The Dark Tower, (PtVI), Song of Susannah, book review. (Stephen King)

Well I'll be honest, I'm not really sure what happens in half of this book, the Susannah/Mia half, because when you're with her you're with Odetta Holmes (Detta/Det) and Mia - daughter of none mother of one - because they're all one person, even if they want different things! Of course this gets a little confusing from time to time, especially when they're talking to each other (which is constant) and arguing over who does what.

Susannah/Mia's baby is on its way and whilst the Calla are celebrating the destruction of the Wolves at the end of book five, she has snuck off with Black Thirteen (one of many glass orbs that have been in existence and exerted the Crimson King's bidding for a very long time - Lord of the Rings esk. The very same orb that controlled Rhea of the Coos who betrayed Roland's first and only true love, Susan Delgado in book IV of the series - of which Black Thirteen is the worst of course) and gone through the door in the cave from The Calla in Mid-World, to our world and New York.

The entire book takes place over a single day, with Susannah/Mia being in a park, finding a bewitched turtle trinket, which she uses to persuade people to do her biding - book hotel rooms, sing her songs, taxi her around town - all whilst visiting the Dogan in her mind (this being a room full of panels [I had film-set power station with banks of lights and dials in my mind when I read this] where she is able to control her unborn child's arrival, the pain she feels and weather the baby is asleep or not).

Confused yet?

Inter-spliced with this you have Eddie, Roland, Jake and Father Callahan (of Salam's Lot fame). The latter two are supposed to go to a small Maine town and track down the author of Salem's Lot (guess who) and find out how Callahan became a character in his fictional book when what happened in Salem's Lot was real - the low men, the vampires, all of it - but the door switches them around so Jake and Callahan end up in New York in search of Susannah/Mia, whilst Eddie and Roland find themselves looking for the author - who is of course the author of this book!

Still not confused?

When Eddie and Roland arrive in their 1999 all hell breaks loose and for me, this was the best bit of the book, the part I wanted more of. 'Gunslingers deal in lead' they say, which Andolini and his goons (low life Mafioso types who Eddie and Roland have already killed in the future back in book two) soon find out to their disadvantage when they ambush them - having been tipped off by Mia when she arrived - and the resulting gun battle and subsequent fifty pages or so disappears in a blur.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, so, back to New York with Jake and Callahan, hot on the trail of a very pregnant Susannah/Mia who's heading off to the Low Men to have her baby and . . . 

It ends. That's it.

The book just ends. Susannah/Mia are in the very depths of a downtown skyscraper surrounded by the Crimson King's henchmen (and chimeras) Mia finally realising that she will have no hold over her baby after its born (the child is Roland's by the way, by default - long story) with Jake and Callahan outside, ready to burst in and then . . . that's it!

The last twenty or so pages are a collection of diary entries by the fictional Stephen King about how the area that he lives in is the epicentre of strange sightings of people who may have travelled between worlds (known as Walk-ins) through doors not to dissimilar to those Roland, Eddie, Jake, Callahan and Susannah/Mia have used, and ends with him (the fictional him remember) reported as being killed by a van whilst out walking!!!

I'm so confused that a star rating will have to wait. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book - it wasn't Kafka - and some of it was all that I love about King but, overall . . . well, maybe I'll know when I've read book seven.

 

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My Absolute Darling, book review. (Gabriel Tallent) (WARNING! Adult content)

I've taken my time before blogging about this one because there seems to be a lot of love out there for it (five-star reviews) and a lot of hate (one-star review) and I seem to be in the middle.
The hate, unfortunately, seems to come from those who have either not read the book, not finished the book, or have taken umbrage that a man has dared to write a book about the abuse of a teenage girl. If you don't like something, fine, there are elements of this book that I didn't like but please, don't slate something you've not read, that's just ridiculous.
So, Turtle (aka Julia or Kibble) lives with her father in a run-down house where the water is warm at best, the electricity fluctuates and she has access to and knows how to use, strip and maintain numerous guns. She also knows how to live off of the land, is failing in school, has no friends, swears all the time and really loves her grandfather, who lives in a mobile home just a few fields away.
On the day Turtle decides she is leaving home she encounters Jacob and Brett who she recognises form school (by the way, teenagers do not speak like that! I live with two so I know) lost in the woods, and using her skills to help them survive, she abandons her dream of leaving. On returning to civilisation (one of the boy’s mothers’ drops her home) she is violently attacked by her father and we are left in no doubt how this is likely to end.
Her relationship with her father - which is the crux of the book - is anything but loving. Like hundreds, thousands of children who are abused, she thinks it is love and that her father feels the same, but she is wrong. Her father wants power, control over her, something he makes quite clear he will never relinquish, and it is this aspect of the story I wanted more of but sadly didn't get.
For me the abuse was too graphic. The third time Turtle is raped it is mostly implied, the reader left to join the dots, and that's all you need. I think abuse, whether it is physical or psychological, needs to be written about, explored and discussed, but do we really need to hear how she cups her father's semen in her hand as it seeped out from inside her? I think not.
The scene where Jacob and Turtle are trapped by the incoming tide and when Turtle bumps into her old school teacher, are convincing, the writing here flowing better and not getting so bogged down as the rest of the book, and the finale, where Turtle’s dad turns up at Jacob's beach house with his guns, is superb, face paced and an apt ending but there's no getting away from the fact that the premise of this book is tough.

A father abusing his teenage daughter, sexually, physically and mentally is never going to be an easy or enjoyable read and with unrealistic teenagers, a plague of heavy description: of plants, trees and their subspecies, the multiple times we are told what gun Turtle is using - not just whether it's a rifle or a shotgun, a pistol or a semi-automatic but the make and model - and the breakfast routine, where we are told a dozen times that Turtle eats raw eggs and tosses her father a beer every morning which he opens on the edge of the work surface, all create a certain frustration and makes the book feel ploddy at best and boring at worst.

So, if you're going to take a punt on My Absolute Darling, go in with your eyes open because I doubt anyone of sound mind will actually say it's enjoyable but I am glad I read it and will consider the author's next book when it's released.
Three stars.

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A Little light reading for the kids this one (both big and small), by yours truly.

My first foray into self publishing was seven years ago now and I've learnt a lot since then so I thought a little time spent revising wouldn't go amiss and to top it off (pardon the pun) I've added a little extra.

So Tom's early morning visit to the park in the title piece has had a rewrite and I've added The Drop (which is a piece of flash fiction that was published a couple of years ago in Graffiti magazine). I hope you enjoy them both.

The link below will take you to the book if you wish to make a purchase and have the Kindle app (this can be downloaded onto any tablet or smartphone) or you can click on the image of The Mystery of Emile Rowan to your right, and then on my author name to see all of my available works.

As this one's for kids and Children in Need is nearly upon us, I will gladly add any purchase monies for this to my donation on the night, so even if you've read it before, grab yourselves the revised copy and treat yourselves.

Enjoy.

(Oh, and please leave a review and star rating. Thanks)

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Over-Top-Can-conquer-fears-ebook/dp/B00DLWTBPY/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=michael+j+richardson&qid=1603369720&sr=8-3 

The Angel's Game, book review. (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

Where do I start with this book? It's one of the few books I've read that doesn't fit a given genre. It is thrilling, sexy, frightening and spooky in equal measure. It is pacey, has excellent and very memorable characters; there is love, loss, desperation, suspense and it's all wrapped up in the atmospheric backdrop of early twentieth-century Barcelona.

The novel follows the life and loves, the ups and downs of David Martin, a talented but poorly paid journalist with a wealthy benefactor as he fights his way out of poverty, start to write under a pseudonym, fall desperately ill, only to be saved by the mysterious Senor Corelli with a book deal to end all book deals - One hundred thousand Francs for a single book to be written over a twelve-month period. (I'm still waiting for my letter Senor Corelli - oh, no, actually, scrap that, I think I'll stick with what I've got).

His muse, a young girl by the name of Isabella, is thrust upon him one night when she leaves her family to become a writer, ending up on his doorstep because he is the only writer she knows, and I couldn't tell at first whether she was going to be a distraction - she is young, beautiful and talented - a love interest, or whether she would fill his world with further anguish, but after a rocky start they find a bond and David takes her to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books so she can choose.

After a deal is struck with the mysterious Senor Corelli, Martin's illness wanes, but there is skulduggery abound. His previous employers, who were unwilling to compromise on his contract, are suddenly killed in an arson attack, his beloved Christina is suddenly betrothed to another (Martin's benefactor friend) only to be driven to despair and . . . (no spoilers here I'm afraid) as the body count rises and David becomes ever more entrenched in the mystery that is Senor Corelli and the fate that seemed to befall his previous employee (Diego Marlasca - who was also commissioned to write a book and, it turns out, lived in the very same house as Martin - The Tower House) the similarities between them becomes all too clear. Wherever David turns it seems, people are dying, being killing or going missing and with the police following his every move he leaves Barcelona not a moment to soon, to go in search of his beloved Christina, only to find . . .

I'll give nothing away here but when he eventually returns and uncovers the truth, is chased around Barcelona, running for his life, cornered, trapped in the cable car, hanging, suspended hundreds of feet in the air, confronted by an armed man with blood on his hands and murder on his mind, you wiz through the last third of the book so quickly it leaves you dizzy, wanting more, which is good because this is only book two of four, so there's more than enough to quench your enthusiasm.

A shockingly good read then, and all the better for it being part of a four-book series but just as good as a stand-alone novel.

If we rated books out of ten, this would get nine and a three quarters, it is that good, so it's as near to a five star book as you can get without it actually being so and very much worth a read. On to book three then, which I’ve not read before, so here’s hoping.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books to see if I have read them yet and if I have not, why not message me with your recommendations.

On Beauty, book review. (Zadie Smith)

On Beauty, the second Zadie Smith novel I have read, has a lot going for it: great characters - although, towards the end what two of them do isn't that believable - great settings, I've never been to New England but feel like I have now and I know London well enough that that part of the book was a comfort; great story, interwoven with love, betrayal, naivety, passion, lies, deaths and new beginnings, and great dialogue, I really felt the generation gap, the race gap, the religion and to some degree the nationality gap between the parents and their children, men and women, university professors and students the English and Americans, and all in all it really did feel like I had lived alongside the Belseys and the Kippses for a year, wow.

The diversity of the two families backgrounds' is explored to add context, there's Howard Belsey's affair, which ends up being far more than the small indiscretion he had claimed it to be when one of their oldest friends is exposed as the other adulterer, religion and its confines on being able to see people as people, not just gay or straight, black, white or mixed, American or Haitian, poor or rich, and the bigotry that goes with it is, and you have the naive pursuit of a beautiful young woman by an inexperienced young man, being overweight, having a voice and a platform on which to be heard, and more, and it's not until you get to the end of this book and think back that you realise just how many different facets of normal life the author has managed to almost subliminally include in the narrative.

There is little pace to the book so I did at times find it a bit ploddy, which is a shame because it meant I found it hard to pick up when I only had a few minutes to read, instead I had to plan ahead, read when I knew I had an hour or two, which isn't always the case and so it took a little longer to finish than most but, whenever I did put that time aside I was quickly sucked back in and thoroughly enjoyed it.

So the lack of pace and the fact that a fifty-seven-year-old man seemed to have enough irresistible charm to entice a nineteen-year-old woman into bed, twice - although he walked out on her on the second occasion - are my only gripes.

The writing is beautiful - pure prose - and it felt like I was entrenched in the two families love's, lies and misdemeanours, so much so that I now hankering after a sequel, to find out what Levi is up to, whether Kiki is happy, what Victoria may have made of her life, whether Howard is still around, et-al.

Well, here's hoping.

Four stars for On Beauty then and as I've already done NW, I think I'll try Swing Time next.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books to see if I have read them yet and if I have not, why not message me with your recommendations.

Cabal, book review. (Clive Barker)

Things are getting a bit dark and very weird in my house at the moment as I revisit some of the 'horror' reads from my teenage years, and with Clive Barker, James Herbert, Stephen King, and Steve Harris being so influential all those years ago, I thought it about time I tried to feel young again!
Cabal (a group of people with a collective secret or agenda) is the story of Boone, a man with an undiagnosed mental issue - he believes he has murdered eleven people, mutilating them, but can't remember committing the crimes - his relationship with his psychologist, doctor Decker, and the woman he has fallen for but can never love, Lori.
Unable to live with his crimes, Boone decides that he must die, but death seems to shrink from him and his suicide attempt fails. So, where will he go? Heaven has no place for a man like him, nor it seems does Hell, and he is too much of a danger to society to remain free so, Midian then - the place of legend, where the half-dead go, the Nightbreed, where Baphomet rules. (You might have to look Baphomet up like I did to know what I'm talking about there).
Mixing legend with reality, the undead with the living, the sane with the insane, Barker takes us on a journey from Calgary to the wilds of Canada, and it is both intriguing and damned right horrific and should not be approached lightly - this is proper horror folks, none of that dampened down jump-scare stuff you get today, but it's also a love story (aren't they all?) between Boone and Lori, and the lengths that they will go too to find and save each other.
This book is quite short and has so much pace that it's almost impossible to put down - which is good of course - has characters that come across plausible and likeable, events that stretch the imagination and horrors that are both explained and implied so that your mind is constantly flexing, conjuring both the author's and your own images, which I like - some books just info dump too much and leave little to the imagination.

I love the police chief Eigerman, who's deputies hate him as much as he hates them, how the town's people of Midian are so easily convinced that there's foul play at the Cemetery. I love the interaction between Boone and Decker, how the Nightbreed are both frightened and frightening in equal measure, and I will admit, despite it having been a while since I last read a true horror book, I love the no-holds-barred attitude to death this book portrays.
So, Cabal. Not one of Clive Barker's best books from my recollection but a great one to cut your teeth on. Three and a half stars then, but go in with your eyes open. There will be blood, lots of blood.

Stephen King (Author focus)

Well, it was only a matter of time I suppose, before I got around to doing an author focus on Stephen King, one of my favourite and one of the more frustrating authors that I read.

To list all of the Stephen King books I have read and reread over the years and to rate them individually would be very long-winded so I won't do that here (you can search this blog for Stephen King and they'll pop up) instead I will just share my thoughts with you on this prolific writer in hope of enticing you to read some of his books.

So where do you start with an author who has written over sixty novels and hundreds of short stories, of which you have read about half?

Well, at the beginning I suppose, which for this old boy was the best part of thirty-five years ago, when I picked up a copy of The Shining (it may have been Carrie, Christine or Cujo because I remember reading them all in quick succession) and I was taken on a journey like no other.

I was cutting my teeth on English horror at the time (James Herbert being my favourite with Clive Barker snapping at his heels) when suddenly I was reading horror without the horror! Horror books which seemed more about real life than the blood-drenched cellars of the Rats trilogy and those found in The Books of Blood and The Hellbound Heart, and I was blown away.

Some of King's novels are a bit lacking, and some are bloodthirsty, I won't lie, but many are no more horrific than what is for some people, normal life (a rabid bog in Cujo, a woman trying to escape an abusive relationship in Rose Madder, a man being driven mad by cabin fever in The Shining, an amputee's recovery in Duma Key, a school shooting in Rage) and with many having a hint of the supernatural thrown in for good measure I was on a roll.

They're clever too, fictional towns like Derry and Castle Rock make repeat appearances, characters hop from book to book, sometimes popping up in the most unlikely of places, and it all adds to the reality of the fiction! There's Dolores Claiborne, which is written as one continuous monologue (yes, the entire three hundred plus pages has no chapter breaks and no speech other than Dolores). The Green Mile, which was released as six mini books over the course of a few months, adding to the anticipation of what was to came next. The Dark Tower series - which I'm still yet to finish - which splices 1970's 80's & 90's New York, with Mid World - a totally fictional place that seems to be Earth but not Earth at the same time - and is simply superb on so many levels.

I eluded to 'frustrating' in my opening sentence, and as brilliant as most of King's books are, he does like to waffle, gets a bit wordy sometimes, which can be frustrating - there's a six hundred page flashback in Wizard & Glass for example - but (isn't there always a but?) when reading IT or all 1400 + pages of The Stand, I wouldn't have it any other way.
So, if you like your books fast-paced and short, fantastical but realistic, futuristic or set in the past, like tomes with dozens of characters that spread over decades, horror, the supernatural, the assassination of JFK and much much more, there's a Stephen King book out there for you, waiting to be found.
Enjoy.

The Exorcist, book review. (William Peter Blatty)

Of course, you know the story, don't you?

The one where the girl is possessed by the devil. The one where she inflicts terrible injuries on herself and others, where the bed vibrates, rising into the air before crashing down. You've seen the film too no doubt; it's a little dated now so maybe you haven't - it’ll be on your favourite streaming service if you bother to look - but have you ever actually read the book? The book that led to the film that spawned a genre that still spews out multiple versions of this story every year?
Well if you haven't, maybe you should.
This book is dark and it's cold, helped by the icy American winter in which it is mainly set, but it runs deeper than that, far deeper because we’re dealing with a young girl (Regan) who we first think is traumatised by her parents' break up, or maybe it's her mother's hectic and somewhat erratic work schedule or her coming of age, we don't really know but something isn't right, and with the failure of the medical experts to assist and then the suspicious death of one of her mother's friends - he falls down a particularly long flight of steps before coming to rest with his head facing completely the wrong way - Regan's mother, Chris, reaches out to the church, to Father Karras.
Blatty's writing here is great: his characters, his setting, his slow but not too slow build-up through the book as Regan sinks further and further into her unknown illness are excellent, and all the way through, right up to the climax, he manages to keep us on tenterhooks as to what the police detective may or may not discover, whether Regan is possessed - in the eyes of the church that is - whether she can be saved, exorcised, and it had me staying up late, reading the last hundred pages or so in one long sitting because I just couldn't put it down. I had to know. (This is a reread but it’s been a good twenty years so I really didn’t remember).
There are some aspects of this book that feel a little dated now - it was written in the early seventies so that is to be expected I suppose - but there's little else to complain about. The pace is strong, it has great characters, I particularly like Karras who, with the recent loss of his mother, repeatedly questions his faith through the book, the wily old detective (who was either copied from TV's Columbo or was the inspiration for him they're so similar) and of course, there's the violent destruction of an innocent child by what claims to be a demon, and a word of warning here, the film does depict the book quite faithfully so the vomiting is here, the profanity and the . . . yes, that scene, where she masturbates with the crucifix, so go in with your eyes open, for this book doesn't hold back but is all the better for it.
Four stars then for the classic that is The Exorcist. Atmospheric throughout, great characters and it leaves you cold and needing the lights on to go to bed. Brrrrr!

Lies Sleeping, book review (Ben Aaronovitch)

The 'Little Crocodiles' was a group of unlicensed practitioners of magic formed by the now deceased and not much missed Geoffrey Wheatcroft when he was at Oxford in the 1950s, and as some of those members have proved rather deadly in the past, tracking down those who may or may not have been involved and finding out what they did or didn't learn, seems as good a place to start as any if Peter Grant is ever going to find the elusive Chorley, and so, the hunt is on.
Lesley May is back - big time - assisting the faceless man, A.K.A Martin Chorley, who has made a bell that he thinks will summons Merlin, as long as he can fuel it with enough magic that is, which means sacrificing a god. So, as Lesley has a serious issue with Mr. Punch after he removed her face in book one, and Mr. Punch was given god-like status about 1500 years earlier, they can kill two birds with one stone, well, they could if it wasn't for Peter Grant, Nightingale and the ever-growing band of staff at the Folly - The Met police's HQ for all things squiffy - trying to thwart them.
Inquiries are made, plans are drawn, pubs explode, DI Stephanopoulos is shot - by Lesley no less - the goddess of the Walbrook is kidnapped - as is Peter - captured fae are freed and as is so often the case in Aaronovitch's River of London books, everything goes to bollocks!
As we race down London's streets and across its famous rivers, Aaronovitch speeds us through the books four hundred pages with deft skill and pace enough to keep you reading well into the night, and there's much to like, too. Characters that we've known and loved (some revered) since the very beginning, pop in and out with a healthy splattering of newer faces making welcome returns and becoming more entrenched in the narrative to good effect.
Peter Grant's pursuit of Chorley in an old Mk1 Ford Transit van is both riveting and hilarious - he's on a pushbike for starters - his temporary incarceration slows the narrative but still manages to move it along, which is clever, whilst foiling Chorley's plans, seizing and destroying his bells, time and again, before we reach the climax - and it's a good one, mark my words it is – where the tempo gets ramped to the max.
So, another thoroughly entertaining read from Aaronovitch then and one of my favourites so far. Four stars.
Oh (spoiler alert) Beverly is pregnant! Yeah.

An Untamed State, book review. (Roxane Gay)

BRUTAL

It's been about two months since I finished this book but I needed that time to process exactly what I had just read and there you have it:

BRUTAL

Brutal is about all you really need to sum up Roxane Gay's superb, An Untamed State, but there are two parts to this book (Happily Ever After and Once Upon a Time) and two sides to the story, so if brutal is one, then love is the other.

Being the daughter of one of the richest men in Haiti, Mireille knows only one side of her native island, the side that money can buy, not that she's completely blind to the plight of her fellow Haitians, far from it, but living the life of luxury when she visits - she lives in Florida with her American husband and their first child - she is chauffeured from the airport straight to the house where high walls and big gates are guarded by men with guns, keeping the poor out and the family in relative safety and so the true desperation of the average Haitian can only really be guessed at.

Then, an innocent trip to the beach and Mireille's life changes forever.

This book doesn't hang about and it doesn't pull any punches either, firing you straight into the kidnapping like a smack around the face and it's all the better for it, and by throwing you straight in, it has you hooked from the first page, has you immediately questioning whether Mireille can escape, be rescued, or when the ransom will be paid, and then, a few chapters in and you're wondering how she can possibly take anymore, how she can possibly carry on (I said this book was brutal and it is, so don't say you haven't been warned) whether she will ever see her son again, and it has your emotions all over the place.

Reading the brutality in part one will make you angry, sick, scared, frightened and then some and you have to remember that this is a work of fiction, and as a work of fiction I feel that this book gets closer to what I can only imagine is a reality for some women then any other I have yet to read.

During her thirteen days in captivity, Mireille endures every depravity imaginable - I won't go into graphic detail here as my audience sometimes includes children - but the way Roxanne Gay writes just rips at your heart and you just know that if Mireille is ever released or ever manages to escape, her journey would have only just begun.

In part two, Gay explores what can only loosely be described as recovery and again she adds so much depth to her characters, not just Mireille but her husband, her sister, her unsuspected advocate, her mother-in-law - who she goes to stay with for many months - and her now estranged father.

Again, the writing here is just sublime and so believable, portraying just the simplest of tasks as being beyond Mireille’s ability but, with help and support, love, and subtle persuasion, a new journey begins.

Where it will take her is for you to find out but I can tell you one thing, it is totally worth spending your time trying.

Due to the subject matter and how graphically it is explored here, I think it would be odd to say that I enjoyed reading this book but it is absolutely superb and so I can highly recommend it to all who are brave enough to try.

Four and a half stars.

BRUTAL!

The Shadow of the Wind, book review. (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

When Daniel Sempere is ten years old and taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten books by his father and comes away with a copy of, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax, he is overwhelmed by its brilliance and vows to track down and read all of the authors’ books.

However, the author seems to have disappeared, along with the vast majority of his works, and so, some years later, with what could be the only Carax book left, Daniel begins to investigate.

With the assistance of his beggar friend, de Torres, and with the rather unscrupulous, Inspector Fumero shadowing their every move, Daniel starts to uncover the truth, the story of a young Julian, son of a milliner, and Penelope, daughter of one of Barcelona's richest families, and how they fell in love.

Due to their backgrounds, they kept their relationship a secret, but with just days to go to their planned elopement to Paris (arranged and financed by Julian’s closest friend Miquel) their love affair is discovered, along with Penelope's pregnancy.

Penelope is imprisoned by her father and Julian - his life now in danger - is forced to make the journey alone.

Decades pass before Julian feels he can return, and on learning of Penelope's fate when he does, he starts to destroy all his books, and it is in the dark, foggy, rain-soaked streets of Barcelona, that Daniel too finds the truth and if he’s not careful and doesn’t act quickly, the same fate might well befall him and his beloved, Bea.

The Gothic beauty in which Barcelona is painted here is so enticing you feel the chill on your neck, the hairs prickle on your arm as you read. The characters ooze such depth and quality that I want to meet them, shake their hands, kiss, or run from them. I want to visit the Cemetery of Forgotten Books - just the once of course - walk through its many avenues, climb its many stairs, before finding my copy of, The Shadow of the Wind, and then I'd be its keeper, its custodian, share and protect it.

This book is so wonderfully written in such a superb setting that you feel the danger that Daniel, de Torres and any who cross Fumero (who is now a corrupt police chief) are in, seeping from the page, and of Julian, having lost his one true love, damaged beyond repair, you feel his pain with every breath.

This book is funny, too – de Torres speaks like a poet and acts like the fool but has a heart of gold. Scary - Fumero’s methods of torture are legendary and being a woman or a child is no protection. Mysterious – what happened to Penelope? Who is the burnt man who follows Daniel? Who has burnt all of Julian’s books? And superbly atmospheric.

Having just read this for a second time (the fourth book coming out prompting me to go back to the beginning) and enjoyed it just as much as the first, it has now cemented its place in my top ten favourites of all time.

Five big gold stars then and on to book two, The Angel's Game.

Lockdown reads from Mad Mike's writing blog.

Well, a lot of us are at home, furloughed - or worse - but as the restrictions begin to be lifted and life returns to a new normal, it means that some of us - me included - are being drafted back to work.

So what has everyone been reading during the lockdown? More, less, the same? And what genres have you gone for? Uplifting novels to perk you up or dystopian virus novels as a reality check?

I've certainly read more, as well as editing down the 87,000 word manuscript of my third novel to the much more novella (ish) size that is currently just over 70,000 but it's all been fun - I think!

Anyway, on to the book stack photo that is my lockdown reads. All very different I think you'll agree, from the world-famous literary titans that are William Golding and Khaled Hosseini to the gothically atmospheric depth of Barcelona and the small fishing village of Fishbourne, from Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Kate Mosse respectively (I'll be blogging about those two shortly) to the hilarity that is magical policing in London from Ben Aaronovitch, Stephen King's first novel, Carrie and finishing with the depravity of human beings with Gabriel Tallent's, My Absolute Darling and the superbly written but brutal book, An Untamed State, by Roxane Gay.

I liked all of these books in one way or another - some were better than others of course - but by reading such a cross-section of authors - there's both men and women here from a somewhat international spectrum - I think it helps me to not only find new favourites (whilst revisit old ones) but opens my mind to books I didn't even know existed before - An Untamed State being an excellent example.

So, for me, I will continue to search for different authors as well as read and re-read the ones I love and although I have enjoyed the time that being furloughed has afforded me, I would hope that we will never have to go through this and lose so many, ever again.

I know our situation in England is far from over so stay safe all who read this and hopefully I will get to see some of you again soon.

Carrie, book review. (Stephen King)

So, the return to my roots continues with this, Stephen King's first novel, Carrie.

Carrie White is a loner, she has no friends - and I'd ask you to pause there for a moment and think about that, SHE HAS NO FRIENDS - and ask yourself how life would be for you, if you were in that same situation, with no-one to call when you needed a chat, no one to laugh or cry with. Pretty shitty would be my guess.

Okay, so on top of the lack of friendship, she has a matriarchal mother who is deeply religious and (as most of you may already know) hasn't told her teenage daughter anything about the natural monthly cycle of women, and so, when Carrie starts to bleed, have her first period (she is seventeen) in the communal showers at school, she thinks the worst; she thinks something's wrong, very wrong. Her classmates, however, think it's the ideal time to taunt her and throw sanitary products at her.

The basic premise of the book is that one of her tormentors gains a conscious whilst another does not, in fact, the other goes out of her way to be cruel and nasty, getting herself banned from the up and coming prom, and thinking she did nothing wrong in the first place, seeks revenge.

In a slightly odd way, this book is like a coming of age novel: you have the bully, the loner/geek, the popular beauty and her boyfriend - who are in no doubt who will be crowned prom king and queen - the nasty spiteful girl with the criminal boyfriend, the deeply religious mother and of course, telekinesis, adding yet more layers to our scene.

What I like about this book is threefold. It is written in a way where extracts of books and case studies are inter-spliced with the narrative, giving the reader a sense of reality as if the event depicted actually happened. It builds brilliantly from the very beginning and due to the aforementioned extracts, you get a sense of what's happened before it's revealed in the narrative, which pulls you through the book quickly, and thirdly, the tension between Carrie and her mother.

In spite of her mother's draconian rules, Carrie loves her deeply, but the cracks start to show the minute she gets home from school after the shower incident, with the true extent to which she will go to, to 'protect' her daughter, not felt until Carrie confesses her wish to go to prom later in the book.

There is no doubt that the highlight of the book is the last third, where Carrie literally ripped the town apart. With her peers burning alive in the school - punishment for the years of torment they have rained down on her - she then goes on a rampage, and it is superb. Exploding petrol (gas) stations, pulling down power cables to electrocute the masses, tearing down buildings, all before seeking out her main tormentor, and as a reader, you will her on, you want her to get justice, get her revenge, and it really doesn't stop until the very last few pages.

Four stars for this one then, and an excellent first King novel if you've never read him before.

The Rats, book review. (James Herbert)

Back to my childhood again for this one; James Herbert's The Rats.

Classic British horror with all the gore and lack of plotline you would expect and love from the 1970s and boy does it deliver.

Such is the pace of this novel, the whole thing is over in a flash (I am not a fast reader but read it in about five hours) and it's rather formulaic too, introducing a new character per chapter at the start, before killing most of them off rather gruesomely soon after, and then the school teacher hero (the author was a school teacher himself when he wrote the book) turns up in the right place at the wrong time to save the day - the attack on the school is actually one of the highlights of the book, along with a doomed underground train where most of the people aboard become a meal - but what I couldn't believe (this book was first published in 1974, which isn't an excuse by the way) is how sexist and archaic it felt. I've recently re-read Stephen King's first novel, Carrie, which was also published in '74' and that didn't feel anywhere near as old, but there you are, just a word of warning.
The book is set in London but it's a London I don't recognise. There are derelict areas by the river Thames where we now have luxury apartments and bomb-damaged rubble-strewn swathes of rat-infested land that probably have an Ikea or Costa drive-through today, which again, for me at least, because I know London reasonably well, dates the book even more.

So, the writing is okay - I should point out that when I first cut my teeth on James Herbert's back catalogue (or before I knew any better), all of his books got five stars because, as a teenager, the gorier the book, the more blood that was spilled and the more ingenious the ways in which it was spilled was all that really mattered - and its pace, as I've said, means you'll tear through in no time. The characters do lack depth though, and their backstories mean very little because the character to whom they refer to are in most cases, quickly devoured.

So, the Rats, one of my first love affairs of the literary world, written by one of the first authors that really got me reading for pleasure, is now a mixed bag. I will always have it and its author to thank for leading me down the path I am still on, for helping me fall in love with the world of books, but, and it pains me to write this, overall, now, thirty-odd years later, I can see it for what it is, average.

Brilliant in parts - the scene in the school really is that good - but showing its age in regards to how it portrays women and in the basic way it is written.

Three stars then for James Herbert's The Rats, but I'll never forget where it all started.

The Foundation Pit, book review. (Andrey Platonov)

Okay, well . . . Er!
What do you get if you cross the bourgeoisie, the kulak (small landowners in pre-revolutionary Russia) with a whole heap of the proletariat - those who own nothing but the feeling an honest day's work gives them?

Trouble is what, and this, this very strange book.

There is a pit to be dug, a Foundation Pit, from where a building of such magnitude will eventually rise that it will house everyone, and so the proletariat toil, day in day out, and ask no questions, for their purpose is to just be, so that the great socialist revolution can prosper.

There are many characters in this book, some you get to know early on, like Safronov and Kozlov, who die one day for no other reason it seems than that they decided they were nothing, had no thoughts and so might not exist, and so they didn't exist and therefore die!
Then there's Chiklin, Zhachev (who is disabled and pushes himself around on a cart), Prushevsky (the engineer) and Pashkin, who seems to be in a more authoritative role, enough to make decisions at least, but nothing is really clear so I could be wrong!

Then Nastya appears. A young orphan, who had been raised on the collective ideals of Stalin's Russia and has a very grownup perspective on things - 'Liquidate the kulak class. Long live Stalin,' she says at one point before Chiklin, who once knew her mother, takes her in. Then things get really strange. Chiklin and Nastya go on a kulak hunt around the outlying homesteads. They stop at the local forge and collect the hammerer there - which happens to be a bear - yes, a bear, the furry kind that fish for salmon in rivers and live in the wild or in zoos - before making their rounds, and it is the bear who calls out when he sees fit, and it is those houses that are raided and their inhabitants evicted.

There is a collectivised farm to be organised too, so on the bear's travels, many are brought into the fold and as they no longer have to think for themselves as individuals - the collective will think for them - they slaughter their livestock and eat them all, making themselves sick from overindulgence, but no matter, it's all for the greater good and so it continues!!

There is a quote on the rear cover of the pictured copy I read, and it refers to the book as 'Andrey Plutonov's absurdist parable' which might give you some idea as to what you're getting yourselves in to with this book but, even with that caveat, approach with caution.

This book is very strange and wasn't really for me, so only two stars I'm afraid.

Schindler's Ark, book review. (Thomas Keneally)

It's when fiction is fact that you get books like this.

During World War II, in the city of Krakow, Poland, not more than a few hours from the Concentration Camp, Auschwitz Birkenau, Oscar Schindler set up a ceramics factory - which also made munitions for the war effort - and enslaved hundreds of Jews in the process, but by enslaving them (he was an undeniable capitalist) he offered them a rare means of hope in a period of history that is now viewed by most, as humanity's (and I don't use that word lightly) darkest.

Beginning with a brief history of both Schindler and Goth - the soon to become tyrant who liquidated the Krakow ghetto and was appointed the commandant of the Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, the man who randomly executed people (Jewish of course) for no other reason than they weren't running fast enough or had somehow been disrespectful - the reader soon finds themselves enveloped in a world they can't, and hopefully never will have to, understand; a world where people aren't people anymore, where they are not only treated worse than animals, they are believed to be worse than animals.

A world where you have six hundred calories a day to survive on, where the roof over your head is shared with rats, the dead and the dying, where the thin scratchy garments you're given to wear wouldn't keep out the cold in Spring, let alone a Polish winter.

Having witnessed the Aktion taken by the SS (Schutzstaffel - meaning protection squadron) to clear the Krakow ghetto, Oscar and a few associates begin to make plans, realising that unless they offered their workers protection, they too would be shipped off to Auschwitz and never be seen again; and so, a list is created.

Schindler was arrested several times during the war (for bribery) but being the player that he was, and having grateful friends in high places, he remained free, which enabled him to continued his work to the end of hostilities.

Written in the early 1980s and after extensive research and interviews with many who lived through the holocaust, this book will leave you emotionally scarred, no question about that, but just like Laurence Rees's book, Nazis, A Warning From History, says, 'One must heed such warnings and never forget what happened the day humanity collapsed so spectacularly,' and we really must.

Last year (20/08/18) I blogged about Max Hastings's rather superb book about World War II, All Hell Let Loose, and summed that up with the staggering statistic that, fifty-six million people perished as a result of World War II, and what we mustn't forget but sometimes do, is that out of those fifty-six million, many millions were civilians, non-combatants – with six million of them being Jewish and killed for no other reason than their bloodline.

Read this book I beg you, for although it is horrific beyond imagination and will tear at your heart, it is a must-read if you ever want to understand just a snippet of what it must have been like to live in such conditions, and yes, if you've seen the film, both the girl in the red dress and the boy (albeit he was a teenager at the time) who hid in the cesspit, were both real, but only one of them survived.
To put a star rating on a book like this seems a bit crass but in the hope that it might get others to pick up a copy and read it, I will give it five.

The Thief of Always, book review. (Clive Barker)

As a lot of people are at home at the moment with their children, I thought, why not do a post for the kids.
It's been twenty-plus years since I last read this little gem of a book and I wish I hadn't left it so long.

Being a little bored and annoyed with all the chores his mother has given him, Harvey Swick is in a foul mood, so when Rictus appears in his bedroom, offering to take him to Mr. Hood's holiday house, a house that has stood for a thousand years and is only just the other side of town, where he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, where he'll never go hungry, do chores or be bored again, Harvey decides to take him up on the offer.
Of course, this being Clive Barker, all is not quite as it seems. His first day is full of fun and frivolity and passes without incident, and whilst waking to spring the next morning, having summer in the afternoon, Autumn and a Halloween feast for dinner and going to sleep with Christmas, the next day is like a dream. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, there's the pool for a start, the deep dark foreboding pool, where one of Harvey's new friend is spending more and more of her time, looking ever more melancholy with each passing day.

Then, there's Rictus's siblings, his huge fat ugly sister, who wants to transform Harvey with makeup and clothes, so he can play tricks on his friends, nasty horrible, callous tricks, tricks that will truly scare them, and there's nothing fun about that, is there? And Rictus's brother - Mr. Hood's deputy if you will - who lives for nothing more than to see the children's fear and pain as they become more detached from reality and ever more ensconced in the house, the pool, the . . .

Time passes, but with each day being the same, no chores, whatever food you want, whenever you want it, Christmas every evening, Harvey is getting bored and decides to leave, only he can't, because Rictus and his siblings have other ideas, and they have their orders. Orders from Mr Hood, strict orders . . . No-one ever leaves.

What a great novel this is; starting as child's fantasy and ending in such (child friendly) horror, and what a clever book too, for children and adults alike, reminding us that we should all be careful about what we wish for and that maybe we should look closer at what we already have before giving in to temptation.

Written in Barker's usual fantastical style but somewhat toned for a younger audience, this book could be enjoyed by anyone, so if you've never read Clive Barker but don't want to invest the time it would take to read one of his more ambitious creations (although I recommend that you do that too as I have liked everything of his that I have read so far) then you won't go far wrong with, The Thief of Always.

Four stars then and I certainly won't be leaving it this long to re-visit some of this author's other books. Enjoy.

The Revenant, book review. (Michael Punke)

Okay, so you've seen the film right?

No? Yes? Well, that doesn't really matter because this is quite different. No less dramatic mind but different all the same.

Along with, Eowyn Ivey's, The Snow Child, this is the book you read if you want to know what it feels like to be cold, really, really cold. It is also the book you read if you want to know what it's like to be truly alone. Not sitting alone in a room, or walking the streets at three in the morning alone but I-could-be-the-last-person-on-earth alone, and that feeling of loneliness, of isolation, envelopes you about halfway through this book and wraps you in its cold blanket all the way to the bitter end.
I recently read and blogged about Birdbox, (26/10/19) which makes you feel alone, I've read John Wyndham's, The Day of the Triffids, and Robert Matterson's rather excellent, I am Legend, which leaves you utterly desperate as it concludes, and this book runs it a close second; truly isolating you in ice and snow until you're in need of some good company, a warm fire and a large measure of your favourite tipple.
Based on true events whilst the Americas were still being mapped and discovered by the Europeans, the story centres around the fur trade, animal pelts, and on one expedition in particular, where Hugh Glass and his group of men are attacked by a tribe of Native Americans and are lucky to escape with their lives.

Then, there's the bear attack, superbly written as is the film shot, and you get so much from Punke's writing you almost feel the animal's claws ripping through your own flesh, and then the book is off, decisions are made, promises are broken and Hugh Glass finds himself alone and as close to death as one can be without passing.

Those first few hours, those first few days, the hopelessness of it all encompasses the reader in a way that you just have to keep going, keep turning those pages, 'cause let's face facts, everyone loves an underdog. So you start routing for him, willing Glass on, wanting him to push through the pain, both physical and psychological. There are other attacks, too, more Native Americans to outwit, more rivers to cross, bears to avoid, and how Hugh Glass actually managed to do what he did, survive what must have seemed un-survivable, is I suppose why this book makes for such good reading and why the film was made. Isn't it in our hearts, humans, in our very core, to survival, whatever the odds?

Four ice-covered stars for, The Revenant then and heartily recommended.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, book review. (Stuart Turton)

Oh No!

Have I found my book of the year 2020 already?

Well . . . Maybe!

Confusing, fast-paced, witty, horrific intriguing and I'll-be-damned-if-I'm-putting-this-book-down-it's-only-half-past-one-in-the-morning-and-I-really-really-really-need-to-know-who-the-murderer-is, oh, shit it’s . . .!

If you like murder mystery, crime, romance, character lead drama, family sagas, a good old punch up, some serious skulduggery and subterfuge, then you are simply going to love this book.

Set in the eloquent but scratch-beneath-the-surface-and-you'll-see-the-peeling-paint-mansion that is home to the Hardcastle family and has been for generations, we find our main protagonist (Aiden Bishop) trapped in the body of a man he does not recognise, a man who feels utterly alien to him in both body and mind, and it all kicks off like a slap in the face.

Aiden Bishop will have eight hosts throughout the book, each reliving the day of Evelyn Hardcastle's death (which at first appears to be a suicide) from different perspectives and it reads like Agatha Christie does Cluedo.

Aiden Bishop is assisted by Anna, whose name is the only thing he remembers when he first wakes as the cowardly drug peddling Sebastian Bell, deep in the woods, but as the days pass he morphs into a butler, a morbidly obese Lord, a rapist and a cad, an aging solicitor, a gambler, all before becomes a policeman and finally, an artist, who help, but in some cases hinder, in his search for the truth, and it'll be all for nothing if he can't solve the murder before the end of the eighth day, for that's when the cycle will reset, his memory will be wiped and everything will start afresh, taking him back to the very beginning, where it will continue to loop, for however long it takes him to not only find out who the perpetrator of Evelyn's murder is, but the reason why they want her dead in the first place.

I love the way this book is written, how Aiden battles inside each of his hosts: disgusted by the Lord's obesity, the solicitor's contempt, the gambler's cunning, the rapist's despicable mind and more.

With each character helping to reveal more about what may or may not have happened and the delicate intricacies between them as they try to gain favour and information - some becoming incapacitated and popping up randomly through the book, others making their bid for freedom - Aiden is gradually left with fewer and fewer friends and even fewer option. So should he trust the not so trustworthy Anna? The man in the death mask? Should he trust anything he's learnt over the last eight days? And where the hell is their host, Evelyn's mother, Mrs Hardcastle, who no one's seen all day?

Simply put, this book is brilliant. It’s original, has superb characters and just keeps going until the very end. Highly recommended.

Four and a half stars then and don't be surprised if you see this book making an appearance in December when I decide on my book of the year.

The Long Walk, book review. (Stephen King)

Another first time read for me of an old Stephen King/Richard Bachman book, and like The Running Man and Rage - which I reviewed last year - I really quite liked it.

It's a simple affair really, a hundred boys/young men have signed up for, The Long Walk, in the knowledge that they will die if they are not the last one standing. There is little premise here, but the assumption I made was that something bad had happened to the world, not Hunger Games bad, but something bad all the same; bad enough that hundreds of young men would essentially sign their own death warrant for a prize – that prize being: all and everything you could ever want or wish for.

I wasn't sure how a long walk could fill nearly three hundred pages but as is usual with King, you're halfway in before you know it and by the time you're close to finishing, you're so desperate to know who will win, that you just can't stop turning the page.

The walk begins at 9 am one unassuming morning and Garraty - our main character - and those that flank him, soon fall into an uneasy rhythm - drop below four miles per hour and you get a warning, get three warnings and the forth is a bullet in your skull, and yes, they really do kill you, so when your number's up or 'you get your ticket' as they say in the book, there's one less competitor to worry about.

There's not a lot of chit chat to start with but after a few hours, after fifty miles, after a kiss by the roadside that earns Garraty a warning, the strengths and weaknesses of Garraty and those around him start to show through, and it is here, in the characters, that the book really shines. You've got the boy with the limp who's going to be the first out but last longer than most, the loudmouth that goes surprisingly quiet as the days and miles tick by, the silent creepy boy who secretly scares them all, and due to their inadequacies, their jibes and mocking of each other, and in some cases their plain loathing, the book ebbs along like real life.

They talk about home, school, the ones they love, be it a girlfriend or a parent, and as they get ever fewer, as the miles trip past, the crowds grow and the sound of gunshots ricochet off the surrounding hills, they increasingly talk of the prize: Any and everything that they could hope or wish for, but will any of them be alive to claim it?

This is a three and a half star book for me. I thought I would like it but it ended up being better than I had anticipated.
So, one more King book down, several dozen still to go.