In this episode we look at the latest two novels from rising star Gemma Amor - Itch (2025) and First Date (2026) - which serve up two very different slices of cutting edge horror fiction!
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Monday, 31 August 2026
Sunday, 18 January 2026
HYPNOGORIA 300 - Winter Horrors Part IV
We start the New Year with another round-up of fine frights for winter nights - featuring vampires in the arctic circle, a Universal monster out in the snow, kidnappers getting more than they bargained for in a wintery cabin, and a tense psycho-chiller from the King of horror!
Sunday, 12 October 2025
HYPNOGORIA 291 - Scarred for Life Volume Three
In this show we look at the final book of the Scarred For Life series - Volume Three is a massive 740 page tour through the dark side of 1980s pop culture. It covers comics, movies, books, videos, and games, plus features a stealthy book-within-a-book on nuclear anxiety and cold war terrors!
All the Scarred for Life books are available here -
Sunday, 29 September 2024
MICROGORIA 125 - A Man At War
In this show we take a look a book by legendary horror editor Mr Johnny Mains, the very unsettling novel A Man At War
Monday, 23 September 2024
MICROGORIA 124 - Eight for Silver
A quick spoiler-free review of the 2021 movie Eight for Silver AKA The Cursed which leaves Netflix next week. Hear why you should catch this fantastically autumnal folk horror tale while you can!
Sunday, 8 September 2024
MICROGORIA 122 - The Kooky Kids Guide to Black and White Monster Movies
In this little show we take at look at a new book written and illustrated by Joey Draper - The Kooky Kids Guides to Black and Monster Movies!
Tuesday, 2 April 2024
ALL THE FIENDS OF HELL by Adam Nevill
One of the oldest tropes in science fiction is the alien invasion, with the great granddaddy of this type of tale being of course War of the Worlds by HG Wells, first published as a serial in Pearson's Magazine back in 1897. Since then the earth has been attacked by strange beings from the great beyond countless times, with hostile invasions spearheaded by legions of flying saucers, and a seemingly never-ending menagerie of alien lifeforms attempting to take over the earth by various means. These alien invasions have given us a great many fantastic tales in movies, comics, and on TV, with the likes of Independence Day, V, and Doctor Who delivering famous stories of less than friendly extra-terrestrials coming to call.
However no alien invasion yarn has ever quite captured a key element that Wells conjured up in his seminal tale - the dread and terror that comes as enigmatic invaders seemingly wipe out our civilisation in one fell swoop. And I don't think we have had an alien invasion epic that has ever quite captured the same shock and awe of War of the Worlds...That is until now, and Adam LG Nevill’s new novel All the Fiends of Hell which brings home again just how utterly terrifying an alien attack would be. And while a story about our little blue planet being pummelled by strange invaders might seem something of a new direction for one of the best horror writers working today, make no mistake, he’s not left the genre for science fiction. For this is a uniquely terrifying novel, and by the time you finish it you won't just be watching the skies but be casting wary glances over your shoulder whenever a slight unexpected sound breaks a silence. Let me explain why…
Firstly we have the wonderfully unsettling cover from the great Sam Araya, whose art has graced the last half dozen books from Nevill under his own Ritual Limited imprint. And once again Sam has knocked it out of the park with a truly eye-catching image as it is as beautiful as it is horrible, and as subtle as it is brutal - indeed a perfect match for the novel inside. And as with all his art for various Nevill books, it’s only when you have immersed yourself in the horrors within that you realise what a perfect cover image it is, crystallising the vibe of the book into an eyeball-searing image.
So what of the story itself? Well, this is not your usual tale of alien invaders, and All the Fiends of Hell is much stronger for it. In previous works, we have seen how Nevill can take what seems like a well-worn trope such as getting lost in the woods, or tangling with a sinister cult, and weave imaginative and striking stories from what many would have considered tired and thread-bare concepts. And with this novel we have what is probably his boldest and most far-reaching treatment of a very familiar type of tale.
Now an alien invasion has been such a staple of popular culture for so long it has become somewhat cosy. We know how this type of story is supposed to go, the earth is over-run by an otherworld menace, a brave few strike back, and as quickly as it started the invaders are vanquished often by something unexpectedly simple and mundane, and normalcy restored in swift order. In other words, endless riffs on Wells’s Martian invasion, with humble earthly bacteria being replaced with by everything from water to car headlamps to even yodelling cowboys records. However you can expect no such familiar plot twists or story beats in All the Fiends of Hell which brings us perhaps the most original vision of an alien invasion in decades.
In this story there is none of the usual comfortable narrative furniture. No alien warlords pontificating on starship battle bridges, no fleets of sleek saucers lighting up the sky with lasers. Nor do the aliens have some outré plan involving clones, robots or meteorites. And as for the home team, there’s no smart scientist who figures out a convenient weakness, no square jawed hero ready to punch out any passing aliens, and there’s certainly no rousing speeches in bunkers. Instead we have something far more realistic, and indeed, an invasion that is truly and unsettlingly alien.
Our lead character is Karl, an ordinary middle aged man with real-life worries aplenty. He’s not the usual lead for this kind of story - that is to say, he’s not a scientist, nor a roving reporter, or even an ex-military fellow with a special set of skills. He's just a completely average guy, and that’s the first indication that there are no guard rails on this particular wild ride. Indeed, at the novel’s beginning, we find Karl is racked in the throes of a flu-induced fever. In his delirium, he dreams of bells ringing, red lights, and gravity seemingly reversing, with people tumbling into a crimson sky dominated by vast black shapes. When the fever breaks and he returns to ordinary consciousness he discovers a strangely silent world.
It seems like everyone is gone, vanished. The TV and radio channels are empty of broadcasts. There’s no sound of traffic. No birdsong even. It is a brilliant eerie situation, and the perfect foundation for further uncanny revelations. We will discover that there are some survivors, others who lived through what the characters term the night of the bells. But the world is now home to other things too, dubbed simply ‘the Horrors’, which are stalking through the now silent world, hunting down and brutally executing the few who have survived…
Now that is all the plot I am willing to reveal without risking unleashing spoilers, but suffice to say, All the Fiends of Hell is a compelling and very disturbing journey that you will accompany Karl on. In this tale, Nevill has brought back the terror to the concept of an alien invasion, the shock and dread at discovering that your world has been ended pretty much overnight by forces far beyond our understanding. As the novel progresses, Karl begins to pick together what has happened and learns something of the sinister and strange nature of the invaders. However there are no easy answers to discover, for this global assault upon the earth is by entities that are completely enigmatic, commanding technologies that seemingly can alter the laws of physics themselves, and are acting on utterly alien motives. Have they come from the stars or elsewhere? Is this an attack, or a hunt? A harvest, a sacrifice?
While it is perhaps something of a cliché that the most frightening thing is actually the unknown itself, it is very true that in a situation where things are not clear, the human mind excels in imagining increasingly disturbing possibilities. And Nevill adeptly harnesses this quirk of our minds to chilling effect - riding alongside Karl, being privy to his innermost thoughts and feelings, this apocalyptic invasion becomes a descent into a hell of uncertainty. Indeed part of the terror of the novel is not just seeing a devastated world, but trying, alongside Karl, to comprehend what has actually happened, to process the magnitude of what has befallen, and has now benighted, the earth.
Now much like alien invasions, a destroyed earth if often now somewhat cosy and familiar concept - cities being razed to the ground is the stuff of cinematic spectacle, an accompaniment for popcorn, and ever since George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, many of us have playfully put together our survival plans for an end of the world scenario.
However one of Adam Nevill’s great gifts as a writer is being able to think into the corners of a situation, finding a believable reality in common tropes, and giving the fantastic and the uncanny a genuine weight. He is a master at capturing a credible human response to such fantastical situations. Hence in All the Fiends of Hell, we do not just get to see a world emptied overnight, but through Karl, we get to feel it. We struggle with him as he attempts to comprehend the fact that everyone he has never known has probably vanished, swallowed up by a blood red sky, that human civilization is effectively over, and he is now staggering through the very end of the world.
And so, while Nevill’s vision of a devastated world haunted by shell shocked survivors and stalking horrors has all the infernal intensity of those paintings of the End Times by the old masters - for example Bruegel's The Triumph of Death - it’s the emotional impact on Karl, and by extension on the reader, that is truly bone chilling. For it’s not long before the novel makes you realise that in this situation, most of us would be utterly unable to cope; that the weight of the shock is more than most of us could bear, and our plans to hole up in the local mall seem trite and childish in the face of the strange intruders who are exterminating survivors with the cruel brutality of mediaeval demons. This novel doesn't just bring a vision of the end of days but makes you realise what living through such an apocalyptic event would be like, what it would mean to you personally. This isn’t just a book you read, it’s one you try to survive.
There are of course some bright points of light, little flickers of touching humanity, like candles in the darkness. However these moments, echoes of a now vanished normal sunlit world, only serve to expertly contrast the rising tide of darkness threatening to overwhelm the last of humanity hiding out in the emptied world. But as harrowing as this voyage into the end of humanity is, it is most definitely a journey worth taking. While there is eerie dread, creeping terror and visceral horror, there is also a huge imagination at work here that you cannot help but admire. This is an invasion story like no other, an unpreceded apocalypse, where the world falls to foes that are as mysterious and intriguing as they are horrific.
Furthermore this novel offers what might be termed the comfort of nightmares - for on finishing this often gruelling and unsettling tale one has the same reassuring relief that one has when awakening from a terrible dream, a glad realisation that the horrors have been unhappened, and the world is unfractured again. And after journeying into the haunting and disturbing end of days conjured by All the Fiends of Hell, one cannot help but be thankful for, and indeed freshly appreciate, our flawed but still intact world.
For fans, this book marks another glorious novel from Adam Nevill, exploring yet more new narrative territory. And while it is something of a baptism by fire, it's also a perfect jumping-on point for new readers too. Although be warned, you may not come back from this literary journey quite the same... But is a voyage that you will never forget!
All the Fiends of Hell is out now in paperback, audiobook and ebook. Signed copies available at the Ritual Limited webstore and there will be a hardback edition coming later in the year.
Plus you can get a free ebook of selected writings Cries from the Crypt here
Sam Araya’s art can be found here - https://www.arayaart.com/
DIRECT DOWNLOAD
Find all the podcasts in the HYPNOGORIA family here plus more articles on the weird and wonderful here-
Wednesday, 15 November 2023
MICROGORIA 118 - The Good Unknown by Stephen Volk
In this show, we take a look at The Good Unknown and Other Ghost Stories, a new collection of haunting tales by modern master, Stephen Volk, from Tartarus Press
Find all the podcasts in the HYPNOGORIA family here plus more articles on the weird and wonderful here-
Sunday, 6 November 2022
HYPNOGORIA 227 - Rituals Unlimited Part VII - The Vessel
In this episode we take a deep delve into the latest novel from Adam LG Nevill - The Vessel, a contemporary, cutting-edge tale of haunting folk horror!
Plus for more coverage of the works of Adam LG Nevill check out my podcast series on his books
Find all the podcasts in the HYPNOGORIA family here plus more articles on the weird and wonderful here-
Tuesday, 1 November 2022
THE VESSEL by Adam LG Nevill
'A watcher may remark that after sleeping for so long, the building appears to have been roused.'
Once again, as is now becoming traditional, Halloween has brought us a brand new book from Adam LG Nevill. The Vessel is his eleventh novel and once again has been published by his own imprint Ritual Limited as a limited edition hardback, paperback and electronic editions, and there will be an audiobook coming very soon.
Like its predecessors - The Reddening, Wyrd and Other Derelictions, and Cunning Folk - The Vessel features another strikingly eerie cover from the brilliant Samuel Araya. Now sad to say we have been living through something of a dark age in book cover design, with lazy photoshopping and big fonts replacing the glorious painted covers of yesteryear. However this run of covers for Nevill’s recent works have been a fabulous return to truly evocative art, and Araya’s cover The Vessel is something of a masterpiece. It’s a textbook example of what good art should do for a book - it provides a visual first tantalising taste of the story, a single image to beguile your imagination, to set you wondering what intriguing tale the pages hold.
Of course the joy of a new Adam Nevill book is that you are never entirely certain what courses will be served up in this latest banquet for the damned. He has never been content to plough the same furrow, something amply demonstrated by his latest three novels, which all can be described “folk horror” and yet are very different tales of terror. The Reddening gave us a gruelling epic with multiple narrators falling into the shadow of a very ancient and bloody menace, while last year’s Cunning Folk, drew on different aspects of old English magic and witchery. And where The Reddening gave us a tense tale of survival horror, Cunning Folk was a more intimate story of creeping dread and liberally laced with some potent black humour.
And now we have The Vessel, which can also be described as contemporary folk horror, but gives us something very different again. As is deftly suggested by Sam Araya’s cover, this is a more spectral sort of tale. Young single mother Jess is having a hard time, stuck in a grotty area, struggling to make ends meet, her ex Tony being more of a hindrance than a help, and her daughter Izzy is being bullied in school. However a new job as a residential carer promises to be the long sought solution - steady work and enough money to move to a better area, send Izzy to a better school, and to put the troubles of the last few years behind them. The job in question is doing shifts caring for an elderly lady, Flo who lives alone in a once grand vicarage, Nerthus House. Flo is wheelchair-bound and seemingly lost in a world of her own. However as Jess will discover, Nerthus House holds many secrets and its past is not going to lie quiet…
Naturally this being a Nevill novel, this is no straight-forward tale of spooks and spectres. For while there are seemingly paranormal happenings and even apparitions, this is as much a story about the spirits of a place as it is the lost souls of the dead. Without giving about any spoilers, a good point of reference would be the eerie tales of Algernon Blackwood where the essence of landscape and location loom large, becoming potent and sentient, spectral and ethereal. Likewise there are touches of Arthur Machen here, where what is manifesting is not so much a returning spirit but a survival of something from an ancient pagan past.
However The Vessel is no modern pastiche of either Blackwood or Machen, and as in his previous forays into folk horror, Nevill very much brings his own distinctive and imaginative vision to the tale. Refreshingly this is not the usual story of a city dweller venturing into the countryside and coming face to face with chanting pagans re-enacting The Wicker Man. Rather when Jess takes the job caring for Flo at Nerthus House, what follows is a carefully constructed series of odd incidents creating an atmosphere of encroaching weirdness, and slowly weave together a story of some strange and troubling survivals.
And survival is a key theme in The Vessel. Obviously there is the central menace, which I won’t reveal, but suffice to say it is something from an ancient time of forgotten rites and primitive worship, that has lingered into the modern age. However there are also other survivals too, the strange figures and images conjured up the gloom in Nerthus House, what MR James’ Mr Abney would term “the psychic portion of the subjects”. Likewise Nerthus House and the sleepy village of Eadric still endure too, despite new developments and modern estates getting ever nearer, and the halcyon days of the village seemingly being long past now.
On another level, it is also the story of more personal survivals. We have Flo’s situation, infirm, nearly immobile, and perhaps lost to dementia, yet still surviving all these indignities that time can inflict upon us. In contrast this old lady at the end of the days, we have young Izzy who is just beginning hers, but she has trials and tribulations too - she's a child still learning about the world but also having to come to terms with separated parents and facing bullying at her school.
And then of course there are various survival challenges for Jess. For as ever in an Adam Nevill excursion into dread, the weirdness and supernaturalism are firmly wedded to the real world. For despite being troubled by the strange events that begin to escalate around her, she can’t afford to quit this job. As it is she is struggling to get through the aftermath of her relationship with Tony collapsing. But then as she starts her new job, there are odd incidents, and haunting dreams, and a client who is apparently active in a most unusual fashion. All of this is indeed very disconcerting and increasingly troubling, but also looming over her is the threat of being unable to provide for her family, to pay the bills, to keep her daughter safe; things that may prove to be larger and more immediate perils. The twin spectres of poverty and failure can more than give the horrors haunting Nerthus House a run for their money.
However as I have mentioned nothing is to be taken for granted in an Adam Nevill novel. For, as is often the case, this tale has one particular moment, when we get what I have in the past called the Nevill swerve. This is a scene that will radically alter the expected shape of the tale he is telling. For time and time again, he deftly manages to anticipate where the reader thinks the story is going, and then, at just the right moment, will throw in something that changes the course of the narrative. And the swerve in The Vessel is a belter, a scene that is genuinely shocking and seems to come out of the blue, although on reflection you will realise the path to getting to this stunning moment was carefully laid out right from the beginning, and you have been expertly guided to this pivotal moment.
But what follows this particular scene is equally surprising, building logically to the story’s memorable conclusion. Now in many ways The Vessel is a very compact tale but it is also a masterclass in storytelling. For while the storyline might seem simple at first, there are subtle complexities here, connections that only become apparent after a little reflection. Certainly it is a novel that will reveal deeper secrets on a second reading. And while the tale concludes in a very satisfying final scene, with various plot threads all neatly coming together in ways one may not have anticipated, there is a kind of transcendence in the finale, with awe joining the horror.
And there are ambiguities here about the nature of the powers lingering around Nerthus House, for like the ancient mysteries called up in the works of Blackwood and Machen, what may seem terrifying and otherworldly may not be not necessarily evil, and indeed where and how we draw lines of morality when assessing the haunting events of The Vessel are questions that will linger with many readers. The Vessel is a tale of surviving practices and powers that reveals far more than the usual elderly gods and monsters stalking the fields and furrows. Rather it is a story concerning how, and indeed why, some things are not forgotten. It’s a tale that embodies some truly ancient pagan ideas, that events fall in patterns, often becoming cyclical, coming around again and again like the seasons. And the turn of this wheel shapes both the present and the future. This is folk horror with imagination, intelligence and heart, and highly recommended.
Plus for more coverage of the works of Adam LG Nevill check out my podcast series on his books
Sunday, 17 October 2021
HYPNOGORIA 191 - Rituals Unlimited Part VI - Some Folk Wont Get Out Alive
In this episode we have a double dose of terror from Adam Nevill! Firstly we look at the new movie version of his novel No One Gets Out Alive which is currently scaring the pants of people on Netflix, and then have a review of his tenth novel, a tale of folk horror entitled Cunning Folk!
The book is available for preorder, along lots of other goodies, at Adam's website
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Sunday, 12 September 2021
MICROGORIA 101 - The Brains of Donovan
In this show we take a look at the three big screen adaptations of the novel Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak - The Lady and the Monster (1944), Donovan's Brain (1953), and The Brain (1962) - three movies, from three different decades, and three very different versions of the story!
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Sunday, 2 May 2021
MICROGORIA 092 - The Gruesome Book
In this podcast we take a look at an old favourite tome - an anthology of horror tales for children assembled by the legendary Ramsey Campbell himself, published back in the 1980s and featuring tales from masters of the macabre such as Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson and Brian Lumley! Kid's stuff it ain't!
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Sunday, 22 November 2020
MICROGORIA 87 - His House
In this episode we take a look at a new movie that being hailed as the best new horror film on Netflix, a modern day ghost story called His House!
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Sunday, 15 November 2020
MICROGORIA 86 - Rituals Unlimited Part V - Wyrd & Other Derelictions
We return the worlds of Adam Nevill with a review of his latest book, a collection of short fiction entitled Wyrd & Other Derelictions - an anthology of terror tales with an intriguing difference.
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Sunday, 8 November 2020
HYPNOGORIA 161 - Opening the Box of Delights
In this podcast, Mr Jim Moon takes a look at Opening the Box of Delights - a lavish new tome all about that classic Yuletide favourite, and interviews the author, Dr Philip Errington! We talk about the book, The Box of Delights in all its incarnations and its creator John Masefield.
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Sunday, 26 April 2020
MICROGORIA 75 - Nyctophobias
In this little episode we are discussing the fear of the dark, and a new book of short ghost stories on that very theme from Mr Thom Burgess - Nyctophobias!
Also for more ghostly goodness visit Manoghosts.com
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Sunday, 24 November 2019
MICROGORIA 72 - Doctor Sleep vs Rabid
Plus there's a trailer for this year's Christmas shows!
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - MICROGORIA 72 - Doctor Sleep vs Rabid
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Sunday, 10 November 2019
HYPNOGORIA 130 - Rituals Unlimited Part IV - The Reddening
We return to the novels of Adam Nevill with a review of his latest opus, a dark exploration of folk horror, The Reddening!
DIRECT DOWNLOAD - Rituals Unlimited Part IV - The Reddening
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Wednesday, 9 October 2019
CHASM by Stephen Laws
When I was a kid, I always remember the standard grown-up response to moaning about the weather was to point out that yes, it might be drizzling again, but on the other hand the UK didn't get hurricanes, tornados or earthquakes, so a bit of rain isn't so bad. And as well meaning as this line of reasoning was, it did have a somewhat difference effect - namely to make me terrified of the aforementioned hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Such is the impish nature of childhood imagination - if you're told "don't worry, that doesn't happen here", it instantly starts whispering "ah yes, but what if it did...".
And I wonder if Stephen Laws had a similar experience, for in Chasm, his tenth novel, he takes us to Edmonville, a typical sleepy little English town, and then promptly hits it with the earthquake of your nightmares. Entire buildings are leveled, the ground literally splits apart, swallowing up whole streets, and so much dust is thrown up, the sun is blotted out. Out of this wreckage a handful of survivors band together and attempt to survive while they wait for the outside world to send aid to the stricken town.
Now for many writers, this opening scenario would be enough to plot out the entire novel. And indeed, tales of ordinary folk surviving after some society-ending cataclysm have been a staple of British fantastic fiction since John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. And indeed, in the early stages of the novel, as we meet the motley crew of characters who will band together to survive this epic disaster, it appears that is exactly the kind of tale Chasm is going to deliver. And indeed in the hands of other authors, this scenario would be enough for a novel in itself. However the wiley Mr Laws has some other tricks up his sleeve, and soon you will discover that the mega-quake that has leveled Edmonville is the stuff of nightmares in more ways than one.
Stephen Laws burst onto the horror scene back in 1985 with his debut novel Ghost Train, and followed it up with a string of well-received books that were hits with readers and critics alike. He proved time and time again to have a real flair for spinning out suspenseful yarns centred on original horror concepts, spurning the standard-issue malevolent ghosts, psychopathic killers and jaded vampires, and creating instead monstrous and macabre menaces that were both original and imaginative. And in Chasm Laws brought us perhaps his biggest and baddest creation yet - for this is no mere disaster tale, this is a conjuration of a truly epic evil. And the further you get in to this novel, the more you appreciate its scope and vision. Indeed when it was originally published back in 1998, Chasm was nominated for a British Fantasy award for Best Novel.
What's more, Chasm feels like a genuine progression too. While even in his first books, Laws always delivered interesting characters and intriguing scenarios, going through his novels you can clearly see a writer who is becoming more and more confident - not just telling bigger stories, but addressing deeper themes too. And Chasm sees him at the top of his game, effortless balancing all the action of you want from a widescreen supernatural horror tale with small-scale, carefully crafted character developments. For a supernatural terror to be effective, we need solid characters with motivations and believable emotional lives to bring the horror home. And this is something Laws has always understood well, and hence in Chasm he never lets the scale of the horrors overshadow the more intimate moments and details of the varied cast of characters.
Laws also knows well that no matter how imaginative your monsters are, they have to operate at a human level too. When it's just people versus monsters, it's easy for storytellers to fall into goodies and baddies tropes operating in simplistic black and white moral framework. However Laws has always been interested in the nature of evil, and how it is expressed through human actions and motivations, and itis something he has explored in many of his novels. Chasm is no exception, and hence while we do have an amazingly imaginative threat for our band of survivors to contend with, there's also more human menaces to deal with. And we are not just talking some folks going over to the Dark Side as it were, for Laws understands very well contrary to most fiction, the worst things happening don't necessarily bring out the best in us. And in Chasm human failings will prove be as big a threat as the cataclysm that befalls Edmonville.
Chasm is a massively entertaining book. There's more than enough action to keep you turning the pages, but the real joy of this novel is that Laws very adeptly throws in a new twist every time you get to a point where you think you know where the plot is going. There are some brilliantly imaginative developments that shift this novel far away from the usual post-apocalypse yarn you might be expecting, while Laws masterfully keeps the story grounded at a personal level, giving us characters we can relate to and a stake in their shattered world. And while there is a lot of truly cinematic set pieces in the novel, in the end it is also a book about human weaknesses and has much to say on the real nature of evil.
Now sad to say, currently horror is somewhat out of favour in British publishing, and one of the casualties of this has been that Mr Laws' marvelous novels have been allowed to go out of print. But thank the dark gods for PS Publishing who are still carrying the torch of UK horror! And they have just published a new revised edition of Chasm, coming as a gorgeous signed limited hardback or a trade paperback. And if you're looking for some classic British horror, pick up a copy today!
Chasm is available as a limited edition hardback here
Or as a trade paperback here
And I wonder if Stephen Laws had a similar experience, for in Chasm, his tenth novel, he takes us to Edmonville, a typical sleepy little English town, and then promptly hits it with the earthquake of your nightmares. Entire buildings are leveled, the ground literally splits apart, swallowing up whole streets, and so much dust is thrown up, the sun is blotted out. Out of this wreckage a handful of survivors band together and attempt to survive while they wait for the outside world to send aid to the stricken town.
Now for many writers, this opening scenario would be enough to plot out the entire novel. And indeed, tales of ordinary folk surviving after some society-ending cataclysm have been a staple of British fantastic fiction since John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids. And indeed, in the early stages of the novel, as we meet the motley crew of characters who will band together to survive this epic disaster, it appears that is exactly the kind of tale Chasm is going to deliver. And indeed in the hands of other authors, this scenario would be enough for a novel in itself. However the wiley Mr Laws has some other tricks up his sleeve, and soon you will discover that the mega-quake that has leveled Edmonville is the stuff of nightmares in more ways than one.
Stephen Laws burst onto the horror scene back in 1985 with his debut novel Ghost Train, and followed it up with a string of well-received books that were hits with readers and critics alike. He proved time and time again to have a real flair for spinning out suspenseful yarns centred on original horror concepts, spurning the standard-issue malevolent ghosts, psychopathic killers and jaded vampires, and creating instead monstrous and macabre menaces that were both original and imaginative. And in Chasm Laws brought us perhaps his biggest and baddest creation yet - for this is no mere disaster tale, this is a conjuration of a truly epic evil. And the further you get in to this novel, the more you appreciate its scope and vision. Indeed when it was originally published back in 1998, Chasm was nominated for a British Fantasy award for Best Novel.
Laws also knows well that no matter how imaginative your monsters are, they have to operate at a human level too. When it's just people versus monsters, it's easy for storytellers to fall into goodies and baddies tropes operating in simplistic black and white moral framework. However Laws has always been interested in the nature of evil, and how it is expressed through human actions and motivations, and itis something he has explored in many of his novels. Chasm is no exception, and hence while we do have an amazingly imaginative threat for our band of survivors to contend with, there's also more human menaces to deal with. And we are not just talking some folks going over to the Dark Side as it were, for Laws understands very well contrary to most fiction, the worst things happening don't necessarily bring out the best in us. And in Chasm human failings will prove be as big a threat as the cataclysm that befalls Edmonville.
Chasm is a massively entertaining book. There's more than enough action to keep you turning the pages, but the real joy of this novel is that Laws very adeptly throws in a new twist every time you get to a point where you think you know where the plot is going. There are some brilliantly imaginative developments that shift this novel far away from the usual post-apocalypse yarn you might be expecting, while Laws masterfully keeps the story grounded at a personal level, giving us characters we can relate to and a stake in their shattered world. And while there is a lot of truly cinematic set pieces in the novel, in the end it is also a book about human weaknesses and has much to say on the real nature of evil.
Now sad to say, currently horror is somewhat out of favour in British publishing, and one of the casualties of this has been that Mr Laws' marvelous novels have been allowed to go out of print. But thank the dark gods for PS Publishing who are still carrying the torch of UK horror! And they have just published a new revised edition of Chasm, coming as a gorgeous signed limited hardback or a trade paperback. And if you're looking for some classic British horror, pick up a copy today!
Chasm is available as a limited edition hardback here
Or as a trade paperback here
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