By Garth Marenghi

Coronet

Horror novelist Nick Steen is abducted and imprisoned at Nulltec, a shadowy technological research facility where he is observed, tested and ‘interfered with’.

We only have ourselves to blame. When self-proclaimed ‘Archduke O’Darkdom’ Garth Marenghi inflicted his TerrorTome on us last winter we should have stayed away. Instead, we went along to his readings and bought the cursed book, making it a Sunday Times bestseller, and like a naughty demonic child, encouraged by doting parents, he’s back… brattier than ever.

Surely Marenghi’s ego couldn’t grow any bigger, but the emboldened hack author has a new confidence, churning out more ridiculous pulp from the depths of Stalkford, and I loved every overwritten sentence of purple (nay, crimson!) prose.

Nick Steen returns from previous collection Incarcerat, a successful horror writer who serves as Marenghi’s wish fulfilment. Steen spouts the sort of dialogue that could feasibly have been ripped from those slender NEL, Corgi or Sphere 1970s paperbacks that populated spinning book racks in Woolworths. Marenghi would love to be be held in the same esteem as Ramsey Campbell or James Herbert but he’s more Shaun Hutson or Guy N Smith. And it’s hilariously, deliberately bad, amping up its appearance of being a casual first draft, while disguising the craft that has gone into making every word count.

As we enter the book, we’re again confronted with the map of Stalkford, but this time it has been annotated to include a focus on three locations – Nulltec, Bloaters Cove and Dankton. After a rambling intro where the author bashes Carl Sagan and the quality of the Indian cuisine at a Welsh hotel, Portentum (or The God Socket) is the first of the trilogy of terror. We discover that Nick Steen is the sole survivor (as well as the captain) of a plane crash, which mirrors his novel The Portentor.

You see, in previous publication TerrorTome we witnessed Steen releasing his imagination and it taking form in real life. And now, death personified is coming for him, but first the matter of being incarcerated at Nulltec. If Portentum is a trippy Altered States-style mind fiddle, Arabella Mathers is an overblown Gothic melodrama that’s equal parts Poe and V C Andrews. Finally, The Randyman is Clive Barker by way of Viz, plunging the depths of toilet humour, where no innuendo or pun is sacred.

Of course, the man behind the throne is writer and filmmaker Matthew Holness – Marenghi’s puppet master – proving himself to be horror’s Les Dawson. Let me explain. Part of comedian Les Dawson’s act was playing the piano badly. He hit the wrong notes, but not just randomly, choosing those that made the greatest impact. Holness here makes bad writing seem effortless, disguising the skill involved in plumbing literary depths.

Verdict: Chief Frightener, Quakerman and now heir to Les Dawson. This is so bad, it’s genius… a guilty pleasure that’s literary (and literally) hell. 10/10

Nick Joy

Click here to order from Amazon.co.uk

 

Find out more about Garth’s Incarcerat tour of the UK

https://www.livenation.co.uk/artist-garth-marenghi-1394500