Review: “Pit Stop” by Ben Larken
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko's Reviews
I was hoping to have reviewed more books by now, but, alas, no. I’ve been caught up writing A Fistful of Rubbers. Now that is done, or at least, a draft has been handed into my publisher, I am free once more to roam, to play, and to frolic.
To begin my season of frolicking, I am going to review an award winner. Pit Stop is Ben Larken’s debut novel, and it won best horror in the Eppie Awards, 2009. The Eppies recognise outstanding achievement in the world of electronic publishing (Pit Stop is available both electronically and as a paperback), and to win one with your first novel is something special indeed. So, I am going to read it and I am going to review this “award winner.” And let me warn you, Ben Larken, I am one jealous bitch…
…who was very impressed, very entertained and ultimately enthralled by your work.
Pit Stop follows the journey of ten individuals…actually, no, first line in and already I’ve misguided you. Pit Stop is not about a journey, at all. It’s a story of waiting; ten people, waiting for their last voyage, a one-way ticket to Hell. Impressively, everyone is dead from page one. It’s good to start on a high.
Ten souls wait in purgatory, and they’re waiting, strangely, in a service station. The Pit Stop, on Route 66 in Arizona, is somewhere I really wouldn’t fancy a coffee. The trip to Hell is not a pleasant thought, and if I was to use my deepest and darkest grey matter to concoct an image of the being that would guide me to the only place worse than Great Yarmouth, I’d be thinking spikes, tentacles, mucus, blood and possibly a little faeces. Bearing in mind the horrible nature of Larken’s warped mind, I was expecting a monstrosity from the very bowels of Hell…oh yeah, that’s sort of obvious, as it technically is something from the bowels of Hell. Still, I was expecting something a little scarier than a bus. However, as I got to know the bus and its psychopathic, ultra-powerful driver, Ramsey, I hoped that the bus would stop being so damned nasty. The bus and its driver are desperate to take the ten occupants of the diner straight to Lucifer and Pit Stop is the tale of their bid for freedom.
Pit Stop is unquestionably horror. It is gruesome, vile and disturbing in its imagery and Larken makes sure the reader not just sees the horrific violence, they feel it too. On top of that, with a set of characters lined up to be royally buggered in Hell, you know you are going to be in the same company as some rather unsavoury beasts. Paedophiles, murderers and prostitutes are the order of the day, but we have some heroes to make this a wonderfully eclectic mix of the damned. Scott Alders and Dustin Calloway are the boys you’ll be rooting for. Dustin’s a bad man with a talent for avoiding any heat that’s coming down on him (death not included). However, his heart is questionably in the right place. Scott Alders is the interesting one. He’s a straight down the line cop who puts his job first. From the start, you’ll be wondering what Office Alders did to earn a trip to Hell, possibly my only point of contention in the story.
Is Pit Stop scary? Pit Stop is a slasher tale with a beautifully evil stalker, Ramsey, who is roguely charismatic for someone who doesn’t really say much, and whose main role is to maim, torment and torture. Personally, I don’t find slashers particularly scary, even though I love them, and I get my kicks from the inventiveness of the violence and my affinity to the characters. Pit Stop had me routing for Scott and Dustin who are wonderfully linked. The book also appealed to my carnal instincts and my desire for bloodlust was well and truly satisfied. I desperately wanted to see some of the characters torn into a thousand gory pieces and Mr. Larken gave the mob what they wanted. To answer my initial question, I didn’t find Pit Stop particularly scary, but that wasn’t in the slightest bit detrimental to my enjoyment of the book (incidentally, I’ve just picked up his latest book, The Hollows, and read the first chapter and that scared the bejesus out of me. I’m hooked already).
Is Pit Stop worth reading? Oh yes, undoubtedly so. It’s an exceptionally good read from start to finish and Ben Larken should be extremely proud of what he has achieved. If you read this, Ben, not many fictional bad guys have quite grabbed my attention as much as Ramsey, the bus driver, and if you ever base a book solely on him, I’ll camp outside the bookstore, the night before, to get hold of it.
Listen out for Ben Larken. I won’t be the least bit surprised if you hear the name in the future.
Pit Stop is available direct from the publisher, LL-Publications, and is also available from Amazon (UK and USA
Find out more about Ben Larken on his website.
Tags: Ben Larken, e-book, Epic, Eppie, horror, Jacko, Jacko: Author, LL-Publications, mark jackman, paperback, Pit Stop, Ramsey, review
Riga, Latvia. Survival of the Fittest
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko's Reviews
It’s good to be able to write this blog; it means that I am not dead. If you read my previous entry, you’ll know that I was nervous about my trip to Latvia. Have a recap: http://mark-jackman.com/blog/2009/04/22/riga-latvia-please-dont-kill-me/
There were twenty-four guys on the do, and it was a helluva a weekend. Remember, “What goes on tour, stays on tour,” so no details will be shared. But what about Riga? Was it as bad as the stories?
Yes and no.
There are a lot of no-go areas in the city. In fact, the first pub that we went to carried a warning from the US embassy, but most of the dangers are to your wallet, rather than your kneecaps. Saying that, if you are in a situation where your wallet is in danger and you don’t pay up, then the danger moves back to your knees. The biggest scam involves “ladies of negotiable affection,” (Terry Pratchett, nod - for the term, not the scam). The ladies get the drunken punter to buy them a drink, and then the barman charges stupid money for it. Not paying results in a visit from big Russian Mafia heavies. Some lads we spoke to got stung for £150 each.
As for the city, The Old Town was beautiful. There is a lot of effort put into keeping the town clean, and there was no litter in sight. That’s the reason that littering in Latvia can result in some hefty fines, or even a night in the cells. Drunken pisses in the streets or throwing up result in a night in the slammer, and why not?
Writing this, I realise that I didn’t see any of Riga. I was drunk. We walked from pub to pub, in a drunken stupor. I was drunk when we landed and hungover when we left. I didn’t try any Latvian food. We ate breakfast at the hotel, and a McDonalds at night… twice. Technically, I have visited Riga, but I haven’t really seen it.
In terms of a stag do location, Riga was spot on, but it isn’t a place to go for a cheap time. It was no cheaper than London. We ended up in Club Essential, which was pure 80s Euro action, where I enjoyed paying £7 per bottle of shit Heineken. The people in Riga were beautiful. People take care of themselves over there. It was not like a Saturday night out in Yarmouth.
As long as you don’t go to to the dodgy bits, stay in a decent sized-group, don’t buy the lasses drinks without knowing the price up-front and don’t piss in the streets, then you’ll be fine. I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter where you are, it is who you are with, and I was lucky enough to be out with a great bunch of lads, who were all up for a laugh.
Good weekend, but feel like crap, now. I have a few days to recover before the next one in Birmingham, on Friday. My poor liver.
All in all, a cracking send off for Leachy.
Tags: Jacko, Latvia, mark jackman, review, Riga, Stag Night
REVIEW: “Ordinary World” by Tony McGuin
Posted by Jacko | Filed under Jacko's Reviews
I am venturing on to new paths. I love film and I love books (wish I had time to read more). So I thought to myself, why not start reviewing them? So I am going to.
(That was all a true story, I didn’t dramatise it at all).
My first victim is Tony McGuin. Ordinary World is his debut novel and is published by LL-Publications. You will never have read anything quite like it…
Review: Ordinary World
There is one amazing revelation that everyone who reads Ordinary World, by Tony McGuin, will experience, and that is the concrete certainty that there is someone out there with an imagination more f**ed up than anyone the reader knows, even ‘Funny’ Uncle Trevor, who your Mum would never allow near you, unsupervised. In fact, a rumour passed my way that Joseph Fritzel finished reading the story, just before his trial, and announced “Tony McGuin, there’s a man who isn’t afraid of a little controversy.” I first read the blurb on the back of the cover, and thanked God. I had finally discovered an author who shares his thoughts with a more demented demon than my own (Rory).
Right now, you are wondering to yourself what can possibly be so disgusting that it warrants the use of Joseph Fritzel’s name in the opening paragraph of a review (which is probably a world first, I might add) so I am going to hit you with it, hard and fast: In Ordinary World, someone wants to open a fast food chain that sells burgers that have been made from aborted human foetuses.
Yes, you did read that correctly (unless I spelt foetuses wrong).
The story centres around Tohon Sehsa and Boater, two of the most unlikely heroes that you will ever meet. Actually, they are not heroes, not in the slightest, and McGuin never makes them out to be anything else. The classic combination of a tall, thin guy and a short, fat bloke has been used countless times before, but not like this. Never have they been murdering, scheming, drunken, woman-beating, lying, cheating, scumbags like these, and they are the good guys! Even though they are terrible excuses for human-beings, you can’t help but like them, and you can tell McGuin does too. These two find themselves wrapped up in the entire foetus burger fiasco, in more ways than one.
So in a book about eating foetuses, and murdering, drunken heroes, what the hell are the bad guys like? The funny thing is, again, there is something likable about all the characters that McGuin creates. There is always something quirky or intriguing about some of the most despicable villains to ever walk the pages of morality. Even the priests with questionable ethics fiddled their ways into my heart. Why does McGuin get away with it? The explanation is simple: this book is laugh-out-loud funny. There are some terribly dark scenes within the three-hundred pages, but there is always something to bring you back. Always.
Before you throw-up, phone the police or organise a lynch mob on McGuin, hold your horses. You see, there is a sense of morality behind it all, and, although it is very easy to forget that and get wrapped up in the word “foetus,” a word which I have just used more times than in a Midwife’s textbook, there is so much more to the story than that. McGuin creates a horrible world of the future, where religion is all that matters and is the driving force behind everyday life, but God has somehow been forgotten. Only in this world could a reader become comfortable with the idea of a foetus burger. Only the mind of this man could allow a reader to become comfortable with this horrific idea, and then hit you with something ten times worse, nearly half way through the book.
Yes. It gets worse.
I can’t divulge anymore, as I want you to experience the emotional roller-coaster that is Ordinary World. This book is not written to simply shock the reader with vileness. There are glimpses of hope in a world seemingly gone mad, and even the most horrific of characters can find a little love in their hearts (not including the priests, mind). You will never have read anything like this before, and you should give it a go. There is a fantastic story underlying the nasty subject matter, and a cast full of characters who you will not be able to forget.
Ordinary World: A title that can only be appreciated once you have turned the final page.
Ordinary world is available direct from LL-publications and also Amazon
Tags: comedy, humor, humour, mark jackman, novel, Ordinary World, pissflaps, review, Tony McGuin
