Category Archives: book reviews

Terrifying Joy from the Forests of Flanders

Posted on November 20, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Terrifying joys, and glimpses into Europe’s our collective cultural past. For while these are all Flemish tales, they are tales that are echoed throughout Europe. Which is only natural, as travels tell tales of their homelands and those tales get retold and made anew. A such this book is tales of the kind told around the camp fire, on the edge of the woods, with twilight all around. Told to frighten, and to warn. The woods are dark, the wise do not wander there.

But who wants to be wise… Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar #22 The Fall of the House of Usher

Posted on October 27, 2024 by Mark Hayes

The themes of three earlier stories in particular are each echoed in this story, those being Morella, Berenice and Ligeia. Which is not to say that Edgar was obsessed with putting female characters into soporific states that seem death like, decaying, and wasting away, but it is a theme that comes up time and time again in the early tales. What is odd is that these themes were so prevalent before the wasting disease that would take his wife from him not many years later was diagnosed. Equally the male characters in all these stories react to these tragedies with obsession and madness that echoes how the death of Victoria was to plunge him into a deep alcohol fuelled depression and began his own downward spiral to an early grave.

Occasionally life imitates art in dreadful ways. Continue reading →

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Redux: Beguiling darkness: Tethered

Posted on October 15, 2024 by Mark Hayes

This is a fabulous ride of a novel, through a dark gritty fantasy landscape, with strong characters, betrayals, surprises, shocks, a whole world of imagination to explore and wonder at. There will I am sure be more to come, and I was delighted to go back to it and see how much what had been a good book when I read the early draft four year ago has been revise and polished into something so much more than it was. Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar #20 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Mark Hayes

As authors go you would be hard pressed to find many with a legacy as influential as that of our own dear Edgar. Poe’s works have inspired directly or indirectly much of what we now perceive as the western cannon. … Continue reading →

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Here Today, Scone Tomorrow

Posted on July 29, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Folk law is full of places that don’t entirely exist. Places that slide off the map, and give cartographers a headache. Continue reading →

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Genteel light vs Grim dark

Posted on July 24, 2024 by Mark Hayes

Just to avoid any confusion I like grim dark fiction. I like heroes and heroines with shades of grey. I have no problem with a two sided coins, villains with heroic traits and heroes who are half the villain. I … Continue reading →

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Beguiling darkness: Tethered

Posted on June 21, 2024 by Mark Hayes

In the distant past before the lost years and the breaking of the world, in a younger less cynical time, I was sent a manuscript to read. This was about four years ( three atrocious prime ministers and one pandemic) … Continue reading →

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Books of the year 2023 Edition

Posted on December 1, 2023 by Mark Hayes

As with last year this may be slightly early, as there is a fair chance I’ll read a couple more before the end of the year. (in fact I know I will as there are a couple I am reading … Continue reading →

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Love, Death and Witchcraft

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Mark Hayes

A couple of short reviews for sequels to books I have previously reviewed. That is the brief here. No waffling on about anything, just do the reviews… Have I ever mentioned I hate sequels. As a writer that is, not … Continue reading →

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Dear Edgar~15: Mystification

Posted on November 7, 2023 by Mark Hayes

The editorship of the Richmond Examiner in the 19th century was something of a dangerous occupation. When someone took exception to an editorial they often expressed there views in pointed fashion. Thomas Ritchie, who founded the paper in 1804 witnessed … Continue reading →

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