This year I’m going to host an Advent Book Calendar event, where Jen and me are going to pick one book every day until December 24th. Books we’ve read this year, and tell you why you should pick it up. You can check our progress in the Advent Book Calendar 2018 introduction post, where you can “open” the windows every day and find out what we have for your reading pleasure!
This year brought many firsts for me. Among other things I’ve read some Lovecraftian stuff thanks to a new aquintance, David Hambling. I’ve read 3 of his Harry Stubbs novels and although it took time to warm up to it, I’m happy I got the opportunity to read them. It would have been logical to pick the first book of the series, but my favorite out of the three I’ve read was the second.
What I loved in these books is the MC, Harry Stubbs, an average guy, with a strong built and a huge heart, who finds himself in the thick of supernatural happenings, which changes his view of the world. Broken Meats had the cutest scene ever, where Harry visits a chinese family, and since he is not familiar with their customs, a little girl helps him how to use chopsticks and they forge a cute friendship. That the books are being set in London just adds to the charm!
“You’d think occultism, chinese culture and their ‘secret’ societies and Jack the Ripper makes a unusual mix. They do. And still, it works and that’s what makes Broken Meats such an enjoyable read. Mr Hambling is not afraid to pull all these elements together and create something strange and unexpected.“
Read my reviews of The Elder Ice, Broken Meats and Alien Stars. You can also read an interview with David Hambling and buy his books on Amazon!
Weird things lurk in the dark streets of London in 1925.
After a bizarre shooting incident, Harry Stubbs, former heavyweight boxer and sometime debt collector, is coerced into helping a visitor from Shanghai. Mr Yang, an agent of the feared Si Fan Society with unusual powers, is seeking information about a dead man.
Roslyn D’Onston was a journalist and black magician — and a leading suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. D’Onston has been dead for thirteen years. But exactly how dead is he now?
When Yang joins a cell of renegade Theosophists for a séance, things start to go terribly wrong and Harry finds himself caught in a battle between occult powers, with strange enemies and stranger friends. It will take all his deductive skills – and talent for throwing a killer punch – to survive against the all-too-real arts of necromancy…
Leave a Comment