Reviews and Comments

A mesmerising read, the beautiful writing by Castro is sure to pull in any fan of folklore horror stories. Most people must have heard of Bloody Mary or The Candyman, the La Reina de Las Chicharras myth is similar, say her name into a mirror three times and you’ll see her, an event you’re sure to regret. I recently saw the TV series Penny Dreadful City of Angels and was really looking forward to seeing that Mexican/American Folklore come to life on the screen, in the end I was disappointed, a very flat story that was rather muddled…. The Queen of The Cicadas meets everything I wanted from that series. It is dark, devastating and sexy, the myth of La Reina de Las Chicharras was absorbing and I could hardly put down the book, I was always telling myself “one more page”.

The story follows Belinda and Hector in present day time experiencing a paranormal event, their research pulls them into the history of a farmworker, Milagros, who is brutally murdered in the 1950’s and a series of vengeance attacks on those responsible and on them that ignored the crime. I found myself siding with the Queen which is not something you usually expect when dealing with these Urban Legends, the punishment she deals out seemed perfectly reasonably to me. As the story progresses I really liked how Castro uses modern technology to enable the existence of the Queen to go viral, it made her feel more life like, one day there might even be videos of her on Twitter.

The writing is impeccable, the violence was graphic just enough to make the point, and the violence dealt to Milagros had me sitting there with my mouth open, even the scenes with sex were very tasteful, a lot of books can make you cringe with awkward sex but there is none of that here, each scene was beautiful. The book builds up your fear ready for big reveals, there lots of things happening out of the corner of eyes, which keeps you on the edge of your seat.

I have really enjoyed this, it has left me wondering why I don’t read more horror, I really need to get out there and look for more, V. Castro has moved onto my favourite authors list and I’ll be looking at what else she has.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/blog-tour-the-queen-of-the-cicadas-by-v-castro/

This is such an interesting and unique style of writing, a book where fiction and non-fiction merge, Erskine makes clever use of the two voices. A factory is being demolished and during the destruction a body is discovered surrounded by ten objects, each one is a clue to the identity of the corpse. There is one man who can help, a man who may be able to piece together the clues to figure out the identity, a man called John.

Each clue sends John down memory lane, it is intricately tied with a chemical and it is here where Erskine’s second voice kicks in, the history of the chemical, it’s discoverer and how the chemical is created…..and more importantly for readers like me, you get told all the morbid details about how destructive it is. The changes between John’s memory trips and the non-fiction is seamless and if you are worried that you might not understand the science, don’t worry as Erskine explains it all really well, her enthusiasm for this subject really grabs you. The relationship between John and the detective was interesting, the witty back and forth and the conversations over meals left me expecting more from them, it makes me wonder if maybe we’ll be seeing the detective again in another book as it feels like we’ve only just started to get to know her…which also makes me wonder will we meet John again???

The plot kept me interested throughout, I did guess the identity early on but the reveal was still moving and tied up things perfectly. I also liked how as the story headed towards it’s conclusion we witness the slow death of a factory, from the risky health and safety incidences to the stunning incompetence’s of the upper management all the way to the all too common final outcome for a factory. Another interesting aspect of the book, which adds another dimension to the plot, is a lot of events narrated by John are based on real life instances, the dodgy things the characters do are so easy to imagine happening.

This is the first book by Erskine I’ve read and it is a good’un, I’ll definitely be checking out more of her writing. I’ve tried to come up with another name of somebody who writes like this and I’ve drawn a blank, for me Erskin has a truly unique voice. Roight I’m off to the kitchen to see what I can create from this book using the kitchen aid.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/06/22/blog-tour-phosphate-rocks-a-death-in-ten-objects-by-fiona-erskine/

Set against the backdrop of the COVID Pandemic, this book is how one birder handles the lockdown and how he coped without his usual access to nature. Being put into this situation he starts to notice nature in a different way, species that turn up early or not at all, foreign species that usually live in warm climates and the impact the changing seasons are having on all of nature, from the wee tiny bugs to the majestic birds up in the sky.

I’ve read Rutt’s two previous books and his love for birds really shone through, here he takes things once step further and shares with us his love of all nature…even if it is a thing from nightmares (Yes, there is such a thing as a Wasp Spider) Just like with his previous books Rutt takes a subject that in the wrong hands could become dry and dull, by sharing his love for these animals and plants adds a real poetic edge to his words. I read his blog too and don’t think I’ll ever get bored with his writing.

In this book Rutt ends up stuck in Bedfordshire during the first lockdown and spends his time exploring the area fully, something he probably wouldn’t have been able to do without the presence of the lockdown. The next part of the book he is back home and trying to fit back in with his surroundings, realising what he has missed and seeing new things for the first time. Amongst all these experiences is the concern of climate change, researching the species that are losing out, those that are making the most of the situation and those invading species and the damage they do, not least the distraction of their presence makes us not notice those that have vanished.

My favourite part of this book is when Rutt points out that during the lockdown people were saying that nature was starting to heal, Rutt thinks that was not entirely true, it was just that nature has been given a chance to shout loud enough for us to hear. Brilliant thought. This book really makes you realise you need to get out there and witness these creatures and events in nature before it’s too late…alas I’m just no good at spotting these things, it’s just too slow a process for me to remember the identity of what I have seen, I need to find some kind of course I can go on to help me learn, I wish this was the sort of thing I was taught at school, would have been so much more fun than drama. This is a powerful book that will inspire you to get out there and look in hedgerows and wild plants to see what you can find, before finishing this review I popped out with the dog to see what I could find, I saw lots of weird little bugs and the only one that stayed still long enough for me to photograph was these:

Blog review here (Photos can be seen on the blog): felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/06/06/the-eternal-season-ghosts-of-summers-past-present-and-future-by-stephen-rutt/

M. J. Nicholls is a Jazz-Man Word-Smith or a Word-Smith Jazz-Man or a Jazz-Word Smith-Man…one of those at least, he has a unique way with words, he’ll use words that surely do not exist so you google them and yes “Bummershoot” is a word (even though Microsoft refuse to admit that and have done a red squiggle) and it is a word I shall be using whenever I can. He’ll reuse/rephrase words in a sentence and it gives the paragraphs (some rather long) a certain beat and that’s where the Jazz feeling comes in, you find yourself getting lost in the flow and really enjoying what he has conjured up.

I like the idea of the plot, find a crappy hotel and then take the worst person in each county and send them to that hotel for an amount of time determined by just how bad their crimes are. I have to admit that I was rather interested in who got sent from my county, the crime revolved around the pressure of getting that perfect opening sentence. A reoccurring theme of the crimes was to do with writers, the chaos they create, the stress they cause, the abuse they direct at publishers and of course that opening sentence issue…I thought I’d go back to the beginning and check out Nicholls opening sentence, was it a good’un or will he being doing time? It features underpants and all bran so gets a thumbs up for me.

The best in the book was about M. D. Thomas, an 82 year old from Warwickshire, a brilliant rant written on the side of a museum, I found myself agreeing with his words and was rather disappointed he was found guilty.

Another clever, absurd book by Nicholls, it’s not going to be for everybody but if you’re ok with letting go of reality for a bit then you’re going to get quite a few laughs from this…and if you don’t like words, don’t worry there are a lot of great illustrations here too, a bit like YouTube but on pause.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/06/02/trimming-england-by-m-j-nicholls/

I am a big fan of Murakami, he can take you on a magical journey into a reality which could go in any direction and you are guaranteed to be left with many questions that you are able to answer with your own ideas after the story has finished…that is how it works with his full length novels. Short stories don’t work as well, the 6 stories in this collection are fantastic but they are not long enough, the characters don’t get a chance to develop and you just start to get intrigued when the story ends.

My favourite story was about the bloke who built bonfires on the beach, he really shows the art of building a good fire, but all that happens at the end is you are left wanting more…I was even left wanting more of the kids story within the last story in the book. I’m not sure what the underlying theme is here, it could be men’s inability to show love or it could be about how a bear goes about selling honey, whatever it is about I wish there was more…I might have mentioned that already.

If you are starting out on Murakami’s writing don’t start here.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/05/27/after-the-quake-by-haruki-murakami/

Oh My! Oh My! What a book! This was completely unexpected, the cover throws you off big time, it looks like journal that would make for rather dry reading, what you actually get is a scarily accurate portrayal of just how the Internet has broken humanity’s grasp on reality. The Strobe Witherspoon in the book has written a novel, a parody of sorts about a former first lady of the USA, no names are given in the book but it is obvious who this first lady is and the ensuing chaos and outrage from “that President’s” loyal supporters makes the basis for this book (OOF not the one about the first lady). Using some innovative writing techniques we get an outrageous story that couldn’t possibly happen…but if you sit back and think about the state of social media and it’s cancel culture of guilty without needing evidence, this book becomes a warning, humanity is on a precipice if we don’t stop with being so dumb ALL the time then we’re gonna tip over the edge and armageddon will be our reward.

Strobe uses tweets, podcasts, blogs, interviews and emails to tell the story, you’d think this wouldn’t work but we are trained to read a story from tweets, blogs are structured in a way that flow nicely and are comfortable for readers and podcasts…are just fun, great when they get out of hand. One weird thing about this book is you have a lot of characters but you only really know 4 of them, the rest are just like in real life, a faceless entity behind a computer screen, Strobe has handled these well and you can get a sense of who they are in how they write. The book has many many many good lines, think of those eye catching headlines and the tweets that make you reply with an LOL. My favourite has to be:

“Hysterical is now the new normal”

I certainly get that feeling when I check out the threads when something is trending…that is a quote that deserves to make it onto a T-shirt.

I have really enjoyed this book, it is very clever and leaves the reader unsure of what is real and what is fake news. One sign of just how good this was is by the time I was halfway through I was already recommending this to everybody.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/oof-an-online-outrage-fiesta-for-the-ages-by-strobe-witherspoon/

I love this wee book, it is slimmer and taller than a normal book, clothbound and perfectly fits in your pocket when imbibing the odd pint at one of the many old pubs mentioned in these pages. The maps are wonderful, nice full page spreads with the routes clearly marked out and if you don’t get on with paper maps or you don’t want to have to keep flicking through pages there is a QR code at the back where you can download digital copies of the routes…a genius idea that even Pepys would be impressed by.

As for the written part, I really enjoyed what I read, I know very little about Pepys other than he kept a diary like Adrian Mole did. I’ve learnt so much from this book, Pepys was quite a character, his long suffering wife had a lot to put up with, arguments, other women, being abandoned and violence. He was a real man about town, he knew everybody who was worth knowing. The 5 walks in the book follow him on common routes he would take throughout his life and Harvey is always getting you to use your imagination to picture the buildings, the bustling daily activities, the smells and of course the fire! The great fire of London is a big part of the narrative, Pepys account of the scenes and the devastation makes for some interesting reading.

It is difficult to share the areas of Pepys’s time with the reader as a huge amount of the buildings were destroyed by fire or the Blitz or gotten rid of to make way for a modern concrete boring building. Harvey’s writing is impressive and the descriptions help you to picture what was there, modern day events are also shared (buildings used in movies and a certain alleyway in that Potter movie) and there are still an incredible amount of smaller buildings still standing, old pubs and shops going back 100s of years, I hadn’t realised what was still around.

I have enjoyed this book immensely and will one day take a trip to London and do some of these walks…and some of the pubs!

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/05/20/walking-pepyss-london-by-jacky-colliss-harvey/

What a remarkable book this is, Gask shares with us a side of mental health that the average joe wouldn’t ever consider, the mental health of a psychiatrist. Gask has had a full career helping those many people who have needed somebody to be there, to listen and to see them and if her writing is anything to go by she must have been a great listener with a soothing voice. The book comes across as very honest, by listening to her patients she has learnt ways to come to terms with her own past trauma and depression and she shares with the reader the highs and lows of her route to where she is at this moment in her life.

I am one of those lucky people, I don’t suffer from any mental health issues and I feel very lucky to be where I am in life, a good life at home and somewhere at work to get away from the stresses of work, (a common with plenty of wildlife to help me unwind) without these stable parts of my life it is scary to think what I’d be like. I think I found “The True North” that Gask is hinting at in this book early on in my life. I do know of people who suffer from anxiety and depression and this book has really opened my eyes about what they are going through, I must admit that I have thought at times that it must be easier to deal with and that it would go away soon…this book has taught me I’ve gotta be way more patient and shown me ways I can be more helpful.

I think Gask has been very brave in writing this book as it is a harsh world out there full of people with a mean streak and zero cares for anybody but themselves, I think she has written a well balanced book, she hasn’t attacked anybody or any system, she points out faults and comes up with ways to improve things and she has raised awareness of things that are working. I’m not sure this is a book for those who suffer as they won’t get any help here, apart from realising they aren’t alone, this is a book for those who know of people who suffer from mental health problems, it is a way they can find ways they can help. Also don’t read this book if you are trying to avoid falling in love with The Orkneys, it is somewhere I’ve always wanted to go….one day I shall make it there.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/05/11/finding-true-north-by-linda-gask/

If Trump hadn’t become President then this book wouldn’t have worked for me, being over in the UK it is only because of the circus Trump created that I had any idea what a lot of the things in this book were about….that being said, even with a sane President these events could have still happened it’s just knowledge of their occurrence wouldn’t have been known worldwide. Thanks Trump! You da man!

This book is great fun, I laughed so much at the way each situation was played out and blown out of all proportion on social media. I probably shouldn’t have laughed as the book covers some very violent events but I couldn’t help it because somebody I know “suffers” from the beliefs covered in the book, he loves going down those rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and then tries to convince me it is fact. The book is not all fun and games though, a huge part of the book covers PTSD, a lot of the characters suffer from this and the bulk of the outcomes are down to them not dealing with it, it just isn’t manly to discuss the trauma you have experienced. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is of the characters here and what they’ve done in the book, Chon shares with you how they got to that point and leaves you wondering that if they got help would things have been different?

I have enjoyed this book immensely and the multiple plots and large number of characters mixed with Chon’s sense of humour made me think of Wes Anderson’s movies, it has that same quirkiness and this would definitely work well as a movie. The plot is very sneaky too, with how things tie up at the end, something happens and you realised it was something mentioned way back in the book. There are two other books that heavily influence this one, the catcher in the rye is the first one, there have been CIA conspiracy’s about that book for many a year, the second book is Confederacy of Dunces, a book I read a few years ago and didn’t quite get, reading Hashtag Good Guy With A Gun has given me a new understanding and I might have to do a re-read.

This book is well worth a read, it is one that I’ll be re-reading in years to come and I’ll be able to look back fondly at the time Trump lost the election and acted like a right tit.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/05/04/hashtag-good-guy-with-a-gun-by-jeff-chon/

There is one thing I hadn’t fully grasped about living through this pandemic until I read this book, which is that everybody has shared the same experience….in years to come I can bore the grandkids with stories of “during the pandemic….” Cowen captures those moments of lockdown coming into force, the staring at the same four walls day in day out, home-schooling and nature stepping up and taking back the world for a bit.

Cowen and Hayes have created something special here, Cowen’s words share experiences with those that have managed to go unscathed during the pandemic and mixed with Hayes’ illustrations it is heart wrenching. When reading “Last Breaths” I had to put the book down and walk away for a bit, I was overwhelmed, too much to handle, my Grandad passed away during the lockdown and was only allowed one visitor (in full PPE) at the end, Last Breaths captures what he and many others went through in their last moments…it also highlights how much the NHS staff did for those people. That poem is a thing of devastating beauty.

It’s not all like that though, there are lighter moments, the joy of home-schooling ending

A book of two halves, one is a concise history of Japan and it’s people and the second half is a travelogue of one of the most chilled travel writers you’ll ever read.

The history of Japan is not something I know much about, it has only briefly been mentioned in other books so this was the most in-depth I’ve gone. As with a lot of countries they are plodding along nicely…you could say thriving….until the Europeans come along and cause chaos and much bloodshed. The people in Japan did manage to do quite a good job of holding them off and it is because of that achievement they are such a strong nation today. Bouvier has a great love of Japan and this comes through in his writing, a subject that could be rather dry is brightened by his wonderful way with words. I think I would have to re-read this book to get a better understanding as it is difficult to remember all the place names and people.

The second half of the book is the memoirs of a man who has spent many years living in and exploring Japan. He comes across as being super relaxed, going with the flow and in no hurry at all. He does his travelling with very little money sleeping in some awful places full of fleas, this is one of the best things about being an armchair traveller

What an incredible debut novel, I was captivated right from the start, a baby found in the snow by a nun on an island just off the Northumberland coast…I knew that this was going to be an interesting puzzle to unravel.

Imani was that baby and there is something rather unique about her, her shadow seems to have a life of it’s own and goes by the name Amarie. You don’t get much info about what she is, Demon? Angel? a twin? What you do know is that others can see her, it’s hard to get an idea of whether Amarie is good or evil. When Imani is 19 she gets a phone call telling her that her mother has died and she has to come home to Ghana for the funeral. The story then becomes a discovery of self identity, who is she? what is her shadow? and why did her mother leave her alone on the island. There are so many questions that need to be answered and I’ve got to admit I was worried there was too many and that Mensah would struggle to answer them all and still have a story that makes sense.

Using some clever use of timelines and using Anansi the spider (an African folklore character and God of stories) as a tool Mensah was able to weave a beautiful story that answers all your questions and leaves you feeling rather emotional. There is no way of figuring out things for yourself as this story is just too clever for that so it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the ride.

For me this is gonna be one of the top books I’ll read this year some fantastic characters and stunning settings on the island and in Ghana have made this a joy to read.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/04/05/castles-from-cobwebs-by-j-a-mensah/

This is the sort of poetry that put me off the subject when I was at school, if you just read the book it is bloody awful, if you take your time and try and figure out what the words mean then you’ll grasp just why everybody says this is so good. It will also help to read this when stuck in a pandemic lockdown, the feeling of melancholia from the book will ring true with you.

I can’t say I particularly enjoyed this collection, I can see that it was ahead of it’s time and it is great that it inspired so many but it strictly sticks within the rules of poetry, each poem sticks with that fancy iambic meter thing used in poetry and the rhyming has to work at the expense of using a sensible word, this dumbass had to keep looking up words…what sort of crazy person would use “laves” instead of wash? Because of sticking within these rules the poems don’t seem to have any character to them, this really shows in the longer poems, I was nearly falling asleep near the end of a few of them. Every now and then though you come across a real gem, a poem that stands out and grabs your attention..one like “The Death Of The Poor”.

Not the easiest collection to read but a million times better than anything I could produce.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/flowers-of-evil-les-fleurs-du-mal-by-charles-baudelaire/

What a rollercoaster of a read this was, every up and down experienced by Macdonald was also experienced by this reader, the further into madness she went the more intense I felt towards this bird, each time the bird flew I found my heart also about to explode with joy. When I was younger I developed an obsession with Osprey’s I wanted one more than anything else, I could easily imagine myself training it and popping to the shops with it on my fist….my parents got me two canaries instead which were a bugger to train to hunt. Before starting this book I was in two minds about whether I would like it, I love going to the local Hawk Conservancy (coincidentally this was where I purchased this book) and being able to see these beautiful birds up close but at the same time I feel guilty that I get this happiness at the expense of their freedom.

This book consists of three parts, the first part is about a woman who has lost her father and is dealing with the grief, next there is the same woman buying a Goshawk and training it and finally there is the man who inspired her, T. H. White in which we find out all about his life and his experiences with training his hawk. Reading about Macdonald’s father and how his death almost broke her was heart-breaking but her words about this man were wonderful and I loved reading about him, reading about the Goshawk (named Mabel) was mesmerising, the writing is so powerful the bird almost comes alive on the page. I found the parts about White hard going, this man was doing it all wrong and I had no real interest in him, I just wanted to get past those pages and get back to Mabel to see how she was getting on. But as the bond between Macdonald and Mabel started to grow and after Mabel starts to fly I found myself drawn more towards White, everything about him was so tragic and he was incredibly self destructive, the man may have had no idea about training his hawk but you soon realise it was his mistakes that has taught us so much about falconry today.

Macdonald’s love and attachment to Mabel is intense, her emotions feel so raw and I got quite emotional reading as she started to become feral, pulling away from the community and losing herself in the hawk. Mabel herself is a thing of beauty and seeing just how free she actually is made me feel much better about those trips to the Hawk Conservancy. Once you let the bird fly it is all up to her whether the bond with the human is more powerful than the lure of flying free and doing what she was born to be, any time she is released could be the day she says “see ya laterz”. A lot of these books try to show the animal’s human side but here that fails, the bird’s identity is just too strong and in fact it is the human that start’s to show their animal side…I could image myself running a mile if Macdonald was to burst through a hedge covered in blood chasing a rabbit out into the open.

This book was so good, one that will stick with me for a long time and one that will always come to mind each time I see a bird of prey. 100% recommend giving this one a go.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/03/28/h-is-for-hawk-by-helen-macdonald/

Heidi James has produced a spectacular exploration of three generations of one family and how past events and shame can pass down to future family members. It was rather eye-opening for me being a man discovering just how much mothers and daughters go through during their life and how much their outcome can be changed by one decision going against them, the changes that Ada goes through are incredibly drastic. The book has scenes that were heart-breaking and others that dazzled they were so full of love.

The writing is poetic at times and the characters feel so real, it has been a while since I’ve read a book containing such vivid characters and whilst there are three different storylines I was constantly thinking back to what had happened and what could possibly happen next to them. There was a real love/hate relationship with the characters too, whilst life was throwing them a bad ‘un you really felt for them but when it was them being the cause of stress you felt like picking them up by their lapels and giving them a good telling them off. The plot was intriguing, for a lot of the book I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out and how the characters were related, when things were revealed you couldn’t fault the choices made.

I have really enjoyed this, following the lives of these three women during three very different time periods was fantastic, how James managed to juggle them and make the changes between chapters feel seamless boggles my mind. The first book I’ve read by Heidi James and it has left me craving more of her books.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/03/14/the-sound-mirror-by-heidi-james/