Review - Strange New World by Vivian Shaw

Strange New World

Vivian Shaw
Orbit, 20 May 2025

Available as: PB, 371pp, audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9780356521077

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Strange New World  to consider for review.

I thought that the series of books about Greta Helsing, doctor to the monsters of London, was done, so I was VERY excited to see the e-book only novella Bitter Waters last year. Gloriously it was followed up by Strange New World.  Strange New World does though think mark a definite end.

It was wonderful to meet Greta again.  I have a weakness for characters who, like her, may be tossed around by events and even baffled by what's going, but nevertheless remain level-headed, focussed and competent throughout - rather than becoming so just in time for the third act. 

Of course, it helps a protagonist when their husband is a wealthy vampire, their best friend is a senior functionary in Hell and their circle of acquaintances included the Voivode, Count Dracula himself. Greta has all of those advantages and is nowhere near as hard-pressed as she was in the earlier books. Still,  even it does look as though previous events - the hunting down of harmless monsters by religious fanatics - are being repeated. Greta suffered enough trauma from that to give her pause (I also have a weakness for stories that respect and recognise trauma rather than just ignoring it). Even so, the dangers (to herself, her friends and indeed, the fabric of reality itself) that she has weathered have also left her conscious of just how vulnerable mortals (and monsters) can be and of the need to face them. In Strange New World, those dangers come from a new direction, and the means to overcome must as well.

Without being too spoilery, I'd like to say how much I enjoyed the resolution to this book. It would have been possible to make it a magnificently bloody piece of combat, with the Universe balanced on a knife edge - and indeed there are some nail biting set piece conflicts in here - but the book is concerned  rather with empathy and morality. The solution, if there is one, is therefore going to require compassion, flexibility - and friendship.

That leads us to a much richer, and necessarily messier, conclusion than if it all turned on a knock-down battle, but also to a much better one I think. Indeed, as the book ended I found myself thinking of a perhaps surprising precedent - CS Lewis's Screwtape Letters. Setting aside the question of whether those "letters from a senior to a junior demon" (a kind of infernal Yes, Minister) establish Lewis, the great Christian apologist, as a founder of urban fantasy (I would love that but perhaps... not quite)  I think there is a comparison to be drawn. I think one of Lewis's insights was to explore issues of personality, confusion and despair in the subjects that his industrious demons were trying to mislead, rather than brimstone and temptation. 

Shaw's demons (and her angels) inhabit a different moral universe, not the Christian one, and nobody is actively trying to save or damn anyone. Here, Heaven and Hell are more like rival idealogical systems, and of course, as she makes clear, other mythologies are also available. But, at the root of things I think there are the same issues that Lewis explored - the fatal flaws in human, demon or, indeed, angel, that can lead to dreadful consequences. We are all monsters. We can all be better. We all need love, acceptance and hope. And friendship. Which made the ending of this book, and the moral actions that lead to the resolution and point to a future of hope, so powerful for me.

Which is, perhaps, a good place to end a series. While I will miss Greta, I feel that in these five books have completed something significant, say something significant. 

I will be keen to see what Shaw writes next!

For more information about Strange New World, see the publisher's website here.

Blgtour review - Shatter Creek by Rod Reynolds

Shatter Creek (Casey Wray, 2)
Rod Reynolds
Orenda Books, 22 May 2025 
Available as: PB, 355pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781916788091

I'm grateful to Orenda for sending me a copy of Shatter Creek to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

This one put me in mind of one of my favourite Springsteen songs, Atlantic City:

Now there's trouble busin' in from outta state

And the DA can't get no relief

Gonna be a rumble out on the promenade

And the gamblin' commission's hangin' on by the skin of its teeth...

Also set in a coastal town that's seen better days, like Atlantic City Shatter Creek sees hard-pressed officialdom - in this case the Hampstead County Police Department - hanging on by the skin of its teeth, threatened by by a wave of murders, by political interference and by the taint of corruption.

Sergeant Casey Wray is back, naturally. She's the woman trying to hold it, and herself, together. Casey - just - survived the violent events of Black Reed Bay, both physically (unlike her partner she's alive!) and reputationally, back on duty after a lengthy investigation exonerated her (though not in everyone's eyes). Now it all seems to be happening again, with her superior officer mistrustful, mysterious calls from a would-be informant, and pressure to resolve the murder of a wealthy political donor without raking up further dirt.

We're in for a tense few days, then, as Casey has to balance the different pressures on her. 

But someone else seems to be interested in recruiting her...

This certainly is not a relaxing read. As with its predecessor, Shatter Creek is a tense book, a window into a high pressure world where nothing can be fixed and just getting to the end of each working day is a minor miracle. Casey's clearly a good cop, and a good friend - she spends as much time sorting out the frictions among her team as in chasing down the suspects - but she's in a tight place. By the time I was a third of the way through this book I was beginning to dread every phone call and text that interrupts Casey's day, because each one piles more and more pressure on. 

As the story progresses, the limited normality and security that Casey has reestablished is stripped away leaving her very exposed. She's pressured to do favours for the politicians - but we just know that if she gives in, it'll blow up in her face. If she resists, though, she'll end up being the fall girl when the enquiry goes wrong, as it seems to be doing.

Through it all, Reynolds keeps a plot moving that is - once we reach the end and see what's gone on - beautifully simply, yet fiendishly complex and misleading as it unfolds. And he makes real a whole train of characters - broken people, who've lost loved ones or discovered someone wasn't what they seemed. Rage, loss, jealousy, greed and pride chase each other down the pages of this novel as though someone had set up a track and field tournament for the Seven Deadly Sins. 

And amidst it all are those broken people, desperately vulnerable. It's not just Casey who's in jeopardy (though she does seem at risk). There's a missing mother and child. Other women are dying, with a particularly nasty form of patriarchy and coercive control on display. Each death leaves a dreadful void for the survivors. Protecting them all is Casey's touchpoint, her still centre in this storm - one of the reasons she's such a relatable and compelling protagonist - but other actors, bad actors, seem more concerned with covering their own backsides, or finding advantage in the chaos.

It is a riveting read, and one hard not to undertake in a single go, though if you suffer from high blood pressure, well, you may want to make sure you take regular breaks... or medication.

For more information about Shatter Creek, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Shatter Creek from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

Review - Paladin's Grace by T Kingfisher

Paladin's Grace

T Kingfisher
Orbit, 8 April 2025 
Available as: PB, 360pp audio, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN (PB): 9780356524313

I'm grateful to Orbit for sending me a copy of Paladin's Grace  to consider for review.

Stephen is a broken paladin. His god dead, he's trying to find purpose - and to prevent the berserk rage overtaking him, because with the Saint of Steel gone missing, Stephen is afraid he'll lose control and commit mass murder. 

The rest of the time, he knits socks...

Grace is a perfumer. A Woman with Secrets, she's already lost everything - twice - and is desperately afraid it'll happen again.

So when Grace is chased through a graveyard by malevolent priests, and literally jumps into Stephen's arms to put them off the scent, she's being practical, not looking for an offer of rescue, still less for romance. And Stephen's too afraid of letting go and losing control to admit the feelings Grace stirs in him.

And yet. And yet...

Paladin's Grace is a fun fantasy romance. Kingfisher's setting - a medieval-ish town crammed with feuding priests, plotting diplomats and, as the toll of bodiless heads mounts up, murderers - is well realised without being over-serious. Stephen's, and Grace's, sensitivities, are well drawn. Their respective drives to resist romantic entanglement war with natural feelings - STRONG feelings, my goodness, as Kingfisher makes clear - but both, of course, are too embarrassed, not to say confused, to explain to each just what they're going through.

And in any case they have no time. There are murders to solve!

The two protagonists are interesting and fun - Stephen may sound from my description above as though he's stepped out of a D&D adventuring party, but he's an intelligent man, not just an arm with a sword, and a complex one at that, trying to navigate his way in a world he never expected or wanted to live in. Grace is a resourceful and determined woman who's suffered appallingly at the hands of entitled men, and is determined not to fall into any man's power. Her profession as a perfumier gives her an ambivalent place in society, allowing access to privileged circles while not being part of them. (As becomes clear when her secrets, and her life, begin to unravel, her foundations in her profession are shaky too).

Through all this, a developing plot concerning poisonings in diplomatic circler, as well as those unidentified heads, adds tension, putting both Stephen and Grace in danger and driving the story towards a violet conclusion.

While I might, perhaps, have hoped that this violence would come on a little sooner - we know it's coming, don't we? - the anticipation mirrors, er, another kind of anticipation that's building of course in our protagonists. Will they or won't they? Well, fair reader, I don't deal in spoilers, you'll just have to read the book.

All in all, great fun and - I understand - a standalone adventure in a wider world that this author is currently developing with more volumes to be published shortly. I'll be watching for them.

For more information about Paladin's Grace, see the publisher's website here.

Blogtour review - Downlands by Norm Konyu

Downlands
Norm Konyu
Titan Comics, 13 May 2025
Available as: HB, 292pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781787743328

I'm grateful to Julia at Titan Comics for sending me a copy of Downlands to consider for review, and for inviting me to join the blogtour for this excellent graphic novel.

I hadn't read Norm Konyu's work before but now that I've seen Downlands I'm a fan. To this 70s child there's a haunting fusion of form and content here, not so much dreamlike as "memories you had forgotten like". And that's even before you add in the folk-horror vibe and rich historical depth.

Set in the ancient countryside and the villages of Sussex, Downlands is centred around James and his 14 year old sister Jen, who dies suddenly at the start of the book. I think it's fair to say the story is centred around James and Jen because her absence is itself a presence that haunts this book. It is (as well as being many other things!) a powerful evocation of loss and dislocation, as James and his parents struggle with their grief and the unfairness of a life lost so young. ("Tea again. I was constantly being offered tea as if it would make everything right.") The supernatural events that flit around the subsequent story reflect that dislocation, but they are clearly intended here as more than a reaction to it - there is something amiss.

Jen's absence isn't the only one. Through the book, Konyu also gives us, via retold stories, fragments of history, postcards, extracts and countless other sources, the stories of the houses in James' street. These include many losses. There have been deaths. There have been disappearances. Young men march away to war, to return changed, it at all. One unfortunate woman is committed to the county asylum. A family perish in a road accident. A cottage burns down and is never rebuilt. 

Other events are also touched on - a famous writer lodged in the street while working on her masterpiece. The local vicar struggles with his sermon. A woman whispered to be a witch has some answers. And, through all of it, a mysterious black dog that only some can see steps in and out of the tale.

It's a puzzle of sorts. James tries to understand what happened to Jen, but discovers that is linked to other, older mysteries. It's not "ancient evil" territory but there is a sense of malevolence, or perhaps, of human twistedness warping a natural ineffableness to darken and taint the lives of those who live in The Street (and especially at one particular address). In the course of sketching this out, Konyu blends many powerful themes, both historical and mythic - excavating the "ghost soil" as it were (and helpfully describes some of the sources at the end)

The story is, as I mentioned, conveyed in a very distinctive style, naturalistic yet stylised, the angles and often muted tones often gorgeous yet chiming with the slightly awkward feelings and sense of disjunction being felt by James and his family. Grief, guilt and disbelief will do that to how you see the world, I think. I have no learning in graphical styles so may be making some huge faux pas here, but to me it also recalled a strand in book illustration from the 60s and 70s - something overlapping between the sparseness of Dick Bruna and those intricate line drawn pictures in 70s Puffin books. I felt very at home with these pages. (That's especially useful since the book encourages you to turn back and forward, making connections between things as later pages shed new light on earlier material).

All in all, a ravishing read, perfect whether as something spooky to send shivers through you in summer hear or autumn fog, as a powerful episode of nostalgia, or as a comforting companion in grief. Or, just if you want a good read!

For more information about Downlands, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy Downlands from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books, Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, or Waterstones.

Review - South of Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver

South of Nowhere

Jeffery Deaver
HarperCollins, 8 May 2025
Available as: HB, 416pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy

ISBN(HB): 9780008665951

I'm grateful to the publisher for providing me with advance access to an e-copy of South of Nowhere via NetGalley.

In the latest instalment of Deaver's compulsive readable Colter Shaw series (though, I'm not sure Deaver writes anything that isn't compulsively readable) our hero is pitted not only against the bad guys but against the forces of nature itself.

Amidst a general drought, the Californian town of Hinowah is threatened by, of all things, flooding, due to snow melt in the mountains. The levee that protects the town has been allowed to fall into disrepair, and it's threatening to give way. In the heart-stopping prelude to the story, we see travellers on the levee road facing the threat of being swept away by the floodwaters, and later, Shaw's cool analysis of how they might survive (if you're trapped in a submerged car with a pocket of air, it will last longer if you wee on the carpet, apparently, so you'd better hope the car's upright).

How, and why, Shaw comes to be in Hinowah and what allies - and enemies - he has there, will be revealed in the book. At the start he's worrying about a development from his troubled father's past, one that may place the family in danger again. That thread is picked up in the book as something that may feature in future stories, but mostly, this one is about the peril in Hinowah. We see an agreeable set of figures battle against the crisis - Army engineers, a disaster response professional who happened to  than be passing by, the town boss who fancies taking over as police chief and sees the whole episode as a "test" for him, a new police recruit who's who most competent person on his team, and, of course, Shaw himself. 

Laced with Deaver's brand of informed analysis on issues ranging from river law (and law), to flood risk to the history of the California goldrush to modern tech and its insatiable demand for water, and his meticulous plotting, the story isn't without the human touch either - whether it's Shaw himself finding romance or seeing the inhabitants of a small town respond in realistic ways to the threat hanging over them (spoiler: realistic ways doesn't always mean sensible ways). 

There are subplots and wheels within wheels and a feature I love with these novels, a Survivalist family who are not far Right crazies - and whose skills and talents are particularly well suited to the crisis unfolding in South of Nowhere. We also see some bad actors about their business (but what, exactly, is their business, amidst a natural disaster?) and there are some surprises about who is up to what.

As ever, immense fun, and those same bad actors provide enough of a whodunnit/ whytheydunnit element to leaven the straight disaster narrative, if that's your thing, although for me , that drama was nalibiting enough in itself.

Strongly recommended, but if you pick this up, be sure to clear your diary for the next few days because you won't willingly out it down again till you reach the end.

For more information about South of Nowhere see the publisher's website here.

Review - Sleeper Beach by Nick Harkaway (Cal Sounder, 2)

Sleeper Beach

Nick Harkaway
Corsair, 10 April 2025 
Available as: HB, 312pp,  audio, e   
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781472158895

I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of Sleeper Beach to consider for review.

Sleeper Beach is the second book featuring Cal Sounder, PI in a near-future, fractured reality. In the first story, Titanium Noir, we saw (spoilers!) Cal fatally injured and treated with the drug T7, which prolongs life and increases body mass, strength and endurance. 

Five years on, Cal is still learning to live with his new body and with the profound change to his status in his own - and wider society's - perception. Cal is now a "Titan", one of of a tiny number of reengineered supermen (and women) who seem set to inherit the earth, poisoned and heated as it is. Titans can live for hundreds of years, with many acquiring great wealth over their prolonged lifetimes. They have a different view of the world, losing track of relationships and of the lives of the ephemeral "baselines", many of whom are resentful, forced to the sidelines of life in what is a nakedly capitalist, dog-eat-dog world.

Despite his new status, Cal continues to do what good he can, rather than allowing himself to be enfolded by the cushion of money and privilege that might be afforded by his girlfriend's, Athena's, membership of the powerful Tonfamecasca corporate family. This is how he comes to be investigating the suspicious death of a young woman in the seaside town of Shearwater. Harkaway lovingly portrays the atmosphere of the peeling resort/ fishing town, a place dominated by the Esrkine family who've been having trouble with their workers. It's a complex plot featuring potential revolutionaries, trades unions and family tensions all of whom have only one thing in common - a preference for Cal to mind his own business. Lurking in the background is the mysterious organisation the 1848, a revolutionary sect that may or may not exist and may or may not be set to avenge the massacre that happened some decades earlier in a place called Tilehurst.

That name is one of the few familiar anchors for me to the present - I regularly travel through Tilehusrt on the train, although it's not the small city portrayed here - the action in the book taking place in a strange, almost dreamlike place that's hard to connect, either spatially or temporally, to now. From the hard boiled tone of the narration one might think the story was based in the US, but other place names, and the geography, seem frustratingly off for that. Maybe there's more going on here than one might think - perhaps Cal, who is our narrator, is already succumbing to the Titan outlook, telescoping time and the b brief lives of baseline humans. Perhaps history is being rewritten, and the centuries the Titans have allegedly been around for are a myth, or something worse? It's all tantalising.

Harkaway is certainly having fun with all this, and, I felt, perhaps poking fun at another current project, the continuation of the George Smiley books. There's perhaps a thin line between Cal's profession and that of the spy, the Communist organisation in the shadows suggests, of course, a subtle enemy and I definitely spotted allusions ion the language - as for example when there is a need for a "legend for a girl". 

But the fun doesn't take over. Cal is not in fact a spy, he is a hardboiled detective - a man who may walk down the mean streets but is not himself mean, hard though it may be to grasp his humanity changed as he is - and in Sleeper Beach he does just want he ought to, carrying out the instructions of his mysterious client, who may or may not be fatale, she is definitely femme but not a stereotype dangerous blonde, to discover who is the murderer. There may or may not be a Titan angle here - it's so easy for them to become killers, so easy to escape justice. There may or may not be a political angle. Cal makes alliances and enemies, explores the roots of the town and spends a great deal of time on that beach where the hopeless come to let their lives drain away.

It's a glorious book, a knotty detective mystery wrapped round a peeling dystopia. I can't think of anything quite like this series. It's got noir, obviously. It's got echoes of M John Harrison's Viriconium. It's got a scorching moral centre as Cal processes the nature of the creature he's become and debates its right to exist. So maybe add Frankenstein to that mix? And I could go on. It's weird, it's sad, it's fun and it's all its own thing.

Strongly recommended.

For more information about Sleeper Beach, see the publisher's website here.

Review - Underscore by Andrew Cartmel

Underscore (The Vinyl Detective, 8)

Andrew Cartmel
Titan Books, 15 April 2025
Available as: PB, 416pp audio, e   
Source: Bought
ISBN(PB): 9781803367989

It's always great to see a new instalment of Andrew Cartmel's Vinyl Detective series (or for that matter, an outing for his spiritual sister the Paperback Sleuth) and I'm especially chuffed because this one quotes Blue Book Balloon in its rundown of reviews. Perhaps I can finally call myself an influencer. 

Not that I am letting that sway me in giving my verdict here. Oh no. I can genuinely say that Underscore maintains the high standard of its predecessors, as the (still unnamed) Detective (who's getting sick of being called that, however, what will Cartmel do?) launches into a search for the soundtrack LP to Murder in London, a gory 1960s Italian film whose events seem to be echoed in modern London...

The Detective, and his girlfriend Nevada, have been commissioned to track down a pristine vinyl copy of the record - but also, if they can, to exonerate its composer, Loretto Loconsole, of murdering his lover during the film's production production. The killing, for which no-one was ever charged, hung over Loconsole's later career, but his granddaughter Chloë now wants to reissue the music - something hard to do if he's still under suspicion (and harder still if she doesn't have a decent copy of it).

The resulting investigation hits all the notes that a Vinyl Detective novel should. I get sheer pleasure from the way that in these novels Cartmel creates a believable, and frankly enviable, lifestyle for his shifting bunch of characters who lunch and drink their way around a beautifully realised corner of the West London suburbs. Yet there are dangers that follow them, and Underscore has some heart stopping moments. Someone is determined to stop Chloë vindicating her grandfather, or reissuing his music, or both. Cass and Desdemona, the grandkids of the murder victim, are also hanging around - they would bribe the Detective to desist if they could (Nevada's tempted, of course) but might they go further?

How to solve a nearly 60 year old mystery? How to find a copy of a recording which - due to the scandal attached - was never issued, with the discs rather being destroyed? How to stay alive while doing both?

It's a tightly written, action filled story (with breaks for those lunches, naturally) which kept me guessing. As ever, Cartmel fills the reader in on the finer points, in this case the giallo genre, the politics of the late 60s recording industry and the surprising fidelity of a pristine vinyl copy. (It's no coincident that the Detective is after vinyl, rather than vintage CDs or tapes). The result is an excellent addition to the canon, and a better knowledge of these essential matters. 

With another Paperback Sleuth novel due this year as well it's going to be a good year, I can already tell.

For more information about Underscore, see the publisher's website here.