Read two interesting books lately.
Skullcrack City from Jeremy Robert Johnson is a bizarro fiction novel, relatively short which made itself felt by the end. Still, it's a pretty interesting book that I enjoyed, and despite being bizarro, it's actually completely palatable. It's about a banker who lives alone with his turtle Deckard, and falls back into addiction to a strange drug called Hex as he tried to sink his own bank by uncovering it's dirty dealings. Was an odd experience jumping in without knowing the author, because my assumption was the setting was IRL as is, but it all got peeled back bit by bit to reveal a more surreal, dark world inspired by paranoid delusions, it feels like. I'd recommend it.
Second one was Pretty Little Dead Things by Gary McMahon, similarly subversive of my expectations. It's the first novel in the Thomas Usher series, the titular character being a widower who lost his wife and child in a car accident and gained the ability to see and attract the restless dead. Assumed it'd be closer to urban fantasy than horror, and was very much wrong, as the main antagonists of the novel have some serious repulsive decadence and self-destructive corruption going on, not to mention the nightmarish thing that seems to be pulling the strings. Got a bit of a Laird Barron vibe. Dark, gloomy and somewhat fatalistic, not a whole lot of good happens to anyone by the end of it all. Have to say, though, wasn't a huge fan of the prose at times, felt a bit too forced and purple here and there. Recommendation pending, gotta read the other books first.
