BEYOND HERE LIES NOTHING By Gary McMahon – Reviewed

Review published courtesy of Morpheus Tales Publishing.

 

This is the third and final chapter in McMahon’s splendidly brooding Concrete Grove trilogy.

Reading the first two parts of this story isn’t essential to your enjoyment, as the third novel, like the other two, stands on its own, but they are interlinked, and knowing what’s going on beforehand will greatly enhance your understanding of the Grove and appreciation for the events unfolding therein.

This book has several cleverly woven plot strands, including: Marc Price, visiting the Grove for a funeral and investigating the Northumberland Poltergeist, discovers a lot more than he bargained for while delving into his dead friend’s archive; Eric Best, a gangland thug and  protective ex-boyfriend to Abby, will stop at nothing to keep his ex for himself, including murder; DS Royle is separated from his pregnant wife, who can’t live with him or without him, meanwhile, the policeman is investigating the disappearance of the Gone Away Girls, a series of unsolved kidnappings, and then scarecrows start appearing with photos of the missing girls attached… post-mortem photos.

Beyond Here Lies Nothing has the same heavy, brooding atmosphere of the first two books. It is stifling and you can’t get away from it, which adds to the increasing drama, both human and supernatural. Although the human beings in McMahon’s novels are horrible enough, he doesn’t rest there, inserting some strange and spookily unreal action along the way.

Although this is an ensemble piece and lacks the depth of characterisation of the stunning second book in the series, Silent Voices, it is more ambitious in scale and plot. Both previous books lead in to this catastrophic finale.

Although not as brutal and nasty as some of his other novels, this isn’t quiet horror; it still hurts, and that’s what horror is all about – making the reader feel. McMahon does this by drawing us into his story, creating realistically flawed characters and brutally punishing them.

McMahon has his finger firmly on the carotid artery of modern horror.  No horror fan should be without the entire Concrete Grove trilogy and the Thomas Usher novels.

www.solarisbooks.com

Morpheus Tales July Supplement – Coming Soon!

Right now I’m working hard on the July issue of the FREE MT Supplement! It’s gonna be another big one at around 40 pages! We’ve got the usual excellent reviews and columns, also a slew of new comic reviews, and loads more. The MT Supplement can be downloaded or read on the website:

www.morpheustales.com/reviews.htm

Here’s a preview of the almost finish table of contents:

SILENT VOICES By Gary McMahon
DON’T PET THE SWEATY THINGS By K. J. Hannah Greenberg
HUNTER’S MOON: VISCERAL TALES OF TERROR By R Scott McCoy
DARK NORTH By Paul Finch
ORC STAIN
THE DEVIL’S NEBULA By Eric Brown
A JAR OF WASPS By Luis Villazon
Horror’s New Chopping Block By Alan Spencer
SINFUL By Yolanda Sfetsos
TOXICITY By Andy Remic
SAUCER COUNTRY
THE LEGEND OF RACHEL PETERSEN By J.T. Baroni
How to Write a Book at Gunpoint By Luis Villazon
REVELATION: CREATURES RULE THE NIGHT By Nathaniel Connors
Ramblings of a Tattooed Head By Simon Marshall-Jones
NAZI ZOMBIES
PAX OMEGA By Al Ewing
STRANGENESS AND CHARM By Mike Shevdon
GHOST WRITER (Kindle edition) By Tom C. Underhill
RASL
RAILSEA By China Mieville
DARK ECLIPSE #9 (the Dark Moon e-zine)
EDGE OF DARK WATER By Joe R. Lansdale
vN By Madeline Ashby
DEADLINE: THE HORRIFYING ADVENTURES OF HARVEY BANKS, TABLOID REPORTER By Jochem Van der Steen
THE HAMMER AND THE BLADE By Paul S. Kemp
THE RESPECTABLE FACE OF TYRANNY By Gary Fry
SUSTENANCE By Nate D. Burleigh
From the Catacombs: Graphic Lovecraft By Jim Lesniak
BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON By Larry C. Kerr
HUNTER’S MOON By Charlotte Bond
THE LAST REEF AND OTHER STORIES By Gareth L. Powell
Matt Leyshon Interview
NEW YORK BLUES By Eric Brown
EVA – A GHOST STORY By Mike Emmett
Shaun Jeffrey Interview

See, I told you! Loads of stuff!This might not be the final order, but everything listed above will be appearing in the July issue.

Might even be able to squeeze in a mini scream queen interview. That should probably read scream queen mini interview, not mini scream queen!

 

SILENT VOICES By Gary McMahon – Reviewed

This review is published with the permission of Morpheus Tales.

Wow! It’s very rare for me to be this impressed by a book. McMahon has produced a fantastic novel, a book of friendship, loss, heartache, and sacrifice.  If you have not read McMahon before, then this is the perfect book to start with.

The second book in the Concrete Grove Trilogy (but a stand-alone novel that works just as well if you haven’t read the first book in the set, although I would recommend it as the first book really sets the changes and starts things off with a bang), sees the reuniting of a group of childhood friends, who twenty years ago went into the abandoned tower block known as the Needle and lost a weekend, only to be found abused and bloodied with no memory of what happened. Finally back together, they head back to where their lives changed, the Needle, to fight whatever demons are there and try to remember what happened that fateful weekend.

The Grove is a hellish place, and if you grew up on a council estate it may ring a little too true, and feel a little too close to home. The unease McMahon creates with his setting is perfectly and sadly authentic.

McMahon’s novel is so well put together, the sense of foreboding, the creeping unease, and the disturbed atmosphere McMahon gradually builds, grow through the novel towards a heart-wrenching climax that leaves you torn and wounded. The characters here are real, you know them.

This is not just a horror novel, this is an intelligent and insightful social commentary; a literary, character-driven novel that delves deeper into our hopes and fears, our shame, guilt and pain, than many other writers dare look.

I always come to a McMahon book with high hopes; his Pretty Little Dead Things is a brutal and twisted vision of genius that is in my top ten books of all time. But that means expectations are high, and that can be a double-edged sword. I look for failures and weaknesses in everything, and usually have no problem finding many, but Silent Voices is good. Really good. Bloody good.  McMahon has done it again; he’s impressed the hell out of me. He’s written an extremely accomplished, intelligent and insightful novel that goes far beyond the genre boundaries.

All horror writers should read McMahon; he shows them how it’s really done. Silent Voices is a disturbing tale of friendship and sacrifice, and McMahon is a master craftsman.

www.solarisbooks.com