#Review - Jamie Hallow and the End of the World by AV Wilkes

Jamie Hallow and the End of the World 

AV Wilkes
Cemetery Gates Media, 11 July 2023
Available as: e  
Source: Advance copy
ASIN: B0C4C5ZPG4 

I'm grateful to Cemetery Gates Media for sending me a copy of Jamie Hallow and the End of the World to consider for review.

AV Wilkes' new novella introduces us to Jamie, a young person living a dreary life post nuclear war in a sealed bunker run by the Legion. The Legion is a paramilitary cult that saw the advantage of making certain preparations...

Raised from an early age in a Legion foster home, Jamie is however far from being a devoted acolyte. As we see more of what the Legion is and does, we will begin to understand why - and it's more about repugnance at the nature of what the Legion worships than actual disbelief in it (albeit Jamie self-describes as "atheist"). The full explanation would be spoilery, but it's enough to state that (1) the Legion's god is real (2) the horror that this implies actually makes a spot of global nuclear war seem almost cosy by comparison.

The action of the story focusses on a number of excursions from the bunker undertaken by the Legion's Taskforce (comprising teenagers anxious to prove themselves) during which the bunker dwellers encounter "Rats", humans existing in the radioactive wasteland outside and who are regarded as less than human by the Legion. These expeditions force Jamie to question everything about the bunker, the Legion and the Taskforce.

In a quite short book - my ARC copy is 112 pages - Wilkes has to rely on a degree of established lore, and does so rather successfully, invoking a Lovecraftian universe blended with well known post apocalyptic tropes and, more surprisingly but very effectively, introducing a group of teenagers (referred to as the "three witches" - and yes they really do have supernatural abilities) for some "mean girls" twists. Taken together, the three aspects very powerfully convey just how alone Jamie is (not just isolated in the bunker but with nowhere to run to) and underline Jamie's teenage disaffection with the Legion (even before you consider LGBTQ aspects of the story which in this militaristic and cultish setting are not a good way to be accepted).

It's a fun and engaging read establishing Jamie as a vivid protagonist and hinting at all sorts of future mayhem. I'd very much like to read a sequel.

For more information about Jamie Hallow and the End of the World, see the publisher's website here.  You can order or preorder the book from Amazon US here or Amazon UK here.

#Review - Bone Harvest by James Brogden

Design by Julia Lloyd

Bone Harvest
James Brogden
Titan Books, 17 November 2020
Available as: PB, 492pp, audio, e
Source: Advance PB copy provided by the publisher
ISBN: 9781785659973

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of Bone Harvest to consider for review.

For more information about the book, see the Titan Books 

website here.

Bone Harvest was originally scheduled to appear in May, but like much else this year, covid-19 had its way with those plans and so it is with us in November. That delay may though add poignancy to this story, a thought that struck me when watching the TV coverage of the lockdown Remembrance ceremonies and in particular, of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Westminster Abbey.

Bone Harvest is a story of folk horror, but as it ranges from the trenches of the Western Front in 1916 to the deceptive calm of rural Wales and the fruitful labour of a group of allotment holders, the most gut-wrenching scenes are of distinctly un-supernatural warfare, blood and slaughter.

"When on the road to sweet Athy

A stick in the hand, A drop in the eye

A doleful damsel I heard cry

Johnny I hardly knew ye..."

In counterpoint to that unknown warrior, Brogden gives us the story of one man who survived this slaughter, but transformed. The man known only as "the deserter" (well, he borrows other names, but they are not his) has been forged in that nightmare of steel, blood and noise. While he has physical wounds they haven't made him, like Johnny, unrecognisable to his sweetheart - rather his spiritual wounds have made him unrecognisable to himself. He doesn't know his name, or remember who or what he is. His old self is gone, erased by the thunder of the guns, and all that remains is that identity: deserter. 

While we shouldn't judge that desertion, his erasure has taken something from him, something which allows him, in the years and decades that follow, to become a different thing, a thing still bent on survival. Brogden will evoke supernatural horrors, but it is the human agency at the centre of things that dominated the book for me.

It is a book, as I've said, that offers great contrasts in atmosphere and theme. Alongside the deserter, who's established as a character in the first quarter or so, we meet Dennie Keeling, a woman devoted to her allotment and to her dog Viggo. She has been devoted to her friend Sarah, but Sarah is dead now - we'll learn in good time what that event has to do with the rest of the story. Dennie may or may not have a dash of the psychic in her and may or may not be experiencing the first signs of dementia (creating a real sense of tension when she begins seeing and hearing things). She seems oh so vulnerable when dark forces appear and begin to manipulate Dennie's friends and neighbours on the allotments. A cat and mouse game ensues, Dennie acting as the reader's eyes and ears to detect what is going on. We have some advantages from that early section of the story, but it's hard to fit that in with what seems to be going on now, in the part of the story set in 2020. Brogden is content to tell his story slowly, letting his shadowy cult act in line with the dictates of the moon and the seasons, as befits a story of horticulture, of planting and reaping, rather than trying to force things in a hot-house. 

If you're the sort of reader that wants to press on quickly to the final denouement, you may get a little impatient in this part of the story. It's not that there isn't action, but things seem to move quite slowly. I'd really, really urge you to be patient though - if you want drama, then the final part of this book delivers it with aplomb. Our deserter hears the sound of the guns again and gathers an army of sorts - and many secrets are revealed.

Bone Harvest is well written, very readable, with beautifully imagined characters (even the deserter is sympathetic, to a point; many have a satisfying moral ambiguity, doing bad things for rational and understandable reasons) and, like this author's previous books, integrates its theme of ancient paganism seamlessly with the mundanity of modern life. It has a great sense of place too, and one particular scene towards the end - you'll know it when you reach it - had me in tears.

Brogden's previous book, The Plague Stones, published in 2019, focussed on the outbreak of a virulent plague. It's with some trepidation that I wait to see what connection with reality his latest will have - but I know one thing: there's a set of allotments across the lane from my house, and I'll be giving them a miss for the next weeks.

  

 

 

#Blogtour #Review - Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver

Nothing Important Happened Today
Will Carver
Orenda Books, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 287pp

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for a free advance copy of Nothing Important Happened Today and to Anne for inviting me to take part in the blogtour, which I am joining today.

I should give a content warning that this book, and consequences try review, deal with themes of suicide.

Well.

For once, I'm genuinely unsure what to say.

This is a thriller different to any other I've read before. I'm really not exaggerating there. It has me speechless. Nothing I have read before is like this

One evening, as trains bear commuters home from London, nine strangers walk out onto Chelsea Bridge. Attaching nooses to the structure, they place them round their necks, and jump.

Nine deaths, nine strangers - and a manifesto from the "People of Choice". A cult is born.

But why did they die? How was the whole thing arranged? And what happens next? Important questions...

This is high concept material already, but Carver's handling of the story then takes things to an even stranger place. We don't follow the investigation, see how the police track down... something or someone, whoever or whatever caused this. We don't have a detailed examination of one or two of the victims. Instead we get short, intense vignettes of the nine and their lives before. We see the tiny tragedies, the miscommunications, self-absorption, the fatigue, the disappointments of the Lovers, the Poet, the Doctor, the Ungrateful and so on (where do these names come from?)

And Young Levant.

Almost unbearable at times, Carver's clear, simple prose illuminates what are ordinary lives, ordinary failings, ordinary lapses, which - when some obscure switch is turned - become despairing lives, hopeless failings, unforgivable lapses. We see that switch click, but we don't see where it came from, what happened. It is VERY dark, very sad, and we spend a lot of time in the heads of what seem very disagreeable people. Not disagreeable because they are contemplating killing themselves - as becomes clear, most of this group actually want to live (whereby hangs much of the mystery...) Not disagreeable because they are lavishly, epically BAD people. No, disagreeable because they are rather ordinary, rather normal, rather - uncomfortably - like you. Or no, that's not fair, I don't know what you're like.

Rather like me. Irritatingly so. A bit out of it, a bit lazy. There. In a scary, inescapable way, Carver has skewered me on his page. And see where that leads...

Around the story of the Nine (and later, the Two, and then, the Twenty) he then gives us musings on,  clinical, cold instruction in, and discussion of, how to be a mass murderer and not get discovered. And on how to establish a successful cult (and on the intersection of the two).

Again, this can get really grim. There are discussions of murders - Dahmer, Manson, Shipman, Bradey - and how their killings began and what exposed them. There are discussions of cults and how they started and grew, and how their leaders took ordinary people (like me!) and influenced them.

As you might expect these parts can also be hard to read. This is about real murders of real people. I have always shied away from "True Crime" for this very reason - in fiction, however grim, one has the consolation of knowing that at least it's all made up, and the dashy, flashy nature of crime fiction with its hero DIs helps establish that distance, even when (especially when) it gets all noir on you. Here, there isn't that distance. And Carver has clearly thought about his stuff here. There are philosophies and practicalities: the cult leader should have a Number Two who will take the fall when it all comes down. the serial killer should, through, work alone. And so on.

It's a mark, I think, of how good Carver's writing is that he engages despite this dark, grim material. And how he does. Phrases like "unputdownable" and "page-turner" are thrown around too lightly today, but they are really apt here. This is a book that, once started, you have to finish. It's a bit like getting into a very grubby bath which has rather unpleasant things floating in it but basically you have no choice.

An unforgettable book. It is scary to think what Carver could do if he turned his talents to bad. For my part, I'll watch out for crisp white envelopes in the post and put any I do receive straight in the fire...

The Nothing Important Happened Today blogtour continues with a star studded cult, sorry, cast of bloggers as you can see below. For more information about the book, see the publisher's webpage here.

You can buy it from your local independent bookshop, or from Hive Books who support Indies, as well as from Blackwell's, Foyles, Waterstones, WH Smith or Amazon, to name only a few.