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REVIEW: Malevolent Nevers by Tom Rimer
Malevolent Nevers packs a serious punch, cracked jaw, fractured skull, split orbital bone, bruised, battered, and beaten. The story feels like an old friend, an old friend who likes to live life on the edge, a friend that you can never tell if they want to help or hinder…a friend that has you walking across glass. A sense of familiarity, this is the kind of book you want to curl up with in front of a roaring fire and a nip of whisky. Pick up this book for its kick-ass cover and stay for the characterisation and penetrating gothic atmosphere. Malevolent Nevers starts from the ground up. You feel the…
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REVIEW: Jimmy the Freak by Charles Colyott & Mark Steensland
Jimmy the Freak is a story that makes you appreciate great characterisation. The relationship dynamics between Jimmy and Mike made my heart warm. Mike has essentially taken on the role of carer and isn’t too above himself to admit that it was more than he anticipated. The authors have created two of my favourite fictional characters of all time. An unlikely friendship. A freakish psychic ability. An obsession for pizza. A will to protect. I haven’t read another story like this in which disability is at the forefront and tackled with a sense of tact and love. I fell deeply for this raw storyline. Jimmy was dropped on his head…
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The Possession (The Anomaly Files #2) by Micheal Rutger
The Possession is a story that is best enjoyed whilst surrounded by a fuck ton of people. Just make sure you know those people well, make sure their personalities don’t change at the drop of a hat. This was a story that reminded me of a mash-up of Inception and The Twilight zone. The people that we love and cherish are like home to us, we see safety in their eyes, a warm hug after a bad day is sometimes all we need to feel better. Tragedy has struck a small town in the middle of the woods after a teenage girl has gone missing. There’s no sign of her…
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The Long Walk by Stephen King – REVIEW
In my crazy attempt to read all of Stephen King’s back catalogue, I chose The Long Walk at random. Written under the pseudonym Richard Bachman you can instantly recognise King’s cutthroat style. The story has no build-up other than for a few pages, you are instantly catapulted into this dystopian America, you have no reference to why The Long Walk takes place or how the boys ended up there. It’s a story that has a mental and physical assault upon you. Your legs feel like they will cramp up the further along you read. Never has a story pulled me in so quickly and left me with so many more…
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Witch Bottle by Tom Fletcher – REVIEW
Witch Bottle is a story that will constantly have your guard up. Fear surrounds this small hamlet-like fog clinging to the mountainside. It envelops around you, constricting you, breathing becomes more difficult, your sight becomes hazy, it’s an all-sense assault. This novel surprised me by the sheer force of its raw veracity and its human emotion. It leaves you feeling deeply unsettled with its supernatural element complemented perfectly with the decline of mental health and broken relationships. Cumbria has never felt so unearthly in this modern gothic thriller. Daniel is on his own, after leaving his wife and baby daughter he has moved to Cumbria to become a milkman. He…
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The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley – REVIEW
The Loney was on my shelf for about four or five years and maybe subconsciously something was keeping me from reading it. Perhaps I should have listened to myself. It’s been shelved numerous times as horror, but I didn’t feel any elements of horror to the storyline apart from the atmospheric edge that The Loney held. Was the storyline slow, yes. Was I frustrated with the plot, also yes. Anyone that knows me well knows that struggle with religious storylines and had I known how heavily this story focusses on it I would probably have left well alone. I think possibly my expectations were way too high going into this…
