A dystopian pandemic novel with a bit of a twist.
The Book of M is primarily the story of Max and Ory: a couple living in an abandoned hotel following the strangest outbreak you’re ever likely to read about: a few years earlier, people across the world began losing their shadows.
Yup, you heard right.
Folk were going about their business, then looking down and discovering that their shadows had disappeared. The world’s fascination with this phenomenon soon turned to horror when people realised that shadows were somehow tied to memory: once your shadow vanished, your memories began to fade, along with your ability to make new ones.
Oh, but it gets worse: the people without shadows became wandering zombies with terrifying reality-bending powers.
To escape from the global chaos, Ory and Max hide away in the mountains, surviving on trapped animals and the dwindling supplies in the hotel stores. But inevitably, the pandemic reaches them: Max’s shadow vanishes, and before she develops the magical powers that could harm her husband, she leaves their mountain home while Ory is out hunting.
And when a heartbroken Ory returns to find her gone, he gathers a few supplies and sets out to find her …
Continue reading “The Book of M by Peng Shepherd”
Classic Neil Gaiman: the everyday blended with the bloody weird. The Ocean at the End of the Lane could be a fairy story, maybe even a children’s story, but the sinister overtones and the occasional adult theme might possibly tip things over into the adult category… maybe. It’s a very simple story, about a young boy living in Sussex as part of a fairly standard nuclear family. His life isn’t all that exciting: he’s a bookish outcast at school and his only real friend is Lettie, the supernatural being who is as old as the universe and happens to live on a farm close to his house…