic novels I need to buy.

Nuber 65 - Lost boy Lost Girl - Pater Straub

 

I had only ever read Straub's rather good collaborations with Stephen king - Talisman and Black House - and had never read any of Straub's solo works. When he sadly passed away earlier this year, I thought it was time to fix that and recommended this for the book group's Halloween read.

He's such a well-respected author in the field, what could go wrong? 

Sadly, this choice of book did. I hope it's one of his lesser works, because I didn't find much to enjoy in this at all. The story starts when Tim Underhill, a writer of horror fiction, visits his brother for the sad occasion of his sister-in-law's funeral after her sudden death. 

There are a number of disappearances happening in the town.  Teenaged boys have been vanishing, never to be seen again. 

Eight days after the funeral, Tim's nephew Mark joins the list of the missing.

This has the potential to be a good story, but I found the pacing, the structure and the plotting let the whole thing down.

It hops randomly through the timeline. I normally don't mind a bit of back and forwards, but it needs to make sense to the storytelling. This starts with Tim travelling back to his old hometown, a couple of chapters in, it jumps in mid chapter, via Tim's journal, to 9 days later where he's travelling back to the town after receiving news of Mark's disappearance. The next chapter, we're back at the funeral of the SIL. A few chapters later, we're following Mark in the week before his mother's death. then it's the day before his mother's death mid chapter, then in the next chapter we're back to a week before her death. 

When it settles down, we get what starts as an interesting storyline about Mark's obsession with a creepy old house on a parallel street that backs onto his house. This part is possibly the best section of the book.

However, we soon jump back to after his disappearance again, and the rest of the book flips randomly.  The timelines seem all messed up too.  There's supposed to be 8 days between his mother's death and mark's disappearance, yet he and his friend seem to spend about two weeks and more before mark stumbles upon at least one of the house's dark secrets.

One of the creepiest things about the book for me was the number of times Tim, the narrator of the book, refers to his 15-year-old nephew's good looks.  Every single time he refers to Mark, the word beautiful, or a close synonym, will appear. I got the message that Tim thought his nephew was beautiful first time he said it, I didn't need the other 3987 references to it.

Another structural deficit is the way the book switches from third person to first person quite randomly. The segments from Tim's journal make sense, but in other places, suddenly a paragraph will be full of I's instead of he's.  This is in sections of third person narrative where Tim is referred to as Tim or he.  Then suddenly he remembers he's the narrator and says I.  And it's jarring. it makes no narrative point or sense.

Tim's reaction to his nephew's fate seems at odds with his character. Mark's fate, if we take it at face value from the book, is all kinds of icky and not in a good way. Tim's brother is allowed throughout to be a horrible racist and is never pulled up on it by any of the supposed nice people around him.

The style of writing, whilst it does have its inconsistencies, is always easily readable and grammatical.  One member of the book group said it was a page turner. that's probably the best I can find to say about it.

I went into this book with very high expectations and was hugely disappointed.  Maybe if I hadn't read it immediately after Foulsham I might have been more forgiving of it. 

This is one book that's getting donated to a charity shop rather than going back on my shelves.  I'm willing to try another of his books that I have on my shelves, since this had faint glimmers of quality. But this particular book rates a measly 4 out of 10 for me. 

Number 64 - Foulsham - Edward Carey

 The sequel to Heap House which i read at about this time last year, and sent me on a quest for as many of Carey's books as I could find. Warning - discussion of the plot on this book will give spoilers for book 1.

I'll say now that this is even better than Heap House, but you will need to read Heap House for this to make any sense at all. The world built in these books is truly unique. The starting point of this story would just seem very silly indeed if you hadn't read the first book. 

Heap House was a definite highlight of last year and this is almost certainly in my top 3 of the year this year.  it might even be at the number one spot.

I thought there was no such thing as a new story, but Edward Carey has proved me very wrong indeed. I can't think of anything similar to this series in anything I've read. 

It's 1876. Victoria is on the throne of England. The Iremonger family in Heap House are responsible for dealing with all the rubbish London produces. 

Foulsham is the London borough closest to Heap House. At the end of book one, Clod Iremonger was very different indeed and his object, James Henry Hayward, was human again.  Likewise, Lucy Pennant had changed and been thrown out onto the heaps to vanish amongst the rubbish.

Can they regain their humanity? Literally.

Can they avoid the ire of the Iremonger family?

Why are the heaps rising up and threatening to swamp the town?

What is the cause of the illness flooding the town and causing people to change?

All these questions and more might be answered in this book.

I can't remember any book this year so far that had this same effect on me. Not a chapter went by without a new shock or twist or mind-bending turn of phrase that made my jaw drop. It gives a whole new meaning to money talks.  Also to the phrase "he has a way with things". I would expand on those pointsbut... spoilers. 

This might be YA fiction, but it's the single most original and exciting piece of writing I've seen in years. The illustrations are pitch perfect and add another layer of surrealism to the proceedings. 

He expands on the history of the family and their relationship to the town, introducing new members of the family and new dangers. Characters who were briefly mentioned in book one come to centre stage here and form their own threats or alliances with our heroic leads.

It's all just brilliant.  This is as close to flawless as writing gets. Everyone needs to read this series. It's surreal, it's funny, it's exciting, it's disturbing. It's just amzing.

Read it.  it's brilliant!

Number 63 - The Dismembered - Jonathan Janz

 

I was sent a preview copy of this by the publishers in exchange for a fair review.

I'd never heard of Jonathan Janz before, but this sounded like good fun.  And by God I was right.

This is a grand guignol gothic novel with a more modern sensibility. Imagine if Edgar Poe hadn't been constrained by the mores of his time and had written a balls-to-the-floor all action-adventure novel packed with gore, gratuitous violence and occasional sex and you're pretty close to this book.

Written in a very good imitation of the gothic style, this tells the story of American writer Arthur Pearce, who encounters a beautiful young woman called Sarah Coyle on a train through rural England. He rescues her from an attempted assault and accepts an invitation to her stately home to assist her further.  Her younger sister, Violet, has been betrothed to a man she believes to be evil and possibly not completely human, and she thinks Arthur is just the man to help break his hold on her innocent younger sister. 

When he accompanies the family, including the third sister, the beguiling Elizabeth, to the castle of the dastardly Count Dunning, the action kicks in and the pace doesn't let up until the end of the book.

There are gruesome murders, shocking twists, surprise betrayals and excessive violence galore for the last two thirds of the book. One more thing that marks this as different to the books it pays tribute to is the fact that the women are not helpless young creatures who need to be saved by the big strong handsome hero. They're strong, independent and just as likely to help save the day as young Arthur.

I don't know if this is Janz's normal style of writing, but it works brilliantly. It genuinely reads like a gothic novel of the era, especially in the first third where the situation is set up. When all hell breaks loose in the last 60 odd percent, it somehow manages to keep the feel of the gothic style, whilst delivering some decidedly modern style violence.

 I've had a great time reading this and will be procuring a real copy when it's properly released. 

This is released in the very near future and can be purchased through the Cemetery dance website.