The City And The City
By China Mieville
I’ve read a few China Mieville in the past and I’ve enjoyed them. His style has been described as The New Weird, largely as it blends genres such as horror, fantasy, sci fi into something strange and hard to pin down. This book is no exception. Ostensibly a murder mystery/political thriller, it’s the setting that makes this one strange and little tricky to get your head round at first. It’s set in the twin cities of Besel and Ul Qoma - two cities that occupy the same geographical space, meaning that the citizens of each city are trained from birth to “unsee” the other one. This isn't normally a genre that would draw me in but the unique set up really drew me in. (It’s recently been turned into a series but I haven’t watched that yet.)
Discovering Scarfolk
By Richard Littler
Probably in a slightly similar vein to Welcome To Night Vale but with a slightly more nightmarish fell, this book is largely an excuse to parody 1970s public information and literature in a twisted and off-kilter way. It’s a fun and quick read with an extremely pleasing ‘70s design aesthetic. There’s also a blog which you read here.
Norse Mythology
By Neil Gaiman
Since reading The Sandman way back in the day, I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman’s writing. He’s clearly fascinated by myths and legends, by where stories come from, so it makes sense that he would provide his own spin on classic tales from mythology. It’s a really engaging read - he does a great job of making quite convoluted and occasionally contradictory stories (based on the remaining records we have of these tales) into something compelling and cohesive. I went through this in just over a day and thoroughly enjoyed it.
That’ll do for now. I need to read some more first before I can say anything about it. It’s a traditional way to review things, sure, but I’m going to stick with it.
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