THE EMPEROR OF DOGS by John Privilege @JackPloppy

5 out of 5 stars

On Amazon UK
On Amazon.com
On Goodreads

How I discovered this book: I got talking to the author on Twitter some years back, and took an idle look at his debut novel, The Turning of the World.  It was in my favourite genre, so I bought it, and was hugely impressed; I've actually read it twice.  I also enjoyed his second novel, The American Policeman.  Years passed... and then my sister, @ProofreadJulia on Twitter, told me she'd just worked on this new one, and loved it.  

In a Nutshell: low-key paranormal drama/thriller, set in Belfast.

The Blurb:

Josie Clenaghan doesn't have much going for him. Socially awkward, sometimes physically frail, he scurries about his life in Edinburgh. It's not so much the long shadow cast by the cruelty of his abusive father that bothers him. Or his barely controlled stammer. It's more the actual dead people, proper ghosts, that glare at him constantly with their burning eyes or silently scream into his face. But now his mother is dying and he needs to come home. Back to Belfast. Back to the past. He's packing a suitcase when the police call to his door. An act of unspeakable violence has ripped through a sunny summer Belfast afternoon. Josie finds himself at the centre of a hurricane of murder and destruction as Northern Ireland teeters on the brink of disintegration. He also discovers that, after the longest time, he might not be alone. This provides welcome comfort when everyone, it seems, wants to kill him.

Then things get really bad.

Haunted, hunted and clueless, Josie faces the past and the present with nothing like bravery. As the violence spirals out of control around him, he must confront the inescapable truth: there are worse things than ghosts.

**

Ah, the seemingly effortless writing, the wonderful inner narrative of the protagonist, the characters drawn straight from real life, the lack of pretentiousness or waffle, the plot originality that makes you do that 'just one more chapter' thing, over and over ... all this I expected from The Emperor of Dogs, if the author's other two books were anything to go by, and I was not disappointed.

The ghosts/paranormal genre is not a favourite of mine, but it depends on the writer, doesn't it?  John Privilege manages to make the haunted world of Josie Clenaghan completely believable.  Soon, Josie discovers that the unseen world is made of up depths far murkier than he knows about, delving into the evil within man, and the reasons why sadists and psychos do the things they do (in such a way that did not seem wholly unlikely). 

This book is tragic and touching, frightening and funny, violent, shocking, steeped in loss and memories and regrets... it's great.  The paragraphing is a tad all over the place (for the uninitiated: formatting books for Kindle is a total mare), but you know when a book is top stuff because you don't care if the first line indents are on the erratic side; I mention this only in the interests of objective reviewing.  Highly recommended!

THE TURNING OF THE WORLD by John Privilege

5 GOLD stars

Contemporary drama, post apocalyptic

On Amazon UK HERE
On Amazon.com HERE

This was a bit of a 'couldn't put it down' book, for me.  It's my favourite genre at the moment anyway, but this is something different from other slightly Hollywoodised examples I've read.

Bobby Reynolds is a Canadian living in Northern Ireland with his wife when the Quang-Tri flu pandemic erupts. The novel is about the aftermath, from the end of normal life to ~ what?

The reason I liked this book so much is that, apart from being so well written that I had to keep saying 'just one more chapter' when Him Indoors wanted me to put my Nexus down and watch Spartacus with him, (i.e., one of those books that damn well ought to be traditionally published), it's realistic.  I suppose.  Who knows?  Maybe other countries would fare differently from Ireland, with all its in-fighting.  The story takes its characters through the childlike belief that 'the authorities' really will make everything all right, the discovery that those in power do not always tell the truth to the public (no, really?!), and the sorting of wheat from chaff: the survivors and the victims.  It shows how some personalities flourish under adverse circumstances, some get harder and more self-serving, some brutal, and how some just give up.  

There are some moments of happiness in the lives of the comunity around which most of the book centres, but John Privilege has also shown something that, sadly, is probably the truth: that living in the aftermath of a global disaster is not all about the swashbuckling waving of swords, middle-aged housewives suddenly becoming handy with a firearm, and the occasional euphoric realisation that we don't need all that electricity and internet and stuff to be truly fulfilled.  It's mostly just cold, miserable, and boring; it's back to the Dark Ages but with the country ruined and filled with people whose instinct is just to take what they need in whatever way they can.  This book is far from boring, though.  It's one of those I kept thinking about it when I wasn't reading it.  I liked it very, very much indeed, recommend it highly and will read anything else this writer cares to publish.

No zombies, but others just as frightening...

THE AMERICAN POLICEMAN by John Privilege is reviewed HERE