Tag Archives: Picador

Lovecraft Country

by Stephen | Leave a comment

Matt Ruff. Pan Macmillan. (384p) ISBN: 9781509883356
Lovecraft Country

Lovecraft Country

Soon to be an HBO Series! Got to love those printed stickers on books.

Now that the gripe is out of the way 😉 Lovecraft Country was low on the cosmic horror side of the Lovecraftian mythos, but high on the adventure and thrills.

Matt Ruff sets his series of adventures in mid-50s USA, where Atticus Turner has returned from the Korean war and faces the Jim Crow era of continued discrimination and prejudice toward black people in America. This works well against the knowledge of Lovecraft’s racism.

There are twists concerning lost blood lines, power struggles within secret societies, adventures, but none of the cosmic horrors that I’ve come to expect in books written in the Lovecraft universe.

There’s a small cast of characters who are well developed and have their own story arcs within the book, all leading back to the central figures of Atticus and Caleb Braithwaite (boo hiss).

This episodic nature of the stories will play really well to becoming a television show, and after watching the trailers I’m glad it’s getting a high production value outing.

The ending was wonderful with the story lines of various characters being left open enough for us to return to.

Bottom Ko-Fi

Share this:

The End We Start From

by Stephen | Leave a comment

Megan Hunter. Pan Macmillan. (144p) ISBN: 9781509843985
The End We Start From

The End We Start From

This is the first time I’ve come across the term cli-fi when describing a genre of fiction, I’ve usually classified books I’ve read about climate change disaster as speculative fiction, but cli-fi is much better.

The End We Start From follows the female protagonist through a sudden climate incident which sees London, and by inference, much of the south of England flooded just as she has given birth to Z.

It follows them through a series of encounters invoolving the break down of society as the situation worsens, and eventually toward a possible resolution, both personal and bigger.

I really enjoyed the episodic nature of Megan Hunter’s writing, it suited this story, telling diary-sized snippets from the life of the main protagonist, and the ever complicating life she was leading to keep her and her child safe and nurtured.

Though it is short, ‘The End We Start From’ packs a real punch, exploring emotions and interpersonal relationships in the face of adversity.

Bottom Ko-Fi

Share this:

Swimmer Among the Stars

by Stephen | Leave a comment

Kanishk Tharoor. Pan Macmillan. (256p) ISBN: 9781509822201

If you followed me on my old Twitter account you may have already realised that I love the short story format as a vehicle for delivering beautiful and compact prose, sometimes almost poetic, and Kanishk Tharoor’s debut collection, Swimmer Among the Stars, is one of the best examples of that I’ve read.

So apart from being a physically beautiful book, it is a book that also internally beautiful, exploring the human soul and their interactions across a dozen or so well-crafted stories.

The first story is so entrancing I’ve read it twice, and all the other stories deserve close reading they are so poetic in their understanding of the human condition. Some historic, some speculative, all the stories are strong and deserve their place in this book.

I usually dip in and out of short story collections but I had to read this in one go I was that fascinated.

A stunning collection and hopefully a good indicator of more to come.

Bottom Ko-Fi

Share this:

Salt Slow

by Stephen | Leave a comment

Julia Armfield. Pan Macmillan. (160p) ISBN: 9781529012590

A brilliant collection of short stories, Salt Slow caught my eye when it arrived as a paperback a couple of days back. Initially the cover but I’m always intrigued by short gothic tales.

Brilliant opening with a Kafkaesque pubescence playing with a cliched male chat up line, a physical representation of a state of consciousness, and many more wonderful sideways looks at the world.

I hung on every word and turn of phrase unsure of the journey each story was going to take and always surprised and satisfied with the end.

Magical realism, gothic fantasy, speculative fiction at its most speculative. This collection of short stories is what I love most about the form, fresh and challenging.

I was going to do my usual with a collection of short stories, dip in and out between other books, but this collection was so moreish I couldn’t stop.

Bottom Ko-Fi

Share this: