Fable by Daniel James

 Changing drug dealers was the start of it all.

Neil, Matt, and Sam are school friends who enjoy their pot smoking. Well, Neil did until his dad got lung cancer and Neil realised it was time to rethink certain things in life. Their dealer, Staubach, hangs around with Noakes, who is affiliated with the hard local gang and Staubach is no stranger to using violence to sort issues out. Sam decided to get some stash from Sticky, another dealer, and when Staubach finds out, he decides to pay the boys a visit. After a confrontation where Staubach believes he was humiliated, the friends know they are marked.

Incidents happen at school that make them realise that they are safe nowhere, which saddens Neil as he has finally mustered up the courage to speak to Lindsey, a girl he has had a crush on for a while. Just being around Neil might not be safe for her. As they contemplate how to deal with the situation, Neil sees something that reminds him of a time when he was young and saw what he believed was an imaginary figure. This being, a giant toad named Frogmore, came through from another world once upon a time, and would do anything to keep Neil’s friendship. Anything including killing.

An untimely death sparks a war between the friends and Staubach and the gang that escalates into a frenzy of violence, retaliation, and outright hate. To save the friends, Frogmore might be back, but doing things his way. And his way, could mean disaster for everyone.

 

I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading this, which left it open for me to just enjoy the story as it flowed. The violence is quite graphic and it was a shock to see how the level was “acceptable” – not in the book, but by the characters towards each other. I enjoyed the way the supernatural element ran parallel to the main story in a very believable way. Very often too much artistic licence is taken but in this, the reasoning behind it almost seemed plausible!

I found the fact that the POVs from the “bad guys” was also offered made for interesting reading. It gave you an insight into some of their actions and also some of their regrets. Having Sam explain why he smoked as much as he did, gave his character a deeper understanding instead of glossing over the stoner image. Frogmore was quite a character to accept. His manipulation of people and situations made you want to hate him but also in a macabre way cheer him on. And the ultimate explanation of where he was from and the beings there gave a new meaning to “we come in peace”.

The one thing that needed fixing on this script was the formatting. It looked as though it had been set for print as there were page numbers in the ToC and the drop caps were not aligned. Sometimes big spaces cropped up in the middle of a page and the author’s name randomly appeared. This was very offputting.

 

Ultimately though, I did enjoy this book as its premise was not one I’ve read before. Yes, there were things that could have been added or taken away, but as a read without thinking too hard about it, this was an interesting one!

 

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

The Forest by Lisa Quigley

The Forest is part horror, part thriller, with a bit of supernatural thrown in.

 

Edgewood is a very special town. People are safe in Edgewood and hardly anyone ever leaves. No one suffers ailments in Edgewood and everyone is happy. All this is due to the tithes that people offer to the forest in the fall festival. Tithes meant to be something of deep value to them. Faye and her husband Charlie are about to become the new town stewards, and as the new stewards, they are now privy to the real sacrifice that is meant to take place to keep the town safe.

 

Faye is horrified when the secret is revealed and wants no part of it. But when it seems no one will help her, she decides to flee with her baby son into the forest to seek refuge elsewhere. The forest has always been seen as a place of mystery and danger, so has Faye headed to the one place that could hurt her?

 

As a debut novel this is a superb piece of writing. I truly loved how each chapter goes back and forth between Faye in the forest and on the run, and the reasons leading up to her escape. When the timelines eventually collide, further secrets are revealed that could tear a family apart. By breaking the timelines, the chapters draw you in to read just one more, as you need to then go to the chapter after that to see where the story goes, and so the chapters roll on.

 

I did find, however, that sometimes the story seemed to get bogged down, especially in the forest. The number of instances where breastfeeding was mentioned made me want to skip over the parts. Once – no problem. Twice – all good. Three times – getting repetitive. Then four, five, six etc. and it almost became a filler. I felt the ending was a little rushed, and what was heading towards a great supernatural finale, became an “Oh, really?” moment. I needed more information about the Rowan amulet and the tunnel too.

 

All in all, a good book where you can connect with the characters, whether you love them or hate them.

 

Thanks to Perpetual Motion Machine for the opportunity to review the book.

 

Still Life With Pig Fetuses by Dirk Bannion

 

Still Life with Pig Fetuses is a clever collection of short stories from a group on a Discord server covering a number of different genres based on writing prompts.

 

The prompts themselves range from length, to a series of words that must form the first word of a sentence, to a lucky dip of piecing random fragments together, to having a plot highjacked by another author. The skill with which these prompts were used (especially the first word prompt) is staggering and showcases the talent out there.

 

The contents of the stories are very diverse, and sometimes what you would guess from the title is completely different from what you get. The stories cover clinical trials, a detective foiling a crime, the sweetness of revenge, an out of body experience, what makes for a bad YouTube video, a summoning interfering with a poker game, a portal used to gather national intelligence situated in a penis (insert shocked face here), and the story the collection is named after: trying something new with pig fetuses.

 

The stories are short enough to breeze through quickly, but contain nuggets of treasure that make you stop and reread a sentence or two or even laugh out loud. Even though the stories are so varied in content and length, the writing styles allow them to form a cohesive collection and the stories “fit together”. I admit that I even learnt a few new words like callipygian and glozed! Since this is volume one, I would be keen to see what future volumes bring.

 

The one thing that I wished could be added to the book was a table of contents, as it would have been easier to navigate if I was looking for a particular story.  

 

I do still recommend this collection for an intriguing look into the processes of writing and to highlight how creative some authors are with the time or style restraints they have.

Thanks to Reedsy Discovery for the opportunity to review the book.

The Many: The Complete Trilogy by Nathan Field

 

The Many is a trilogy made up of the three books: The Many, Ancestral, and European School. It is part thriller, part mystery, part conspiracy theory, with a dash of horror thrown in.

 

Book One starts with siblings Karl and Stacy. Stacy goes out on a date with a doctor she met on an app that seems far too good to be true. When she comes back the next morning, Karl notices that her behaviour has changed somewhat even though she insists the date went well. She is more aggressive, her demeanour has sexual undertones, and she even accuses Karl of lusting after her. As the days go by, she sinks further and further into high and low episodes where she starts remembering men without faces and having sex in an underground room. Not long after this, it all becomes too much for her and she does something drastic.

 

Elsewhere, Isobel, Dawn’s mother, also uses an app to find a date and the same scenario occurs with her where her moods swing violently and she starts remembering bad things that happened to her. Isobel feels compelled to do the same as Stacy did, leaving Dawn looking for answers.

 

On essentially the same quest, Karl and Dawn’s paths intersect on the journey to find the faceless men. Both of them will be pushed into situations they could never imagine themselves in and make decisions that will change their lives forever.

 

As they move through the next book, Dawn discovers that she may have been a part of the whole thing from the beginning once she is kidnapped and discovers she is pregnant. The book now moves through Karl looking for her and being pursued by the faceless men. The story opens wider with more twists, and new characters being introduced.

 

This leads into the concluding book which starts of with a completely different setting and different set of characters. Elijah is being sent to an elite boarding school that is not found on any map and once he is dropped off, he may not see anyone outside the school until he graduates. The schoolgoers are odd in a number of ways. They all look similar, the teachers are afraid of the older ones, and the ones in higher years have secrets that they keep aggressively, with the explanation that the younger ones will learn in time.  Elijah also comes across a deformed person living under the school that no one will acknowledge is there. The culmination of the story is the intersection of the three characters and the underlying secret behind the entire plot. Who is the actual kingpin?

 

I received this trilogy from NetGalley (thank you for that) and was looking forward to a three-book thriller/horror fest. The story starts with a great hook, and even though some details are quite graphic, you really have no clue why certain things are happening. Book one sucks you in and sets up the base story while not giving you too much to work on when it comes to figuring out the reason.  Book two adds more clues and you get to see a different side of the characters – especially Dawn and using violence to get information by any means necessary. Certain parts ask you to stretch the believability factor and things like the “cult ritual” had my eyebrows raised in disbelief at the ease of it happening (this may have taken place in the third one but they all kinda blurred together for me). Book three takes place fifteen years later, so, in the interim, a lot has happened. This book stretched things even further and took one of the oldest conspiracy theories to use as its base. I was hoping for a fresh idea, but this one has been done before. Book one drew me in quickly and book two kept me going for a while, but by book three, I was reading for the sake of reading. The pacing and story just threw it off-angle and I was disappointed with the ending. To have characters “accepting” the reason why didn’t feel right.

 

Karl started off as a strong character, but as time went by, I kept questioning why he was giving up his whole life. And considering what happened to him, well... Dawn may have been pushed to extremes, but her behaviour became too inconsistent and her ability to “persuade” seemed odd. Elijah’s parentage – we will just leave it at that…

 

So this is a bit of a mixed bag. It starts off with a great idea but fizzles out. Things are not all ended/explained and bits like the masks would have been interesting to find out more about. Kudos to the writer though for the style of writing and the “almost there” story. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review the book.