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It is no secret to anyone who reads this blog regularly (and there must be someone out there, surely?) how much I like Ben Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London series, and how thrilled I was to get my copy of Whispers of Underground signed at an event last year. Sadly I couldn’t make the London event this year but no matter, as soon as my copy of Broken Homes arrived I dived (dove?) right in and devoured the thing in short order.
So much as before we have Peter Grant, PC and wizard, his boss Nightingale and colleague Jenny still on the hunt for the rather nasty Faceless Man, still interacting with the various incarnations of the Thames and its tributaries and still being dragged in to any case with a whiff of the supernatural. This story starts with an odd car crash, some mutilated bodies and *gasp* the need to go south of the river to work out exactly what, if anything the connection is with a particularly unusual housing complex designed by the somewhat eccentric Erik Stromberg.
As you might expect I really loved this and its mixture solid police work and, well, magic. The story really clips along. As always (and its perhaps a bit of a cliché to say this, but hey, this is how things become clichés) London itself is a significant character and also as always I learned quite a bit that I didn’t know about the city that I live and work in. Although I think all the books are strong this seems to me to be the best since Rivers of London itself.
And the end was Oh!
Followed by Ah!
Followed by a rush to the web to find out when the next volume is due because I want to see where this is all going.
Absolutely great stuff.
Fear the Dark says the front cover of Justin Cronin’s The Twelve, the sequel to his really quite popular The Passage which I read and reviewed last year. Reading that old review it was pretty clear that I expected to plunge into the newer novel quite soon but after Christmas but I got diverted as I often do by new bright and shiny things so here we are in August and I’m only getting around to writing about it now having read it a few weeks ago.
I also notice from that older review that I had picked up some mixed vibes about The Twelve, and perhaps that’s why I put off reading it, but never fear I have got there in the end and there is something to be said for reading dark horror on very warm and sunny summer days.
So The Twelve is bit timey-wimey in as much as it takes as back to the events of the original novel as seen by a different group of characters all so that a rather nasty villain can receive a proper set-up before h forges on to create havoc in world fully of vampirey things. Most of the (not exactly) flashbacks are designed to give us a more detailed back story for characters old and new so that the big climax (and it is really quite a big one) will have the appropriate amount of oomph. There was at least one person i didn’t expect to be there at all and although i was pleased to see that person (despite what they were going through) it did kind of undercut the “what just happened there?!) last couple of paragraphs of The Passage.
It’s not as compelling as the first novel but I still enjoyed it a great deal, reading it in huge page-turning chunks. There’s a nice set up for the last book in the trilogy although I’ve no idea when that’s coming out.
So pretty cool all in all.
The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs by Jack Gantos is one of those books that I didn’t know existed until I saw a review of it on someone’s blog (and this is where I kick myself because I didn’t make a note of where I saw it so can’t properly the credit the person concerned) and was just so intrigued by the premise that I had to get a copy.
It is the tale of Ivy who at the age of seven, spending an Easter Sunday with her mother whom she adores if not downright worships along with the elderly Rumbaugh twins Dolph and Ab in their pharmacy where her mother worked as a young woman, finds out something rather astonishing – the twins have apparently “preserved” their deceased mother (stuffed her to be accurate). This is the latest manifestation of the love curse of the Rumbaughs – obsessional mother love beyond the understanding of most people.
Coupled with a talent for taxidermy.
As Ivy tells us at the beginning of the novel (out of concern that we might think she was being unnecessarily Gothic or exaggerating her story for effect):
I am simply going to tell you a plain and true small-town story about a family love curse that is so passionate and so genuinely expressed that it transcends everything commonly accepted about how love reveals itself – or conceals itself.
For it becomes clear as the tale unfolds between Ivy at seven and at sixteen when the identity of her father is more or less confirmed, that she is also a victim of this curse, and she starts experimenting with taxidermy in preparation for the inevitable day when her mother dies.
This is a wonderfully odd, macabre little book which I thoroughly enjoyed. Ivy is a wonderful character, obsessional yes but it’s not entirely her fault after all. The background to the love curse is told with great verve, all the characters are vivid and I read it in a couple of sittings, wondering what was going to happen (though having a pretty good guess).
One of the delights of my copy is the notes at the end, where the author talks about his inspiration for the story and there is some material on Oedipus, taxidermy and Psycho, all for obvious reasons.
A real gem.
A new Neil Gaiman novel is always something to look forward to, and I pre-ordered my copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane as soon as I was able, knowing that whatever the tale being told, it would be something special.
The book starts with our narrator in the present day, having come back to his hometown for some unspecified family event, and finds himself turning up at an old farmhouse at the end of the lane where hi house was. We then flashback some forty years to when he was a little boy, a very unhappy child living with his parents and his sister, not at all at ease with the world around him. The family’s lodger steals their car and commits suicide in it, troubled by money and having betrayed his friends. And it’s this event that puts our narrator in real danger, because it unleashes on the world some rather nasty things from beyond our world, and the only people who understand what it means and can help to put it right are a young girl, Lettie Hempstock, her mother and grandmother who all live in the farm with the duckpond that might be something significantly more than it appears.
I thought this was a lovely story, capturing magic and legend and myth, the unpleasantness of adults and the horror of things beyond our ken. There are some astonishingly grotesque characters, particularly the sinister nanny Ursula Monckton who is definitely something else. And at the centre is a little boy who makes a friend and has to find the courage to fight for what he cares about. It’s a difficult book to write about in some ways because it’s the atmosphere that’s so important. The best thing perhaps to repeat the quote by Neil Gaiman on the back cover of my edition:
[it] is a novel of childhood and memory. It is a story of magic, about the power of stories and how we face the darkness inside each of us. It’s about fear, and love, and death, and families. But, fundamentally, I hope, at its heart, it’s a novel about survival
I think that really does sum up the themes that he explores, and I was totally bowled over. Gaiman has such a strong, loyal following that there is always a danger that you review the man and his body of work rather than the individual story at hand. And there is a tendency for his stuff to build up such anticipation that there is a danger of being disappointed (like my friend Silvery Dude who thought it was but not up there with his favourite Neverwhere)
I’m not sure its my favourite of Gaiman’s books (for me that’s a tie between American Gods and The Graveyard Book) but it is remarkable and one that I plan to re-read in the future. A sweet tale with something very dark at the centre.
The world (including me) mostly knows George RR Martin for the Song of Ice and Fire sequence that is the basis of the Game of Thrones TV series. I will admit to being a fan of the series but I’ve never read any of the cycle that underpins it, though the Book God and a couple of friends keep on telling me that I should. And I may very well do in the future but for now, and as my last read for Once Upon a Time VII, I decided to pick up an earlier volume that the Book God also recommended.
Fevre Dream is fairly high concept: vampires on riverboats. It tells the story of Abner Marsh, a steamboat captain who has fallen on hard times and is approached my a very distinctive person in the form of Joshua York who funds the building of the boat that will be known as the Fevre Dream, one of the finest of its kind ever to be built. But it becomes clear that Joshua is not only not what he appears but that he has a mission which brings them both face to face with others of Joshua’s kind who do not share his views, and a mighty struggle is inevitable.
I enjoyed this very much, and not just because vampires are my supernatural monster of choice. There is a verve and swagger and romance in the telling of the story which makes this more than vampires on a boat. A love of the ships and the lifestyle and the river really shines through, and the growing respect and friendship between two men who couldn’t be further apart adds a great deal to what could have been, in other hands, a bit of a potboiler. It also has a quite wonderfully aristocratic villain who makes a worthy opponent.
This would have been a brilliant Hammer film.
The conclusion was rather lovely and very satisfying, and I’m glad that my participation in this year’s challenge ended on such a high note.
John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things is another one of those books that I’ve had for a while but only really paid attention to when Silvery Dude told me that I would enjoy it. I made a start sometime last summer and for some reason couldn’t get on with it; the Silvery One dared to suggest that I might find it difficult to put myself in the mind of the lead character given that I have “never been a 12-year-old boy”, I countered with the fact that I had lost my mother so thought I might have an inkling of what was going on in our hero’s head. Though of course I was much older, but still.
For the lead character is indeed a young boy called David whose mother has died and who has had to watch his father remarry and have a child with his second wife. World War Two is in full flow and David is struggling with what looks like OCD, anger over his loss and feeling left out in his father’s new family (though not because of his stepmother who I rather liked). Like any sensible child he has a love of books but they begin to speak to him at night and start to affect the way he look sat the world.
And then the Crooked Man comes and David crosses over into a dark and dangerous world populated by the myths, folk and fairy tales with which he has become absorbed. Enticed by what appears to be his mother’s voice, he has to make his way through many perils to reach the King of this land and find his way home.
I thought this was a really dark story, which makes sense when you think about what the fairy tales we all know and love were like before they were sanitised for the safe consumption of youngsters. The Huntress in particular is truly dreadful, but it is the Crooked Man himself, who preys on the fears and jealousies of children to get what he wants; truly evil. And I’m not ashamed to say that I cried at the end, sad and lovely all at once.
My edition of the book has a fabulous section at the end which gives background on the tales referenced in the story for those who find that sort of thing interesting – that would be me – and led to a little follow-up reading list:
- From the Beast to the Blonde by Marina Warner
- Nocturnes by John Connolly
- Transformations by Anne Sexton
- The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells
David’s story stayed with me for days after I read it. Another potential re-read, and a further read for Once Upon a Time VII.
I had a lovely birthday with some fabulous presents including the following books:
- Red Gloves by Christopher Fowler – wanted this for ages and it was possibly my present of the day
- Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear – Cthulhu-based short stories with a beautiful cover
- The Eiger Sanction by Trevanian – I enjoyed the Clint Eastwood film many years ago without realising it was based on the first of a series of thrillers (thanks to Anne Billson for telling me that) so thought I’d give this a try
- Tom-All-Alone’s by Lynn Shepherd – looks fascinating
My brother the Stanley Scot gave me a book voucher and I have planned a spending spree with Silvery Dude at the end of February.
Looking forward to diving into all of these!
I absolutely love HP Lovecraft; I gave a bit of background to my adoration when I reviewed one of his short stories during an ill-fated challenge to read 100 short stories in a year, and that still stands. He got to me young and I haven’t even tried tear myself away from the eldritch world of Cthulhu and the Elder Ones.
At the Mountains of Madness is probably my favourite Lovecraft novella and I was excited when the Book God pointed out that a graphic novel of said tale had been published and of course I had to get it. Rather good it is too, capturing the horror of the ill-fated Miskatonic University expedition of 1930 without being too gruesome.
At the same time I came across a short e-book called Ice Cores, a set of essays on ATMOM which look at the influences on Lovecraft which may have had an impact on his writing of the novella , as well as the context in which he was
writing, and a bit on the story’s publication history. The author links fascination with the polar regions right back to Frankenstein, some of Poe’s stories (Arthur Gordon Pym for one) and in turn some works that Lovecraft himself influenced. An interesting diversion, though much of what he covers is necessarily speculation. Gets you thinking though.
All of this makes up a tiny bit for my disappointment that, for the moment at least, it doesn’t seem the movie version of ATMOM planned by Guillermo del Toro and set to star Tom Cruise will be made. Let’s hope that changes soon; I would love to see what he might do with this atmospheric tale.
This novel is one of those lovely surprises, a book that came in under my radar and was all the more enjoyable for me not knowing anything about it before I started reading.
The English Monster was brought to my attention via Silvery Dude, who had gone on a little book-buying spree and had been told by one of the nice people at Waterstones Piccadilly that given what he had already picked up he should read this, and he passed the info onto me and I bought it immediately on reading the plot synopsis. Silvery Dude and I had planned a bit of a readalongathon but that turned out to be impractical as (1) SD has been incredibly busy workwise and (2) I just couldn’t put the darned thing down.
It’s a nicely constructed novel which tells two stories in alternating chapters. The first is the tale of the Ratcliffe Highway murders in the Regency London and the nascent police force investigating the killings. The second is the tale of William Abless as he begins his career under the Tudor sailor John Hawkyns in developing the English slave trade. The two stories are clearly going to cross at some point and the fun of reading the novel is in seeing exactly how that happens and why.
I thought this was fabulous, and I say that as someone who normally avoids stories involving pirates like the plague. The Big Thing that happens is handled very cleverly and I had to read it through again just to make sure that what had happened was actually what had happened. The murder mystery sections are fascinating and truly horrible and paint a picture of Regency justice which shows how much the city needed a proper police force when it finally came along. I found the ending really satisfying and am glad that this is the first of a series.
I always enjoy reading the author’s note but this is a particularly fascinating in giving us the lowdown on what’s real and what’s invented but especially in the discussion about Britain’s involvement in setting up the slave trade and all the attendant awfulness, something which has been overshadowed by the focus on abolition. It made me dig out Harry Kelsey’s biography of John Hawkyns from my 16th Century history pile to read more about him.
So, a hidden gem for my last proper read of 2012.
Justin Cronin’s The Passage is another one of those books that has been on my TBR list for what seems like forever, though thinking back I remember exactly when and where I bought it. It was in January 2011 in the Waterstones at Ludgate Circus and I was with Silvery Dude who was kindly getting me a copy of Rivers of London for my birthday and I saw this and had to have it. I was suffering from a really nasty cold and ended up off work for a few days medicating myself with Stephen King.
And its taken me this long to get to it, but I was just in the mood for some pre-soon-to-be-post-apocalyptic horror; this definitely fits the bill.
So there’s this scientist who goes to South America to follow up on information about strange goings on which may lead to a cure for cancer or everlasting life or something of that sort and despite (or because of perhaps) the involvement of the military it all goes horribly wrong. We leap to some time later and death row inmates are being signed up by the guy I thought was going to be our hero, FBI agent Brad Wolgast, to take part in something which will basically mean they are erased from the record. And we have Amy Harper Bellafonte, a six-year old girl who will turn out to be something pretty special (again not a spoiler, you can get this from the back cover).
So much for the set up, and the book does start of as a conventional but well written and extremely creepy horribleness takes over the world and we are all doomed horror. Not giving anything away to say we’re talking vampires, Jim, but not as we know them.
Then something happens and we are plunged into the post-apocalyptic stuff I mentioned, with a whole bunch of other characters set in the future where the world is significantly changed and people are doing what they can to survive. Then it turns into a road trip slash quest novel as a band of intrepid souls go off for various and quite plausible reasons to find out just what the heck happened and is there, you know, anyone else out there.
I thought this was great, a real page turner. The end of the first section and the leap into the future I’ve described above was a bit of a surprise as I thought we would be with the same set of characters for this book at least (given that I think its part one of a projected trilogy). But I soon got used to that and came to love another set of characters which makes the last page a real WTF moment (I won’t say more than that but I read the last paragraph a couple of times to make sure I was really understanding what was going on).
I think this is a really well written story about characters I really came to care for and it has an internal logic to it which makes the world it describes work for me.
And I really, really want to know what happens next, so Santa has been asked to provide the sequel.
Definitely recommended.
Bride of the Book God 