Dan
Paul Tremblay has been one of the fastest rising stars of horror fiction over the last few years, and this new book will do his reputation no harm at all. The action takes place over just a few hours in the midst of an outbreak of a mutated rabies strain that is bad news for all concerned. It is fast and focused, with attention laser-tight on the two women at the heart of the story. There's huge jeopardy and a gruelling climax, supporting characters who are brave and fearless, and others who are misguided and wrong (but not just broad brush evil bad guys), and that relentless pace, as the clock ticks down on [SPOILER], but the absolute core of the book is the relationship between Rams and Natalie. Between the action, Tremblay sketches in the history of their friendship, and it is one you will believe in utterly. Of course, that just raises the stakes even higher as we breathlessly career towards the ending scenes, which are, uh, intense.
This is a juggernaut of a book, highly recommended. And look! I got through this whole review without mentioning any real world pandemics that might have been going on while I was reading it!
I wasn't all that taken with this one, I ‘m afraid. The concept sounded intriguing, like a high level deconstruction of the classic mystery, but the reality didn't live up to it. The short mysteries that are the core of the book are flat and repetitive. They all take place in the same kind of milieu with the same kind of cast, and the prose is workmanlike at best. The envelope story that surrounds them all isn't a great deal better, with characters that never seem anything more than mouthpieces for the author to explain how clever he is. The climactic twist relies on reveals that have gone unseeded, which is frustrating (I'd love to think this was some kind of metatextual joke highlighting that all the rules that have been discussed at such length up to now are bunk, but...). In the end I found it a dull retread of Golden Age mysteries, lacking in spark or joie de vivre. From the blurb I was expecting something cleverer and more playful. A lot of people seem to have enjoyed it more than I did and good for them, but it just didn't do it for me.
It's Sherlock Holmes, but not as you know it. Some of the names are the same, some are different. Some of the characters with those names are the same, some are different. And the two most important characters are simulataneously the same and different. You will recognise the stories here, but they are all viewed though a distorting lens. It's the canon retold with a huge supernatural element (although, interestingly given ACD's interests, there's no spiritualism). It's not hard to discern the book's origins in fanfic, but it's still fun, if inessential. Katherine Addison's previous novel was the superlative The Goblin Emperor. This is nothing near that in terms of worldbuilding or characterisation, but it is an amusing diversion.
George A Romero essentially created the iconography of the modern zombie myth via his string of legendary movies. When he died in 2017, he left an incomplete novel, a story he wished to tell that he could never get the budget or funding for. This manuscript has been taken up and completed by Daniel Kraus. It's hard to guess what's Romero and what's Kraus (although the fascinating Afterword goes some way towards this), but the most important thing is, it feels authentic. Just like the movies, there are lashings of gore, mixed with trenchant social commentary. The atmosphere is right and the settings feel faithful to the films without slavishly reproducing them. George's trademark pessimism is there in spades as well. Fans are also going to dig the nods to other Romero films, and some other post apocalyptic scenarios (I'm sure there was a reference to The Last Of Us).
As a quibble, I'd like to have seen more of a global perspective, but maybe that's a different book. This is highly recommended for anyone who enjoyed Romero's classic films.
Review of this one courtesy of my daughter who is an actual Young Adult, and not a Curmudgeonly Old Git like me:
I really enjoyed this book. It was quite creepy in some parts but in my opinion this was good. The main character Lola is the daughter of a horror film maker Nolan Nox. Lola is sent to the town of Harrow Lake to stay with her grandmother, who she has never met; after her father is attacked. It is her mother (who left when she was 5)'s hometown and the town is also the setting of her father's horror film Nightjar, in which her mother stars as the leading role. As she explores the town and meets new people she realises not everything is as it seems.
Harrow Lake is a really enjoyable book and you have no idea what will happen next.The descriptions of the town are very good as you can picture where the characters are. The book makes you question your first impressions of the characters and story, for example, is the town really as creepy as it seems? The ending of the book was very good and unexpected. It had a lot of twists throughout the book that kept me reading. It had some good creepy moments and it keeps you on your toes. I really recommend this book. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Hmmm. Mixed feelings on this one. My biggest gripe is that the structure is a bit off. Most of the first half is spent pretty tightly inside one person's head but somewhere around halfway this changes, the perspective pulls back, and we're dealing with a group of characters. This means the book loses some focus and immediacy just at the moment the true nature of what's going on is becoming clear. By the climax you're (supposed to be) rooting for someone who barely featured in the first three quarters of the novel. I was a lot more invested in the first half than I was the second, and that isn't right.
On the plus side, a relentless unstoppable supernatural force is well depicted, and the author gets the tension between quiet moments and full on horror pretty much right. I also liked that it is a realistic (well, apart from that relentless unstoppable supernatural force thing) look at contemporary Native American* lives. It's not something you see very often at all in genre fiction, and it's good to put a different perspective in your head every so often. So yeah, I don't think this is the five star work of genius some reviewers are proclaiming it as, but it's an interesting and worthwhile, albeit somewhat flawed, book.
*there's a line where a character explains why they are called Indians throughout the book, and it's a good point, but I'm in the UK and it's more ambiguous term here. Even more so in India itself I'd have thought...
In this third of Lissa Evans' loose trilogy we have moved on to 1944, and are offered a strong depiction of the London home front in last full year of the war, a city bearing a resigned but stoic acceptance. The story revolves a house in Hampstead that will be familiar to readers of the previous books, its landlady and her ward (ditto) and a new supporting cast of lodgers who are well drawn and provide some excellent colour. There is a sense of danger throughout, with death unexpectedly coming out of the sky and a smaller, more personal, calamity for Vee and Noel, but there is also humour and good companionship. The charm of Crooked Heart and Old Baggage is still here, and this is a fitting capstone to the trilogy (if indeed it is a trilogy - there are, not loose ends, but throughlines to future novels at the end of this one).
A lot of the buzz around this one talks about HP Lovecraft, and to be honest, I think that's a little misleading. While it shares that sense of reality not being what we think, the horror here is as much intimate as it is cosmic, and the book is far better written and interested in character than anything that Providence misanthrope ever managed. It's certainly rooted in classic American horror, with nods to King, haunted house rides and Anne Rice as well as old Howard Phillips, but it sits aside from that world. It's a quiet, odd, melancholy, book, with something of the off kilter fairy tale quality of Jonathan Carroll. It's not a brutal gorefest, and you could have an argument about if there's even a villain, but in the end, it's a book that got under my skin, and I think it'll linger there.
The first quarter or so of this one is really good and drew me into an intriguing mystery. The climax is exciting, satisfying and technically interesting. So why did I find this to be such a frustrating book? The ideas are good, and the set up is strong, but it sags badly in the middle. There's a large principal cast, and the momentum is slowed dramatically as the author tries to find something for each of them to do. In all honesty, I think this could have been a much better book if some of them had been amalgamated, scrapped or relegated to a smaller role. It also doesn't help that the villain turns out to be fairly unimaginative and one dimensional. Another draft or a ruthless edit could have produced a really good book, but we've had settle for something that is less than that. It's decent and readable, but it won't last long in the memory I fear.
This is a supernatural horror novel, but it has a vibe that you also find in a certain stand of 60s British SF like John Wyndham or Quatermass And The Pit. Fans of those influences and the wider area of folk horror will find a lot to enjoy here, whereas the gorehounds are likely to be disappointed. Despite the Maine setting it's not a full on Stephen King horrorfest, but more a character study of someone already going through trauma being thrust into an unsettling and unexplained situation that starts to turn very nasty. The novel cleaves rigourously to her viewpoint - you will spend the entire book firmly locked inside her head and have to make your own mind up about what's “real” or not. From that point of view it's a success. Major conjures up the fear and paranoia of being stuck on a hostile island with no escape (the handling of the local geography is particularly good, and even without a map you'll have a good idea of how each location relates to another), and the eventual supernatural denouement is very effective.
After two outstanding novels in All Involved and Safe, Ryan Gattis has done it again. It's set eight months after the LA riots that were the background for All Involved, and has a few tangential connections with that book. It starts with one gang related crime, an attempted murder, and follows that through, covering the police investigation, the legal teams prosecuting and defending the case, the reactions of gang members on both sides of the incident, and life in the Californian prison system. It's a bigger and wider canvas than the previous books, but Gattis keeps it tight and focused. Once agin, it's an incredibly propulsive book that moves like a rocket but still leaves room for empathy. He does a great job of putting you inside the heads of characters from successful lawyers to gang kids stuck in an inescapable vicious circle. He does a fantastic job of building tension - in the courtroom sequence towards the end, I was so engaged with, and fearful of, the outcome that I had to put the book down and go for a walk (just around the house, obviously) because there was just too goddam much on the line and I couldn't take it.
I will be first in line for Gattis' next book. If I had one wish, I'd go for it to have a contemporary setting - I'd love to see his take on how mobile phones and social media etc have affected the gang lives he describes so well. In meantime, go read this one.
In my Foundryside review, I mentioned that the magic system was one of the best and most original I've seen. Well, in this one Bennett takes it to the next level, running through all kinds of logical consequences and dazzling implications with glee. It's typical of a book that builds on its predecessor in all the right ways, raising the stakes, deepening character relationships, developing complicated magical and political ideas, blowing up even more stuff, and one that cements my view that Robert Jackson Bennett is the best fantasist working right now. The concluding part is now officially my most awaited book of the next couple of years.
This is a departure for Yoon Ha Lee. Previously known for the mind bending occult mathematics of the Hexarchate novels, this is a turn into fantasy, set in an imagined version of Korea under Japanese occupation.
On the plus side, there's an intriguing and original magic system that taps into the book's concerns about colonialism and appropriation. The characters are well realised, with believably complex relationships. And there's also a giant metal flying dragon. Lee has put a lot of work into the art of this book, taking a theme and working with it, setting resonances and echoes of it throughout the world he has created.
But that same care doesn't seem to have gone into the narrative, which is a little slight, a little obvious. There are some good set pieces, but there's no complexity or surprise in the story, no tricksiness. Even the one revelation that you could generously call a twist doesn't really surprise or shock. It's not terrible by any means, but the storyline doesn't feel like it's been crafted with the same attention as the rest of the book. I've seen talk that this is a standalone novel, but it feels like a part one to me. There's a blatant sequel hook at the end, but more importantly the lead character has at least two interpersonal conflicts that don't really get resolved. I'd like to see more of this world, so I hope there is another in the works.
This is one of those books where I wish GR allowed half stars. Four stars seems generous, but three feels too low. I'll settle on 4.5 /5 for the setting and the atmosphere, 3/5 for the story. And a million out of five for that gorgeous cover.
N.K. Jemisin's new one is an urban fantasy in every sense of the word. It runs along riffing on quest fantasies, superhero origin stories, Lovecraftian cosmic horror and a dozen other genre standbys. This isn't a complaint, more an acknowledgement that this is absolutely for the right path to take for a book championing the diversity and blend of New York. It takes all these elements, chops them up, turns them around and builds them into something new, just like the best hiphop does (about half way through, a memory of the Wu Tang Clan proclaiming that they form like Voltron popped into my head and stayed there, another part of the legend of New York that suffuses this book (although, considering how Jemisin treats Staten Island, they might not quite enjoy it so much!)).
It bounces, crackles, pops and fizzes, full of the livewire energy of the city it celebrates. This couldn't be more different in tone or setting from the author's multi-award winning Broken Earth trilogy, but that just shows what a capable and talented author we have here, because it is just as readable and just as impactful. Bring on volume two!
This is a short and effective novella about dealing with loss and growing up, and a small boy's infatuation with the woman who serves sandwiches in his local store. It talks about big things by focusing on little things. To be so convincingly inside a young boy's head is a remarkable feat of empathy from Kawakami. She was a new author to me, and I will be looking for more of her work.
Okay, this book doesn't really do subtle. It's a fast paced story of (wo)man vs mythical beast which barrels along and doesn't stint on the excitement and gory violence. I have to say I struggled with the opening chapters, which are basically just awful people being awful, but it's needed to set the scene, and to lay the ground for some of the character development that comes through in the second half. Once I was in that second half I was kept rapt, and the (electronic) pages were turning faster and faster. No, it's not cordon bleu cooking, but it's a damn good cheeseburger. If you like a good monster movie, you're going to have fun with this one.
As a former Tokyo resident I was keen to read this one. It's a series of linked short stories that circle round each other, cross over, and meet in unexpected ways, much like an unplanned wander around the backstreets and alleyways of that marvellous city. Background characters in one become the lead in the next, and walk past someone who comes to the fore a few dozen pages later and so on. This will be familiar to fans of David Mitchell's Ghostwritten, and I suspect they will also find a lot to like in the loving depiction of Japanese life here. At times, the book does veer maybe too close to a game of Tokyo Bingo, as the expected landmarks and customs are ticked off, but I never had the impression it was done in a cynical way. In the end, the book is about emotional connections as much as it is narrative ones, and it's a rewarding experience.
This one put me very much in mind of the early work of Iain Banks, which is high praise indeed round my way. It's intelligent and enjoys playing games with identity and duality, but never at the expense of a fast moving and engrossing plot. The life of wannabe rockstar Brandon is clearly informed by the author's day job, but his twin Adam(A & B, geddit?)'s obsession is fresh and original, and gives hope that Osman has much more in him to come. One of the best debuts I've read in years.
The attraction of this book also turned out to be its flaw. I liked the idea of multiple narratives documenting how various lives were thrown into upheaval by a volcanic eruption. Unfortunately in the end, this feels like six novellas stitched together with no real connective tissue in exactly the same way that, say, Cloud Atlas doesn't. That aside, each story on its own is decent. Glasfurd has a good knack for conveying a setting, and for writing in distinctive voices. My one favourite, aged radical that I am, was Sarah's story with its peasants' uprising. I'd happily have read a whole novel just on that. Worth a read, but won't be troubling my books of the list come December.
If you're reading this, I guess you are already familiar with Reynolds' Revenger series. This is amongst my favourites of the universes he has created - I love the slightly archaic feel, and the sense of technologies that are simultaneously far ahead and well behind our own - possibly because it's the most fun. This is the final volume, and let me reassure you, it wraps things up well. No spoilers of course, but character arcs come to satisfactory conclusions, and the ending goes up and on and out with an element of the cosmic scale that he does so well. I believe Reynolds is heading back to Revelation Space next time, but I'd be happy to see more books in this setting.
I was expecting this to be a horror historical, but in the end I felt the paranormal element was very underplayed. The horror elements are there, but firmly in the background. There's no real sense of rising fear or dread, and the eventual revelation is delivered in a very matter of fact way, with no sense of supernatural awe. So we are left with a historical novel about the Titanic. In those terms it is decent enough, but probably not one I would have chosen to read. There's nothing particularly new about the depiction of upper class luxury, but some of the below decks stuff is good. I was particularly taken with the subplot involving the two boxers, which could have made a decent novel on its own.
3/5 - I didn't especially like this, but I can see that other people will. It just didn't chime with my tastes in the way I'd hoped.
