Steve Cockayne

Creepy in places and very-nearly-effective, this book didn't quite do it for me but I can't quite pinpoint why, so it's not far off working well. It's aiming for an atmosphere of narrative uncertainty - how real are the Good People of the title, and how much of it is in Kenneth's vivid and disturbed imagination? It teeters on the edge of the resolution of this question quite well, but somehow it feels as if the author hasn't quite yet got the trick of doing this stunt of writing.

The childhood setting during the Second World War is vivid, and overall the part I liked best. The beginning was very clumsy and nearly put me off entirely, and while the ending did have me sitting there reading it when I should have been doing other things, was distasteful and tipped it into horror. At that point, the foreshadowing became too visible and again it felt clumsy.… (más)

Has several hallmarks of a first book. The scattering of focus is hard to feel truly connected to any of the characters and in fact I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished it. It's probably someone else's kind of book, just not mine.

In a secluded house an invisible presence watches Victor Lazarus as he supervises the repair of the house.

In the city Leonardo Pegasus is seeing how his life is going to change with a move from one ruler to another, where his skills as magician won't be needed with a king who doesn't want magic.

In a village, Rusty Brown meets a strange young girl who tells him a secret, this secret changes the path of his life forever.… (más)