Number 83- Tales from the Cafe- Toshikazu Kawaguchi

 Book two in this series translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Chousselot is more of the same as the first volume.

In a strange little café in the back streets of Tokyo, you can travel back in time, with limitations. You have to wait for the ghost in the corner seat to go to the toilet. You take her seat and when the waitress pours your coffee you will travel back to the time you need to go to.  Once you're there, you cannot leave the seat, nothing you do in the past will change the future, and you can only stay until the coffee gets cold. If you fail to drink the coffee in the allotted time, an unspecified bad thing happens, which almost certainly involves death.

The regular cast from the first book are still running the café but we're now 7 years after book one and the young daughter of the now deceased owner (whose story is the last novella in book one) is now a regular.

We find out more about the ghost in this book and her link to one of the staff.  There seems to be a fairly strong continuity building now and I'm expecting to learn even more about her in book 3.

Slipping back into the world of Funicili Funicula (the café) feels like greeting an old friend you've not seen for ages- coincidentally something that happens in every story. There's a soothing feel to the writing and the whole thing moves at a nice relaxing pace.

I'm sure  how memorable these books will prove to be. The themes are quite repetitious and everyone who sits in the chair has the rules explained by the coffee pourer. This is never skipped in the narration so the same text appears almost word for word in each story.

That's a minor quibble though as these are excellent palate cleansers and well worth the read. There's nothing big or exciting going to happen. These are small scale human dramas. intimately told. It's feel good fiction tinged with some human tragedies at the heart of each story, yet each one ends on a hopeful beat.

If you want a soothing read, I can't think of anything I'd recommend before these. It's the literary equivalent of soaking in a hot bath after a long hard day at work.

Number 82- Playing Possum - Stephanie Rabig

 

Another book that was created to match a cover drawn by Keelan Patrick Burke featuring an unlikely killer beast. The first of these was The Roo- which was my introduction to Alan Baxter, who is now one of my go-to writers. There's a third book called The Cassowary which is also on my shelves. The proceeds from all three go to the World Wildlife Fund which is as good a reason as any to buy these books.

Sadly in this case it's the best reason to buy it. Despite loving the first chapter, which features one of the best shreddies I've seen for a while in a horror novel, the rest of the book doesn't quite work for me.

The storyline is truly bonkers and should be right up my street. The possums in a small town have gone berserk and started eating people. Those fortunate enough to survive an attack find themselves mutating into human sized possums and going on the warpath themselves.

There are some good set pieces scattered through the book and some laugh out loud funny moments so it isn't a total loss.

The characters just never really came alive for me. I know in the scy-fy channel movies that this book seeks to emulate, the characters are not alllowed more than one dimension, and cardboard cutout is a generous description, but other than Vanessa- the hero of the hour, the characters in this struggle to even gain one dimension to make us care about them. 

The prose is very basic too and didn't drag this particular reader through the book the way it should have done. 

There wasn't enough possum action. With the lack-lustre characters there needed to be more possum mayhem, and less personal relationship issues. Basically, a few more shreddies would have really lifted this up to a good fun and silly read. Instead it was more silly and less fun.

It's worth reading, but I would struggle to score this more than 5/10.

Number 81- A God In ruins- Kate Atkinson

 The last Kate Atkinson novel I read was a detective type story where one of the characters was introduced with the words “Character name had never harmed a living thing in his life”- or words to that effect.  One thing was certain, this guy was harmless and had never hurt anyone or anything.  At the end of the book, we found out that, previous to the events of the book and his introduction, he had once accidentally killed a Russian lady of the night and thrown her off a hotel balcony into a skip. Although it was an enjoyable read, such a lack of attention to detail in the writing put me off her books somewhat.

This book is entirely different.  It tells the life of Edward "Teddy" Todd, a WWII bomber pilot, from his early childhood to his death in the early 21st century.

Teddy is apparently the younger brother of the lead character in Life After Life, but, as far as I can tell, it doesn't impact on this story. This was my book group read and those who'd read both books made no mention of any Easter eggs between the novels.

The title is derived a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson which defines a man as a God In Ruins.  

The story took a bit of getting into due to the constant time leaps. Even in the first chapter, which deals with Teddy's childhood, there are references to his life as a pilot, as a 50 something and a pensioner. This made it quite hard to follow for several chapters until the characters were properly established and all the time periods were fixed in my head.

Ted and his family become very real characters. I found myself totally absorbed into the intricacies of his life.  I hated his daughter Viola and had endless sympathy for poor misunderstood Sunny, who only had his grandad on his side.

The final chapter created a huge split in the book group. Half hated it and the rest loved it.  I was definitely in the loved it group.  

The style of writing, once I'd tuned into the time periods and characters, was compelling. There are some gorgeous sections of the book, some heartbreaking sequences, and thrilling accounts of the bomber raids teddy flew on in the war.

This has changed my opinion of Kate Atkinson after the annoying errors in the other book of hers I've read. I will be seeking out a copy of Life after Life to find out more about Ursula and her many lives...

Number 79/80- Monstress Vol 8 & Descender Vol 1

 

I really should have reread the end of volume 7 before I picked this one up as I found it a bit confusing for the first section.

The artwork is stunning as usual, and the storyline continues to expand. this book is set in the one place the being Maika shares her existence with fears.  The Prison world where its brethren have been held for millennia.

All the usual comments apply about this series.  Now I have to wait a year for the next volume again.  I'll probably do a quick reread of the whole thing before that though.

 And a new series for me from the writer of the rather magnificently mind-bending Gideon Falls.

This is set in a distant future, a decade after planet sized robots called Harvesters wiped out swathes of the population of the galaxy before disappearing. Since then robots are not trusted and destroyed by many factions. 

The old question of at which point does genuine AI become it's own individual being raises its philosophical head in this one.

A child companion robot named Tim-21 wakes on a mining colony, alone except for a mining robot and a robot dog.  The family he was ensconced with are long dead from a gas leak that killed all the organic life on the station.

When Tim connects to the Base computers the rest of the galaxy is advised of his existence.  This is bad news, since the roots of the Harvesters machine code is apparently contained in Tim's circuitry.  Thus he becomes a highly sought prize for many organisations. 

There are twists and turns I did not see coming, and Tim-21 is an intriguing protagonist so far.  His robot companions are amusing and the human cast is a good mix of flawed and vulnerable. 

The whole thing is gorgeously drawn by Dustin Nguyen.  I will be searching out the other volumes ASAP as well as the sequel series Ascender.

Despite the vast differences in approach and look, there are some thematic links running through these books. Both feature incredible detailed world building and a central character with the key to immense danger built into their DNA/Circuitry (whether figuratively or literally in the narrative).

Number 77- the Kindness - Jon Ajvide Lindqvist

Ever since I read let The Right One In all those years ago, Lindqvist has been one of those writers whose books jump to the top of the TBR as soon as I can get my grubby paws on them.

Therefore, when I found out about this I was rather excited. 800 pages of Lindqvist goodness! Look at the thickness in that second picture. And that cover is so clever. A shipping container drawn from the angle to make it look like a coffin. very apt when you look at the plot.

A shipping container is found on the shore of a Swedish town with a long, complicated name. Inside the container are the bodies of 28 refugees... and something else.  Something that gets into the river and pollutes the town with fear and malice. 

We follow 6 characters as they try to live their best lives while the town (and their psyches) are sullied by the strange presence in the water.

This being Lindqvist, the people portraits he paints with his words are almost perfect.  We know these people, warts and all. With nearly double his usual word length we have plenty of time to get to know them. 

There's something missing from the book though.

In all his previous works, there is an abundance of incident.  There are set pieces that will disturb and shock you.  In 800 pages, he barely does that.

There is a distinct atmosphere of building threats, and sequences in this are very tense indeed. But there doesn't seem to be much payoff at any point. Lots of build up, and no release. It doesn't deliver on the majority of the drama it promises. The vast majority of the violence happening in the town happens off screen and our protagonists learn of it second hand. 

There are a couple of cutaways to the interior of the container before it was dumped which are truly horrific, with a graphic depiction of the inhabitants as they turn on each other and hope dies screaming around them.

Other than that, probably the two most shocking scenes happen to a minor character who doesn't appear till nearly 600 pages in,

Even the big finale feels a bit pat and all sorted far too easily.

There are a couple of really strange chapters written in first person that don't seem to add much overall except for pointless surrealism.

That's not to say that it's all bad. I enjoyed reading it throughout. The characters are beautifully drawn. The whole town feels real (even if I did find myself glossing over unpronounceable street names  so never quite got a grasp on the geography of the place).  I wanted to know what happened next.  He never took the plot in quite the direction it seemed to be heading (a good thing sometimes, but in this case, not always). The feeling of dread he creates is palpable.  It just didn't go anywhere and it all sort of fizzles out with the very disappointing ending..

It's mostly very good, and occasionally great for 770 pages or so... then he puts that ending on. The crescendo he seemed to be building towards was more of a kazoo squawk that spoilt the whole symphony. 

If this was my first Lindqvist, I would think twice about buying another. 

I'm not sure if this has just lost something in translation but it was a definite let down by his usual high standards.

Bonus review - Number 78 - the Worst Breakfast- China Mieville and Zak Smith

China Mieville wrote a nonsense poem about a bad breakfast, and it was illustrated rather coarsely by Smith.

Probably fun for the age group it's intended for.  It raised a wry smile from me a couple of times, but I really didn't like the artwork.  Even for a children's book it's messy and a bit incoherent.

Buying books like this is the worst part of being a completist on authors I really like...

Number 76- Wrecker - Carl Hiaasen

 

I seem to have inadvertently stumbled into a theme of writers not using their usual writing style. First the Mieville graphic novel, then the Thomson going all Cormac on us… and now this. Carl Hiaasen writing in the present tense.

This is one of his young adult books- you can always tell from the one-word titles. All his novels for the more mature reader (that sounds less dodgy than adult novels) have two-word titles.

Wrecker – aka Valdez Jones VIII- is a troubled teen living in Florida. He calls himself Wrecker because the original Valdez Jones used to dive down to shipwrecks for salvage in the last but one century. His dad is a waster who walked out on the family to try to start a music career. He doesn’t get on with his stepfather for several reasons so he lives with his older sister, an eco-warrior campaigning against large cruise ships being allowed back into the bay. For extra money he cleans iguana droppings from a grave in a nearby cemetery. For relaxation he goes out fishing in his skiff.

It's while he’s out on the skiff that he runs into a motorboat stranded on a sandbank. The occupants are not the type of people you want to get involved with, but this chance meeting is he start of a whole new set of troubles for young Wrecker. He soon finds himself increasingly entangled in the smuggler’s nasty business. Can he find a way to extricate himself with all his limbs and his potential future intact?

Set during the pandemic, and with a very strong pro vaccination stance taken by most of the protagonists, and a sub-plot about the historical lynching of a local man, this book has actually been banned from several school libraries in Florida, and Hiaasen found several of his scheduled publicity stops on his book tour cancelled.

Personally I thought it was a fun romp like all his books and the fact that it's wound up the stupid people is a bonus.

The characters are as well drawn as ever.  Wrecker and his family and potential girlfriend are a good set of protagonists.  The villains are suitably villainous If the ending isn't entirely convincing for me, that's because it's YA and slightly simplified so I can live with that too.

It's a lightweight read (unless you're the type that gets angry when people point out that Covid is a nasty illness) but I wasn't over-convinced by the writing style.

As previously mentioned it's in present tense.  Normally this doesn't bother me, but in this book it doesn't quite work. As with all his books, he tells more than 50% of it in flashback. The flashbacks are in traditional past tense, and when it suddenly switches back to present tense for the current sections of the story, it grates. Not enough to make me stop reading or anything, just enough to pull me out of the story every time it happened. This means it's a less satisfying read than most of his books.

But it's pissed off the people who deserve to be pissed off. That earns it more points in my eyes.

Not available in the UK yet, unless you order it from the States. Well worth seeking out.

Number 75 - Dartmouth Park - Rupert Thomson

 A new novel by Rupert Thomson is always straight to the top of my TBR pile

This one came out about two weeks ago and naturally displaced pretty much everything else

Phillip Notman is a historian, married with a troubled teenage son 

On his way home from a conference in Norway, he suffers a massive sensory overload leading to a bout of nausea

 This is the spark for a mid life crisis that sees him travelling across Europe in search of his purpose

This may not sound like the most enticing plotline, and I'll be honest, if this was anyone other than Rupert Thomson I might well have put the book back on the shelf when I saw the plot description 

However, if Thomson published his shopping list I would probably buy it

 This man normally writes the coolest most lucid prose packed with Bon Mots that you'll experience

You're guaranteed a hypnotic read regardless of the storyline

In this one, he's gone all Cormac McCarthy on us and eschewed regular punctuation

Other than question marks, apostrophes and commas, there's none to be seen

Especially full stops

There isn't one in the entire book

As a result, every sentence is its own paragraph

This changes the flow of how you read it in a way I find very difficult to pin down

It works though, and this was an incredible read, leading me into the deepest recesses of Phillips psyche, the lack of punctuation accentuating his broken link with reality as he hops around Europe 

When he works out what he thinks his purpose is, this ceases to be a mere travelogue of a middle aged man and turns into something much darker

Phillip is not a likeable character. however his story is compelling due to Thomson's immaculate writing

He is totally self-centred and frustrating- particularly in the way he treats his poor family- but while I could rarely sympathise with him, I needed to know where the story was going next

His breakdown is meticulously documented, like watching a train crash in slow motion

Even his appalling treatment of his family is one more symptom of his increased dislocation

Ironically for a book about dislocation, the sense of location from the various places he visits on his personal odyssey is beautifully done and you can almost smell the various haunts and taste the Ouzo

There isn't much in the way of action, rather action that doesn't happen, but this is a character driven narrative

I loved it

Every word and sentence fragment

Through Phillip's plight we get to see the world anew and so many of its faults

And he might have a genuine point with many of them

How did our reality become what it has? 

How can we stay rational beings in an irrational world?

By the end, I might not have agreed with his plans but I understood why he felt the need

And that was quite a disturbing thing to realise

This is in some ways a companion piece with Katherine Carlyle

In both books, the central characters take off on travels to find who they really are

In both books, Thomson is playing stylistic tricks with his prose

And both books feel almost hallucinatory in the details

Available in all good bookshops, grab yourself a copy

Number 74 - Dial H - China Mieville & Mateus Santolouco

 

A China Mieville book I never knew existed.

This was a short lived reboot of a silver age character during the New 52 era at DC comics.

Fat schlub Nelson Jent is not a hero in any sense of the word.  However, when he stumbles on a friend being attacked and tries to dial for help on an old payphone, he's transformed into Boy Chimney- a frankly terrifying warrior for the forces of good.

It's a short lived change and he finds himself back to his usual shape after dispatching the bad guys. Next time he dials he becomes Captain Lachrymose...

He discovers that any time he dials the word HERO on the old phone, he transforms into a random hero, sometimes with great powers, sometimes not quite so great. He also runs into another dial user who calls herself Manteau and wears a mask over her various manifestations.

When not superheroing with her dial, she's actually a little old woman.

The scene is set for one of the weirder products of the DC factory.

The fact that the two leads are an elderly woman and a fat slob is more than a little refreshing. The storylines are surreal to say the least. The first big villain they fight has powers over nothingness. Another villain has the ability to manifest his past and immediate future selves which leads to some of the most remarkable artwork concepts I've seen in comics.

China Mieville's script starts off very sharp and occasionally hilariously funny, but the final issues seem to lose the focus somewhat.  it could be that he had to wrap things up faster than intended and the the ending is somewhat confusing and extremely meta. 

The artwork is remarkable throughout and perfectly complements the weirdness of Mieville's concepts.

I know nothing about the original Dial H comics except that they were apparently just a goofy excuse to create the weirdest superpowers they could without having to create permanent storylines around them. Mieville, in the second half of the book, creates a history and explanations for the Dials and how and why they work- also throwing in more than one type of dial for that extra bit of variety.

It's a fun way to kill an hour or two and the artwork bears up to close inspection and is worth the cost of the book all by itself. If it gets a bit silly near the end, that's forgivable. 

Number 72 - Octoberland- Thana Niveau

 

I didn't realise quite how well the backdrop matched the top of the book when I took that picture.

This is a collection of short stories by the rather wonderful Thana Niveau- aka Kate Probert. I've met her a couple of times in real life and she's one of the loveliest people you could meet.

However, she writes some nasty horror stories. In a good way. This collection showcases just how versatile a writer she is.

The horrors in here range from Bradburyesque weirdness by suggestion, to extreme Lovecraftian weirdness, to full on gore. And they all work!

There's not a weak story in this collection, and it's a big one- 25 stories and over 300 pages. That makes doing a write up slightly awkward.  I'll just have to pick a handful almost at random rather than try to go through all of them.

One of these stories, I've read before in the 9th Black Book of horror Stories. The Things That Aren't There. it's a brilliant story that reminds me of peak era Bradbury. It's a point of personal pride that I also have a story in that collection. To have an editor judge my writing to be comparable to something this good is one hell of a compliment.

Guinea Pig Girl is right at the opposite end of the horror spectrum with some extreme gore.  However the true horror in the story comes from the psychological breakdown of the protagonist, a young man obsessed with Cat 3 Japanese horror films, and one particular victim who seems to appear in the most extreme, 

Tentacular Spectacular well and truly lives up to its name. A mysterious shop in a steampunk version of London starts selling the most amazing corsets. From this starting point the story spirals into pure Lovecraftian horrors from the deep invading in great style.

And May All Your Christmas... takes one of the best possibilities around Christmas and turns it into an inescapable nightmare. This story contains some of the deepest chills in the collection (pun intended- when you read it you'll understand).

There are two zombie stories on offer- Sweeter Than to Wake and Vile Earth, To Earth Resign and I guarantee you've not read a zombie story quite like either of them.

The Queen takes something as innocuous as a beehive and creates a startlingly unpleasant and frightening tale. It would be good for a horror sequel to Bee Movie 

Death Walks on Pointe was a true surprise.  I would have thought it was by Thana's husband John Probert- who writes similarly gleeful sadistic giallos- but it turns out that Thana is equally proficient with the twisted world of the psychopath.  

I could go on.  As I said, there isn't a weak story in here. There's stories written half from the POV of a dolphin, there's satanic rituals and devil children, anxiety inducing landscapes and cityscapes, and lots more.

And all of it is fantastic. this is one of the strongest single author collections I've read since I started this blog. Thana is a multitalented and versatile writer. I'm not sure i can think of anyone who can straddle as many subgenres as in this set of stories with this level of success.

If this is still available on PS Publishing's site, buy it.  You will not be disappointed.

Number 72B- Hex- Thomas Olde Heuvelt

 

I’d heard a lot of good things about this book so I chose it for my book group for the annual Halloween Horror read. The time pressure on reading it means I had to put aside book 72 to read  this.  The review of book 72 will follow shortly.

Black Springs is not your average village. It’s haunted by the ghost of a 17th century witch. Her eyes and lips are sewn shut and her arms are chained to her sides. She can vanish and appear wherever she likes at will. The locals are so used to her that she’s just a part of the furniture. They have a complex system of cameras to track her movements around the town and clever schemes to hide her if she appears in front of outsiders.

There’s a downside. If you move to the village, you can never leave. Anyone who stays outside the town borders for too long starts to experience suicidal thoughts that will only go away if they return home. The local teens are bored of the situation and want to make their own fun.

That’s the basis for this exceptionally original treatment of the old Witch’s Curse trope. We mainly follow the Grant family, with diversions to other locals every now and again.

The normalisation of such a strange situation with the townspeople is brilliantly done, and the changes as the mask of normalcy start to slip are the stuff of nightmare.

It’s well written for the most part. There are some flashes of brilliance in there. For example, at one point, when one of the human antagonists has just punched his own mother in the face and knocked her to the ground, we get the line ““I told you not to touch me,” he said softly.” That use of the word softly after a barbaric act of violence tells us he’s in complete control of himself and made me genuinely worried for the other characters and what he might be capable of doing.

The final chapters, once the s**t has really hits the fan, form one of the best horror set pieces I’ve read in years. The book has one of the best finales in recent fiction. My first thought on putting the book down at two in the morning (there wasn’t a chance I could put it down in the middle of all that mayhem) was ‘Wow that was intense’.

It’s not a perfect book. I did think there were some issues with pacing. There was a lot of building to an event then life back to normal, build to the next one. In the days since I finished it I realise that this is just an extension of the whole normalisation theme of the book, but it grated slightly while reading it, Having said that, I also think it would have been nice to get to know some more villagers, and to know the villagers we did meet better, which would have impacted the pacing more, so I’m contradicting myself.

There were some events that didn’t quite gel with the American setting that might well have made more sense in the original Dutch version. Maybe I would have accepted them better with a Dutch setting...

Overall, I really enjoyed this book even with its flaws.  There's the occasional bon mot and the ending is one of the most horrific in a good way that I've read in recent years. I will be seeking out more of his work, When he wants to disturb the reader, this book shows he's more than capable.

Number 71 - Obsidian Heart 1- The Wolves of London - Mark Morris

 

And on to the final book I started on my holiday last week and I'm all caught up.. One good thing about my hotel being a three-hour coach ride from the airport, it meant the last day I had those three hours plus the four-hour flight for uninterrupted reading.

This is the first part of a trilogy by Mark Morris. I thought from the title that it would be about werewolves, but I was extremely wrong.

Alex Locke is an ex-convict, working as a lecturer in a university twenty years after breaking away from the criminal underworld and making an honest living for himself. When his eldest daughter is threatened, he makes a desperate call to an old acquaintance from prison for help and finds himself pulled back into the life he has successfully evaded for decades.

He is forced to steal an artefact from an old man– the Obsidian Heart that gives the trilogy its title- but things go very wrong very quickly. He finds himself on the run, trying to just survive the pursuit from the Wolves Of London, a group of supernatural assassins, intent on obtaining the Heart for themselves.

The Obsidian Heart is more than just a decoration, it’s an object of extreme power, and Alex must figure out how to harness it, before things go too far out of control.

This is the third book I’ve read this month that mixes crime drama with the supernatural. It’s very different to the other two though. Like Relics, it starts with a good grounding in reality, but in this book, the fantastical elements are far more pronounced. 

The bad guys are genuinely nightmarish and the storyline is unpredictable once the "one last job" trope is past. The whole thing is compulsively readable (I did it in 2 days although I did have a LOT of spare time the second day) and very well written, We sympathise with Alex and his plight, and his quest to save his daughters feels heartfelt (sorry).

The only negative I have about this book is the lack of resolution to any of the lead plotlines at the end. I appreciate a cliffhanger ending, but I would have liked to see at least one plotline completed, or some questions answered. I know it's book one of a trilogy, and I have books 2 and 3 all ready and waiting on my shelves where it will all play out, but this didn't feel like an ending, just a springboard to book two.

Nothing is going to stop me reading book 2, as this was a damned good read and up there with the best I've read from Mark Morris. I just hope book 2 has a more satisfying ending.

Number 70- The Salt Grows Heavy - Cassandra Khaw

 

After reading Khaw's previous work, I felt somewhat frustrated.  I liked the writing but couldn't bring myself to love the book. Full thoughts on that book here. However, I decided to give them a second chance, especially with that cover...

A mermaid and her companion, a plague doctor, travel across a destroyed kingdom and encounter a group of children in the process of hunting and killing one of their own.

To say any more would be unfair.  This is a book that's best experienced completely cold without knowing any more than is on the blurb in the inside flap of the dustjacket.

I absolutely loved this book. The tricksiness of her prose style completely suits the weirdness of the subject matter and made this into the new best horror I've read this year by a long way.

I pretty much read this in one sitting.  It's compulsive, gruesome, deeply strange and you'll never watch/read/think about The Little mermaid in the same way ever again. It's beautiful and repulsive in equal measure. A strange hybrid of Mary Shelley, Hans Anderson and...

I can genuinely say I have never read anything quite like this and just cannot find the final comparison point to finish that last sentence. But it's something horrifically violent yet gorgeous to look at...

Some of the imagery is seared in my brain still, a week after finishing it. Her use of language is stunning throughout. Not one word is wasted in this novella and every phrase is calculated for maximum impact.

I'm almost tempted to give this a 10/10 since I can't pick a fault with it other than I wanted more... even though Khaw finishes it in a perfect place.

If you weren't convinced by Nothing but Blackened Teeth, give this a go.  This confirms Khaw as a major talent. I will 100% be buying everything else she releases now.

Number 69- the Devouring - FW Armstrong

 

Excuse my hairy leg creepng into the shot there, possibly the most horrific thing to have entered this blog in the past 4 years. The backdrop is a beach in Crete where I was on holiday last week, which is why I'm playing catch up on these posts.

FW Armstrong has appeared here once before with The Changing. Armstrong is a pen name for the usually very good indeed TM Wright. However, i recall finding the Changing to be greatly lacking, and sadly this is not much of an improvement.

Shortly after he failed entirely to save any lives in the Changing, our psychic detective Ryerson Biergarten gets mixed up in what starts out as apparent vampire attacks in the town of Buffalo. He also finds love with a fellow psychic and must save her somehow from the evil spreading through the town.

While I say this isn't much of an improvement on the Changing, it is an improvement. It's a very different take on the vampire story initially and morphs into something quite different by the ending.

However, he completely drops the ball on the ending and I have no real idea of how or why the evil was apparently stopped... there are major plot threads left hanging and not resolved.

It's difficult to take bits of this book seriously with character names like Irene Sabitch scattered around. There are almost no normal names in the entire book and it becomes distracting.

Saying this, it's not all bad. It's just a weak book by Wright's standards. The writing doesn't have his usual compelling draw but it's more than competently written. The concepts being played with are really quite disturbing. Although there is a major plotline left dangling, the final confrontation with Ryerson and the Big Bad is actually really tense and a genuinely good piece of horror writing. 

Ryerson appears in two books under Wright's real name (Goodlow's Ghosts and Ascension), and is a much better character in those.

This is probably a book best suited for TM Wright completists. 

Number 68 - Reborn - F Paul Wilson

 

Four books into the series, and finally we have an actual follow up novel to The Keep. I’ve also managed to keep to the same style of covers so far in this series because I just think these look like proper horror novels. I love the old 80s and 90s OTT artwork like this.

Set twenty six years after the events of the first book, the action moves to Long Island USA. Dr Roderick Hanley, millionaire geneticist, dies in a plane crash with his working partner. In his will he leaves a struggling writer, Jim Stevens, his mansion, and the vast majority of his estate.

More importantly, it solves a mystery Jim, who was adopted as a baby, has been struggling with his whole life- the identity of his birth father. Far from making his life easier though, it leads to more questions and some shocking revelations.

Meanwhile, his wife Carol has started having horrific dreams of torture and violence. Also, a disparate group of religious believers have received divine word that a great evil is coming. Led by a wandering monk, they form an alliance to fight it when and where it surfaces.

We finally have a returning character from book one as well.

This is just as good as the first three in the series that this was officially (at the time) part two of. The main characters are fleshed out nicely and they’re all believably flawed. When Carol makes a horrendously stupid decision at the midpoint of the book, we go with it, despite thinking she’s a complete idiot. As the story unfolds, there could be more to it though.

I’m not sure if it’s just because I was on holiday and trying to sleep in a strange bed, but while I was reading this, I was having deeply unsettled sleep, and this book was a definite part of my dreams including a persistent nightmare that I struggled to shake off for nearly an hour. It’s the first horror novel to invade my dreams quite so insidiously in I don’t know how long so it must be applauded for that.

There’s a very 1980’s debate near the end that truly dates the book even though the book is set in the late 60’s.

There are some completely unexpected character deaths, and this book never quite goes in the direction you think it will. By the end of the book, morality is so grey, that it’s hard to tell if the group fighting to stop the rebirth of what they believe to be the antichrist are the good guys or the bad guys.

That type of ambiguity sets this book apart for me and raises the whole thing significantly.

I loved it. My biggest regret is not buying these as they came out all those years ago.

Easily one of the best horror novels I’ve read this year.

Number 67- The Last Call of Mourning - Charles L Grant

Despite that romance novel cover, this is actually an early horror novel by Charles L  Grant.

Cynthia Yarrow has returned home to Oxrun Station from her year long travels in Europe to find that not all is right in her family. family heirlooms have gone missing, the estate they live on is increasing run down, and things seem odd in a way she can't quite pin down.

Then she finds she is being stalked around the town by the Greybeast- a limousine that chases her on numerous occasions, trying to run her off the road. The shop she is trying to open, to break free from reliance on the family money and prove herself as independent, is targeted. What dark forces are surrounding her and her family?

This is a very early novel by Grant. It's only the third of the Oxrun Station novels. It has many of Grant's strengths, the atmosphere is suitably creepy throughout, 

However, it's also one of his weaker novels. Plotting was not necessarily his greatest strength as a writer, and in this book, that's quite evident. Despite the fact that the clues are laid carefully throughout the story, the explanations when they come are something less than convincing. The mechanics of the solution just don't quite add up. The idea is good, but the execution it lacking.

It's also quite low on incident even for one of his novels.

There's a few deliciously creepy moments, a good car chase or two, and an intriguing concept hidden in there somewhere. It's just a bit pedestrian by the standards I've come to expect from Grant's fiction. As a completist, this was worth reading. If it was the first Charles Grant novel I'd read... I'm not sure I would read another. 

Number 66- Peter Crombie Vs the Grampires - Adam Millard

 I'm several books behind at t6he moment. the reason for this might be apparent in the backgrounds of the pictures in the next few posts.

This is the sequel to Peter Crombie Teenaged Zombie.  Peter is still a member of the undead, resurrected by his father who is still the leading mad scientist in town.

His best friend is still a vampire ghost and the really-not-his-type girl next door still has a major crush on him. 

What is new is that the monkey can talk and Count Dracula has moved into the local old folk's home and is creating an army of elderly vampires.

The scene is set for as epic a showdown as is possible in this sleepy little town.  Luckily, there's another stranger in town who might be able to help- if he can persuade people his name isn't Vannel Singh.

This is typical Adam Millard in younger readers mode, fast paced, funny and self referential.

He doesn't care about being politically incorrect, even in a book aimed at children.  This is packed full of the sort of comments that we read are being removed from Roald Dahl's children's books- particularly when referring to the attractiveness, or otherwise- of the neighbour girl, and her lithp. And it's all the funnier for it.

It's a quick easy read- as you'd expect from a children's book.  It's probably not a future classic of children's literature, but it's good fun with plenty of laughs to be found in the surrealist world he's created here.

Number 65 - Relics - Tim Lebbon

 I normally try to not read books that are too similar close together, but this is the second full novel in a row with a secret society of supernatural beings hiding in plain sight from humanity and called the Kin.

However, that's where any similarity ends between this and the Alan Baxter novel.  The difference in treatment between the two storylines could not be much starker.

Angela Gough lives a happy life with her boyfriend Vince in London. When he goes to work but fails to message her one morning, and doesn't respond to her messages, she starts to worry. When she finds a mysterious note from him telling her not to go looking for him, the worry turns to panic.  

She uses her talents as an investigative journalist to do exactly the opposite of what the note said, and her happy little world falls apart and expands in directions she never dreamed possible. Vince had a double life, trading in the remains of supposedly mythical creatures. Now his world has turned dangerous and Angela gets dragged into the terrifying underworld alongside him.

It's a lot more down to earth than Bound was with the similar plot details. It's much more of a horror novel than the James Bond with magic treatment in Alan's excellent novel. This is just as good. 

When we meet the happy couple in chapter one, theirs is a relationship we can believe in, So when it all seems to fall apart with his disappearance, Angela's search and panic ring true. 

Frequently, leaving plotlines open for the sequel can feel cheap and cheesy.  However, the ending of this book is so well handled it leaves me wanting more.  This was just the  introduction to a new fantasy world existing alongside our own. and it's a world I want to visit again sooner rather than later.  We've just scratched the surface in this first volume of the trilogy. 

This was my first Tim Lebbon novel, and he's easily joined the scarily long list of writers I need to get the whole back catalogue of.

Number 64 - The Plot Vol2

it's a week since I read this. Whoops. 

The second and final volume of this mini series. i probably should have skimmed through part one a second time before reading this one as I initially got quite confused. The non-linear storytelling didn't help much. 

After I re-acclimatised myself to the story and who was who though,  it was an entertaining read. The artwork is really very good indeed and the monster is the stuff of nightmares.

The family are still under attack from the ancient evil that possessed their ancestors. The thing in the  swamps wants its sacrifice.  Can they escape and break the family curse?

I'm not 100% convinced that an ancient evil that was on the land before the houses would have been destroyed in the way they do in the story, but your mileage may vary. 

It killed an hour quite nicely, and is a pretty thing to look at. It's no classic, but it's well worth seeking down and reading.

Not much more I can really say without straying into spoiler territory.

Number 63- Bound - Alan Baxter

 

My regular readers will recognise the name of Alan Baxter as I have reviewed his books several times and never found any of them wanting yet.

This is one of his earlier works and part one of a trilogy.

Alex Caine is a prize fighter in the underground fight circuit in Australia. He wins most of his fights due to an ability to see his opponent’s actions before they do it. That, combined with an almost supernatural speed, ensures he’s almost unbeatable. This lands him in trouble when a local crime lord orders him to throw a fight and he refuses.

At the same time, a mysterious Englishman tracks him down and claims to know his secret abilities. Eager to escape the guns of the crime lord, Alex flies with him to London to learn more. With his special vision, he’s asked if he can read a particularly ancient magical grimoire. The book binds itself to him and slowly but steadily tries to change him. Control of his life is important to Alex. Can he break the artifact’s hold on him before he loses himself to it forever?

“Fast-paced” barely begins to describe this book. A globe hopping adventure with magic, violence, and sex, often all at the same time, with wizards, world-wide conspiracies, ancient evils rising again, a glimpse at the supernatural creatures that live among us and give rise to many of the more enduring monster myths, and a pair of very human villains for Alex to deal with, this book gives us everything we could want in a fantasy adventure.

The quote on the front cover says it’s “Jack Reacher with a spell book” and that’s as good a description as any. It’s action-packed high stakes magical adventure, spanning continents in an attempt to save the world from an ancient evil.

If I hadn’t already known that Alan Baxter is a real-life black belt martial artist, I would have guessed from this book. He really knows how to write a good fight sequence. This book has some of the best fights I’ve read in decades.

It’s not a flawless book. The frenetic pace does mean that it falls prey to the narrative trap that he suddenly knows how to do everything far too quickly. Maybe it needed the literary equivalent of a training montage in the opening chapters rather than just reading a few books and knowing how to do it… but that’s just a minor quibble that didn’t impact my enjoyment.

The only thing that pulled me properly out of the story was when he paid for two double whiskies in a London pub and got change from a twenty-pound note… I’m fine with wizards and ancient gods and the rest of it, but that truly stretched the incredulity a touch too far. Even if it is set in 2014 when it was written, the barman should have been asking for the rest of the money

The characters are entertaining, the writing is never dull. There are even a couple of good horror moments thrown in there for good measure.

Alan Baxter seems to be a hugely versatile writer.  With the exception og the Gulp and the Fall (which are similar for very obvious reasons) all his books have felt very different to each other.  And all equally good.

This is crying out to be filmed. It would make such a great new franchise. Exotic locations and exciting action that feels original. In the meantime, it’s a great book and I can’t wait to read the sequel.

I bought the full trilogy signed direct from Alan himself through his website 

Alan Baxter - Warrior Scribe - Horror, dark fantasy, and weird fiction from multi-award-winning author, Alan Baxter.

Please do the same, let's not give Mr Bezos any more than we have to.

Number 62 - The Good Earth - Pearl S Buck

 This month's book group read was this relatively obscure novel from 1930. Pearl Buck grew up in China, the child of missionaries, and spent most of her life there. She taught in Chinese universities when she wasn't writing. As she says on the back cover of this rather old penguin edition, her chief pleasure  and interest had always been people, and since she lived amongst the Chinese, Chinese people.

This is a story of the Chinese, told in microcosm through the story of a farmer Wang Lung. Wang Lung was a peasant who bought a slave girl from a local great house to be his bride.  The bride, O-lan, sorts his house out, bears him lots of children, and her decisions are instrumental in his rags to riches story. 

I'm sure there are a lot of parallels and references I don't understand since my knowledge of Chinese history is sketchy at best.

This covers the life of the farmer from a desperately poor peasant in his twenties, working his fields, to his dotage as a very old man.  In that time he deals with droughts, villainous relatives, second wives and moody offspring.

What is quite disturbing in this book is the attitudes towards women.  If this was written by a man it would be somewhat unbelievable, but since it isn't, it's worrying how close, historically  speaking, this book is set. O-Lan is directly responsible for Wang-Lung's success.  All the decisions that instigate his rise in society come from her.

But he treats her like a slave and only shows concern when she falls ill. And then it's mainly worry about who will clean and tidy. he still criticises her for having too big feet.

The writing in the book makes no judgements on any of the characters though, even when Wang Lung starts cheating on his wife and spending all their money on his new woman. The writing remains impartial and arguably quite dry. The reader is left to judge the characters based on their actions and Wang Lung is frequently frustrating.

Her missionary background shows through in the prose.  It frequently reads like the King James Bible- "And thus it came to pass..." and similar phrasing used throughout.

One distinct flaw in the book is a classic case of Women Writing Men, where the motivations she ascribes to Wang Lung are totally unbelievable with regards to his love life.

It may be that that is down to an allusion to Chinese history that I've missed entirely, but without lots of research, I have no way of knowing. And I do have a life outside of reading and writing this blog.

Another thing that bugged me was how many children she had for him.  Even when they were living for a year in a lean-to made of a half a dozen mats slung against the wall of a great house in a city in the south, she still fell pregnant. Where were they finding alone time? They already had at least two children living with them (and Wang Lung's decrepit father). This is especially strange given the revelation in chapter one that no person had seen Wang Lung unclothed for several years. It seems that his shyness must have evaporated somewhere down the line.

This is an absorbing and interesting (if occasionally frustrating) read throughout. I'm glad I read it and I'm tempted to find the sequels.

It's available from most good bookshops and online in much more recent versions.  Although this edition does win the best smelling book I've read this year by a country mile.