Review - The Sound of the Dark by Daniel Church

The Sound of the Dark

Daniel Church
Angry Robot, 28 October 2025
Available as: PB, 400pp, e   
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(PB): 9781915998408

I'm grateful to the publisher for sending me a copy of The Sound of the Dark to consider for review.

Though this book is set during the summer, it would make great reading (and a great present!) for a landscape-horror to consider at this, the darkest time of the year. In particular, The Sound of the Dark, as its name suggests, makes superb use of sound as a channel and metaphor for the insinuation of evil. 

It therefore feels very current - the true-crime podcaster in fiction is fast, I think, becoming the modern day equivalent of those slightly fusty academics MR James wrote about - the ones who come across an oddity in a manuscript from the previous century, investigate it... and suffer the consequences.

Whether "the consequences" arise from the malice of an evil spirit, or more mundane human wickedness, or a combination of both, there's something about the hapless investigator pulling an unravelling strand from the past and trying to establish what really happened that provides the perfect gateway to horror. That feeling one has that they are in for trouble and should draw back - but knowing that they won't, and waiting and wanting to see exactly how bad it gets.

And in The Sound of the Dark, that's very bad indeed.

With folk horror vibes, Church's new novel focusses first on a murder-suicide that took place in the 80s when a troubled artist destroyed first his family and then himself. He'd been poking around in a disused RAF station, Warden Fell. 

(Who was the warden, we might wonder. Against what were they on guard?)

Forty years later, podcaster Cally Darker stumbles across Tony Mathias's story. Darker, herself troubled and in a relationship with a controlling boyfriend, digs enthusiastically into what records she can find. I had a distinct sense that Cally was using Tony's story to escape from her own rather grim reality. She is an engaging and, as the story proceeds, increasingly brave and determined young woman, but she certainly has Issues. (Kudos to Church for telling us just enough about her family background to give the outlines there, but not holding up the story by providing too much detail).

Ultimately, Cally lays hands on some relics of Tony's life that will cast light on those events in 1983. Or perhaps, cast darkness. Because there is a sense of a taint here - a darkness at noon - as something ancient and amiss seems to be at work even under the midsummer sun. This subversion of the usual horror conventions only makes things seem more eerie, more out of joint, as we see the ancient horror beginning to take form, or rather, as we hear it - this book is haunted by a whispering, by an insinuating quality of sonic presence. Church captures that sense you sometimes get alone in a house, or awake in the small hours, when there's a noise and you lie there trying to work out what it was, half convincing yourself there wasn't a sound at all, even though you know there was.

Take that, energise it, and bring into broad daylight and you'll appreciate how Cally begins to feel as she discovers more and more about Tony, tracks down witnesses to his life and deaf, and begin to listen to his tapes. It's a creeping horror that coexists with the very mundane. And she still has to navigate that mundane - the nasty boyfriend, the lack of a job and money, her flaky mental health 9could all this just be some sort of episode?) 

In the best traditions of folk horror, everything is under threat, but it's not clear how...

For more information about The Sound of the Dark, see the publisher's website here.

#Review - Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson

Neon Roses    
Rachel Dawson
John Murray Press, 25 May 2023 
Available as: HB, 304pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 1399801929

I'm grateful to John Murray Press for an advance e-copy of Neon Roses via Netgalley to consider for review.

Rachel Dawson's novel is an absorbing and eventually uplifting story of some very hard times. It's a book that acknowledges dark things, but refuses to despair, a story that showcases the need for solidarity, for friendship and always, for finding hope and a way forward.

It's 1984 and in the Valleys of South Wales a young woman, Eluned, is committed to supporting the miners' strike. In this she and her community are lined up against the cruel Thatcher government and its supporters in the media and the police (the latter personified by the unpleasant Graham, boyfriend of Eluned's little sister, Mabli). It was a very polarising time which as a teenager (not in a mining area) I remember well, I saved up pocket money to donate and I still have my Coal Not dole stickers in my scrapbook. 

As the only person in her family with a wage (she works as an assistant in a show shop) Eluned plays a key role, although it is a precarious one (who has money for shoes during the strike?) and as the months roll on, we see things tighten for the miners, with the eventual end of the strike and, in prospect, the end of the coal industry and of whole communities like Eluned's. But a time of change is also a time of opportunities and new horizons, and the solidarity of the strike has introduced Eluned to members of LGSM - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners - who have been fundraising and organising. In turn, that leads her to explore her own sexuality, and when she sees her way to a department store job away from home in Cardiff, to form new relationships.

I was struck by the portrayal of Eluned. Dawson avoids cliche - Eluned isn't a naive young girl astonished to learn the ways of the world, so much as a smart and curious person discovering who she is and what she wants. Resourceful and compassionate, there is a real warmth to the character, with her love of music, her kindness to her landlady in Cardiff (a fascinating woman who surely deserves a novel of her own) and above all, her desire to experience the world - which makes her the reader's eyes and ears in Dawson's depiction of LGBQT culture in 1980s Cardiff and in London (and, eventually, Manchester). That depiction is done with a great sense of vibrancy, not dwelling on the darker things - Section 28, AIDS/ HIV - although they are acknowledged, with the notorious James Anderton, head of the Greater Manchester police, playing a role - but stressing the power of resistance and the potential of human connection.

I always hesitate to use "coming of age novel" as a description of a book, because it seems to stick a huge label on a process that properly is nuanced and drawn out, but I'll mutter it here in passing - and then hurry on to stress that this is a very subtle, very nuanced book. Yes, at times Eluned gets in over her head - both for good and bad: at one stage she takes up with a woman who is controlling and manipulative - but she soon gets out of that and it's beautiful watching her relationship with June quicken and deepen.

The book captures the 80s atmosphere well, I think, both through incidental things - like the copious smoking, the sisters sharing a Walkman, the music - and the fact that Eluned is fairly easily able to get that shop job - retail hadn't been gutted by online sales). The only detail I could spot that didn't quite work was the reference to a videographer at a wedding in 1973. It's good on atmosphere, evoking both the Valleys towns and June's London squat with its raucous, supportive sisterhood, and it doesn't try to tie everything up, leaving things on a note of hope and mutual support but definitely unresolved.

This is one I'd recommend strongly. And finally, no this is not "Pride - The Novel" - it goes deeper that that - though if you have seen that film there will inevitably be some crossover events and themes.

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

#NetGalley #Review - By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar

By Force Alone

Cover design by David Wardle

Lavie Tidhar
Head of Zeus, 5 March 2020
HB, 505pp


I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of By Force Alone via NetGalley.

'If you expect Enlightenment to occur centuries hence you are sure to be disappointed'

Well.

Where can I even start with Tidhar's latest? There is so much to this book, it's hard to know where to begin. I'm tempted just to say you should buy it, and then sign off, but I need to do better than that.

By Force Alone takes as its theme the life of King Arthur, previously invented, narrated, embroidered, reinvented, retold over hundreds of years and also subject to numerous quests for the "real" Arthur, the "real" truth. What we have is, then, another retelling, but a retelling shaped for the times, reflecting our early 21st century, late capitalist, preoccupations...

...as is every retelling of these stories.

Tidhar summarises this process in an Afterword, which also puts the subject in its historical context, sketching what is known of the corresponding actual history of Britain in a period when it had broken from being part of a pan-European polity and had to make its own way in the world. That situation is, as best anyone can tell, the "real" background to Arthur, if there is such a thing - the post Roman period, from which few written records survive but which seems to have been foundational in producing what would later be called England. (One little quibble is the phrase 'The Dark Ages': just no!)

In the course of this book Tidhar actually sketches a very convincing picture of this period, one in which Roman towns, infrastructure (roads, mines, aquaducts) and - though sketchily - political structures still survive, albeit decaying, and in which various local "bosses" survive, claiming various forms of legitimacy but all holding power, in the end, by force alone - a repeated mantra in this book. The former Roman provinces are divided into tenuous "kingdoms", based on geography, tribal allegiance and opportunity - both credible historically and reflecting the nature of the Arthurian tales which abound in petty kings.

As the story proceeds, locations, which initially correspond to real places (Google some and you'll see) become vaguer, introducing legendary and possibly mythical places such as Camelot and Camlann. We are, then, moving from what is known, what can be inferred, into the mists of history. In keeping with that, we repeatedly see the impatience of rulers with mere practical questions such as how to keep the aqueducts working or supply food to the miners toiling in the - still just working - Roman gold-mines, and their immediate interest when it comes to hunting down groups of bandits or challenging each other for the top table. As we move into those mists, the sword's the thing, the trappings of civilisation fall away (though, how Merlin yearns for a decent library!)

Entertainingly, Tidhar sets up a comparison between these rulers and organised crime syndicates: mafia language proliferates with knights being "made" men, the objectives of the bosses being trafficking, protectionism and prostitution, there is mention of the omnium ducibus dux, the bosses of all the bosses, 'the sort of offer you couldn't refuse' refuse, and so on. There is one scene where the mobsters, sitting in the street and eating olives as though on the Aventine, reflect on how things were done in the Old Country, from which their parents and grandparents came.

The message is that this isn't the age of chivalry, Arthur's band of soldiers are not good Christian knights despite the many Sir thises and Sir that's (indeed, Christianity is a shadowy, somewhat marginal faith here). Nobody here is following a cause: Arthur's actions in seeking to unite Britannia (England isn't a thing yet) are all about getting, and enjoying power. 'He cares only that it is his commands that are obeyed, that on his word men live or die'. Merlin's, too, in supporting him - as a Fan, Merlin feeds on power.  And Arthur's prepared to deploy populist rhetoric to achieve that ('They want our land. They want our wealth. They want our women', 'Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much blood'). He's just like a - well, insert the name of your favourite lying populist demagogue, there are plenty to choose from. There are no principles here. 'It occurs to [Merlin] that this sort of patter will never quite fail. Perhaps in centuries hence this sort of crap would still light up people's hearts.'

And if you recognised one of those quotes, it's because it comes from a 20th century English politician, not from Thomas Mallory or Geoffrey of Monmouth. Tidhar uses such anachronisms ruthlessly [more examples] and quite fittingly, given that the whole setup of knights in armour, castles, squires, chivalry and jousting which we associate with Arthur is itself totally anachronistic, dating from nearly a thousand years after the time of Arthur (if there ever was such a time).

Equally fitting is the exploration here of the place of the Arthur myth in the national psyche - a myth which sits uneasily with the long accepted narrative of a state founded by Angle and Saxon invaders, given that Arthur is cast as one of the natives. (The dirty secrets of England's foundation is a subject ripe for fiction, that narrative of the triumphant incoming Germanic tribes long suited a culture seeking justification for an imperial destiny but doesn't sit so well in post-colonial times).

Tidhar is absolutely the right person, I think, to carry out this exploration. Many of his recent books (for example, A Man Lies Dreaming and Unholy Land) reveal a fascination with pulp literature and its myth-making, whether that is intended or not. In a sense, the whole Arthurian cycle and the way it has developed, with its origin myths, reboots and team-ups - is the ultimate body of pulp literature, made up as it is of tales of heroes performing wildly improbably feats, created to satisfy the demand for brightly coloured exploits and coming to fruition when printing allowed mass distribution. I've no doubt there were worthies in 15th century England denouncing the influence of  this trashy stuff on the young.

In Tidhar's hands the latest rewrite of The Matter of Britain hits all the right notes and as ever with this writer, the breadth of cultural references is impressive and, again, impressively anachronistic. Tidhar evokes Shakespeare (often, but especially through the witches from Macbeth), Trainspotting ('Choose life. Choose a home. Choose a great big fat palace to stuff all your money in...'), Blade Runner ('attack ships on fire off the coast of Smyrna'), Gangs of New York ('Everybody owes and everybody pays, as the poet said' - appropriate, given how he sketches London), TS Eliot, 20th century myths such as the speculation of Erich von Daniken and much, much more.

At the same time, all the familiar figures ands tropes are here: not only Merlin and Arthur, but the Round Table, Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast (possibly the only two genuinely good and pure characters here), Kay and Hector as Arthur's foster family, the Nine Sisters (though here the 'ladies of the lakes and streams', still dispensers of swords, have become enthusiastic arms traders).  Lancelot and Guinevere are here (though given exciting backstories: both are now kick-ass assassins, but while Guinevere is an ex-highwaywoman with her own girl gang, Lancelot - a Nubian - is a member of a mystic sect form Judea, trained in the ancient art of gongfu and ready to deliver such moves as 'the Monkey's Paw and the King in Yellow and the Turn of the Screw'.

There is the Dolorous Stroke that wounds the King and inflicts sickness on the land. Tidhar puts his own emphasis on things - the Lancelot/ Guinevere thing is passed over in a few pages, the whole Grail Quest gets a completely different twist on it which I'm saying nothing about because it would spoil things

The book also looks forward ('Perhaps... one day all of this land will speak in Anglisc, and they'll re-surface the old Roman roads and ride down them in horseless chariots, like dragons belching smoke...') ('As though swiping through images only she can see') and Tidhar's use of language sometimes shows the same place across time (for example 'The Romans' once-new castle on the Tyne' or the scenes in which Guinevere and her companions, travelling in the North East, seem to encounter coal smoke, the incessant din of industry and the flames of furnaces and forges.

Overall, it is I think a dark take on the Arthurian material. A very dark take. I'm reminded of Michael Hughes' Country, which uses the Homeric narrative of the Trojan War to frame the story of the Troubles in Ireland. Both retellings use a familiar narrative to illuminate the present and both are stories of bloodshed and loss, with many dodgy protagonists. Both end in bloodshed and loss. But while Country manages to achieve some closure, the ending of By Force Alone is a devastating assassination of any cosy, nation-building mythicness that one might look for in the Arthurian cycle. Not only has Tidhar exploded the internal content of the cycle, substituting amorality and power lust for the chilly literary chivalry of the late Middle Ages but he's shown how that cycle will be appropriated by the victors from the losers (' The Angles and the Saxons are here to stay, dear Merlin... They'll tell this story and think it is about themselves it's told...') Another point of reference might be a story that ends with these words, from an earlier retelling: 'For Drake is no longer in his hammock... nor is Arthur somewhere sleeping, and you may not lie idly expecting the second coming of anybody now, because the world is yours and its is up to you. Now especially since man has the strength to destroy this world, it is the responsibility of man to keep it alive...'

Another complicated, thought provoking and many-layered novel from Tidhar whose books are definitely a must-read for me, taking in a dazzling range of themes and perspectives.

For more information about By Force Alone, see the Head of Zeus website here.

#Blogtour #Review - The Art of Murder by JS Strange

The Art of Murder (Jordan Jenner 2)
JS Strange
Panther Publishing, October 1 2019
PB, e 285pp

I'm grateful to Panther for letting me have a free advance e-copy of The Art of Murder and for inviting me to take part in the blogtour.

Jordan Jenner is back!

Yes, the reclusive, cat-owning gay private investigator from Cardiff returns to the page with a new murder mystery. Following the events of Death on the Rocks, which took place over a (very bleak) Christmas it's now April but while you might be expecting green shoots and new life, it's not quite like that.

Jordan's brother Ashley is still sleeping on the sofa, with Jordan no nearer understanding why he has left his partner, Ben. Perhaps a city break in Amsterdam may help the two relax? It's not to be, since they catch the attention of... someone... over there and on return, Jordan finds himself in the middle of very sinister goings-on centred on Cardiff's art world.

Events which culminate in murder.

As with Death on the Rocks, there's a personal angle to this - Jenner has been hired by one of the artists at the focus of the scandal, and soon finds himself having not only to investigate a death, but also to pin down the identity and motivations of a fringe group, the 'Dirty Dollys'. This mysterious cabal is a rather brilliant creation of Strange's - they act as a pack, targeting popular, up-and-coming artists with fraud and blackmail. Are they an artistic movement? In it for the money? Is it political? How far might they actually go? Nobody seems to know, so the threat to Xander Draper - the darling of the Cardiff art market - has to be taken seriously.

At the same time, someone is following Jordan. Someone seems to know where he lives. This has got very personal - even more so that in the first book, where Jordan's mother became embroiled.

I liked this story, it's fast-paced, continually throwing things at Jordan. We get to see more of his personal life - credit should go to Strange for writing books where the gay characters are many and diverse - and he's a fascinating mass of contradictions, a but of a loner and a grump perhaps but likeable and understandable. He's certainly a long way from being the stereotyped antisocial detective. Jordan is more at the centre of this book in some respects because, while the police are involved, he's no longer an external consultant to them (budget cuts). He also has his own client involve din the case, giving him a slightly different agenda from the official police. That makes him less part of a team and leaves more for him to do.

I found the Dollys (the spelling is deliberate) an intriguing group, the whole setup - artists picked off and subject to harassment in the full light of day, as it were - having something of the sulphurous edge of a Margery Allingham story. This book is completely naturalistic, there's nothing supernatural here, but the drive and motivations of the villains (if that's what they are) does have an almost metaphysical cast.

Strange has a style that grows on you - sometimes it feels as though it could do with a bit of polish, and it may not be to everyone's taste, but in my view there is lots of smoothed down writing out there, lots of bland stuff that reads pretty much the same and this one (with its predecessor) has something distinctive which is actually quite rare and precious.

Overall, a welcome return to the world of Jordan Jenner which left me wanting more.

You can buy the book from Amazon here. The publisher website is here. The blogtour continues with sone excellent reviewers - check out the poster below!

Review - Early Riser by Jasper Fforde

Cover by Robert Frank Hunter 

Early Riser
Jasper Fforde
Hodder & Stoughton, 2 August 2018
HB, 407pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of this book via NetGalley.

Skinny Pete went to sleep, underfed and bony
Skinny Pete went to sleep, and died a death so lonely.

The enemy aren't the Villains, nomads, scavengers, insomniacs, Ice-Hermits, Megafauna, nightwalker, hiburnal rodents or flesh eating cold slime - it's the Winter.

This is a standalone volume from Jasper Fforde, not part of the ongoing Thursday Next series or a continuation of Shades of Grey, a potential series that seems to have been blighted by a quite different book with a similar name. However, in tone I'd say it is more similar to Grey than to Next, taking place in a fictional version of our world which is, while fantastical in some ways, not magical.

The world of Early Riser might best be described as an alternate timeline, a planet and landscape identical in many ways to our own, with a lot of technology, cultural references ("Fawlty Dormiorium with Sybil, Basil and Polly and so forth - 'don't mention the Ottoman' ") and history in common, but where - rather than a trend to warming - global cooling ("snowball Earth") is happening, with the winters bitter and a glacier advancing across "the Albion peninsula" (the separation from the mainland never having quite happened, although a belt of marshland following what to us is the Channel shows where a warmer era led to higher sea levels).

The sheer wintriness of this book (apart from being very agreeable to read during the 2018 summer heatwave) motivates the plot in many ways. In this reality, humans hibernate and always have, clustering in "hibernatoria" - multistorey, circular buildings with floor upon floor of sleeping cells, all heated by cosy nuclear piles in the basement ("Hotpots"). Hibernating is a serious business, governed by law and custom. One needs to put on enough fat in the Autumn to last through till Spring, and anyone not attaining their healthy "Winter weight" is looked at askance. Forde loving describes the whole culture around hibernation, making it, in the end, quite a cosy idea. The hibernatorium is more than a sleeping cave, it is a home, a community, with dining room and (as a fine illustration here shows) many other facilities. And a Porter guards the entrance, staying awake through the Winter to protect their charges.

Of course, it's not all cosy. Only the lucky (and rich) are entitled to supplies Morphenox, a drug that prevents dreams and so saves on energy (and fat depletion) allowing a greater chance of survival. But Morphenox has a potential side effect... a small number of those who take it lose their minds in sleep, waking as "nightwalkers", effectively zombies. Yet the risk is considered worth it, not only for individuals who are less likely to starve over Winter but for the good of the species - survival is vital because, in such a hostile climate, population is under threat, so there is mandated childbearing and a great deal of care is taken of orphans in "the Pool". Anything that reduces attrition is welcomed and HiberTech, the company that makes Morphenox, is a power in the land.

The land itself is Wales, the story taking place in early winter in mid Wales when Charlie, a newly appointed novice Winter Consul - an order who stay awake through the cold months, guarding the population against Villains, Wintervolk (monsters) and disasters (like meltdowns in the Hotpots -  ventures from Cardiff to the interior to deliver a "nightwalker" to HiberTech. A simple job for a newbie, and he's accompanies by a vertebral Consul, so what can go wrong?

A great deal, of course. What with hostile colleagues in Sector 12, the formidable duo of Arcadia, head of security at HiberTech and Toccata, the top Consul in Sector 12, missing nightwalkers, a massive bet hanging on whether or not the Gronk is real, hippies on a quest for real dreams, and a terrorist movement seeking a return to Real Sleep - and more - there is plenty going on. Indeed the book is so rich, with such a cast of characters that it can be overwhelming at times, or at least it would be if those characters, and the setting wren't so perfectly realised.

There are also some hilarious strands, such as the Villains, ("Villains generally lives on the edge of the ice-fields and often raided nearby towns for pantry and domestic servants") who prove, of course, to be English and upper class, the banter between Jonesy and Charlie in which they spin a wholly fiction, longstanding love affair out of thin air despite having only just met (and never actually bundled each other) or barely fictional names such as that of " 'sleep extreme' guru Gaer Brills". There are also some very sharp observations ("She was making up nostalgia", "right-wing hardliners loved a good panic").

Behind all this, though, there is a well constructed and devious thriller plot. As Winter falls, a secret is in play, its preservation essential to the way of life of Charlie, his colleagues and the wider population - and its revelation key to preventing  rather nasty fate for many. In a headlong, catastrophe-stern series of encounters, not all of them waking, Charlie will be tested to the limit and find out who he can really trust. Because she of those around him are basically two-faced and have their own agendas...

It's not a short book, but the pages fly by, with fascinating new details of that intricate, well-delineated world coming in all the time, even as the sinister events of Winter unwind and Charlie fears for his life. By the end, I was sorry that the story had to stop but there is a wonderful coda in the form of some posters and other material including, of course, advice from the Ministry of Sleep.

In all an excellent addition to Fforde's imaginary worlds, even if it does remain standalone (but i hope it won't).