The writing is very poetic and evokes a dream-like atmosphere. The setting is modern day England, but seen through a very dark lens. It provides what feels like a sincere evocation of the world we're living in today. There is a feeling of hopelessness, danger and despair lurking just outside the little circle of illumination life casts around the characters. The unease I felt as I read this book was a product of recognizing the reality underneath the fantastic exterior.
'A mesmerising, mysterious book . . . Haunting. Worrying. Beautiful' Russell T. Davis
'Brilliantly unsettling' Olivia Laing
'A magificent book' Neil Gaiman
'An extraordinary experience' William Gibson
Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize 2020, this is fiction that pushes the boundaries of the novel form.
Shaw had a breakdown, but he's getting himself back together. He has a single room, a job on a decaying London barge, and an on-off affair with a doctor's daughter called Victoria, who claims to have seen her first corpse at age thirteen.
I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes and the crazy, remarkable people who work there. There was a good deal of whimsical humor and the logic, or perhaps I should say the illogic of their pursuits. which is drawn out to very effective length. Cisco always chooses his words well and is skilled at giving his readers the little frisson of fear and uncertainty so typical of his works.
Weird fiction icon and award-winning author Michael Cisco's Black Brane, begins with the physical pain of a bad foot and later voyages into absurdity, mad science, occultism, and existential dread.
A man lying in a bed of pain flees from physical torment into his own memories, and into speculations about life and reality. He was, once, employed by the Temporary Institute for the Study of Holes, a think tank pursuing research that ranges from occult studies to advanced physics, including black holes-or, as they are known in string theory, black branes.
This reminded me of the old science fictional adventures written by John Wyndham: a terrible disaster strikes England and then how do the people in a localized community react to it? The disaster in this case is particularly dreadful. Ryman is really invested in putting the experience across to the reader and as one turns the pages and the hope for a good resolution dwindles the horror of the situation truly becomes hard to bear. The animals that Teddy lived with and that made up his whole world turn into something altogether different. Very creepy.
ANIMALS tells the chilling tale of a family caught at the heart of a terrifying and transformative epidemic, in an astonishing fusion of beautiful writing and pure horror at its finest.
Teddy has always been a special child. Frightened by other children, described as 'imaginative' by teachers, home-schooled by his mother. His closest friend was his father, until he left them for another man.
Now, his closest friends are the family pets: the greyhounds his mother used to breed for racing; the three-hundred-pound family pig Charity and her best friend, a duck; and the stray cat he slowly befriended: Little…
In a world with witches and devils, the scariest ones are the pirates. In a setting modeled on the Caribbean, c. 1700, Deirdre, Queen of the Witches, has finally succeeded in killing her long-time antagonist, the Son of Light. Now the world is at her mercy. Tom and Katie are two lovers who become separated when Tom embarks on a three year sailing voyage. After he departs, Katie finds she is pregnant. In the new, dangerous world they inhabit, trouble is breaking loose everywhere. Amidst an Indian war and a slave revolt, pirates come in search of the marvelous emerald that is the eye of Madibimbo, the one-eyed monkey god. Katie’s unborn child is destined to be the next Son of Light, and Tom and Katie must traverse a dangerous terrain in their quest to reunite. When she miscarries, can the situation be saved?
