Three this month:

A double review of Conrad Williams' The Unblemished and Ramsey Campbell's The Grin of the Dark.

And two magazine reviews from The Fix:
Something Wicked, Issue 6
Postscripts, Issue 14

They're all positive write-ups, so do check everything out.

The Unblemished by Conrad Williams (2006/8)

In Conrad Williams's novel, history is not as we thought it was: the Great Fire of 1666 was the work of flesh-eating creatures who were invited to cleanse London after the previous year's plague. They were then driven out of the city; but now, centuries later, these creatures -- who look human, but aren't -- are back for their revenge. A girl has been impregnated with their Queen; a man has been given the ability to read a map that will lead the creatures to their nest; a serial killer is coming out of retirement to take his place at their head; and people who aren't people begin to feast on the unsuspecting population...

As you may surmise, The Unblemished contains frequent gory moments; deeply unpleasant things happen in the book, and Williams does nor shy away from depicting them. But he doesn't dwell on them either; it's striking how distanced the blood, guts and disaster feel at times. This is part of what I like most about The Unblemished: the way the threat to society builds up in layers, as the characters realise that reality just will not behave. The cliché holds that what you can't see is much scarier than what you can; Williams's technique here made me wonder whether what you can see but can't understand is scarier still.

Admittedly I'm not as widely read in horror as I'd like to be, but I can't recall reading a story with quite the same layering effect. It tails off towards the end, as perhaps it must, because the novel needs a final confrontation. But it's the journey that makes it special. The Unblemished is not a nice read, but it is a good one.

It makes a good Jack Dannism, too.