#Blogtour The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse

It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse.

'Greg Mosse’s debut novel The Coming Darkness, was a Sunday Times Thriller of 2022, and a Waterstones Thriller of the Month 2022 and widely reviewed. Mosse’s second novel The Coming Storm, sees the return of his anti-hero the French special agent Alex Lamarque, and is part of the new genre of “Cli-Fi Fiction” or Climate Change Fiction that is looking to predict what a post climate change future might look like.'

About the Author

A theatre director, playwright and actor Greg Mosse is the founder and director of the Criterion New Writing programme at the Criterion Theatre in London, running workshops in script development to a diverse community of writers, actors and directors. In addition, since 2015, Greg has written, produced and stage 25 plays and musicals.

Greg set up both the Southbank Centre Creative Writing School - an open access program of evening classes delivering MA level workshops - and the University of Sussex MA in Creative Writing at West Dean College which he taught for 4 years. 

The husband of the bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, Kate’s hit novel Labyrinth was inspired by a house that Greg and his mother bought together in the French medieval city of Carcassonne, where the couple and their children spent many happy summers. Following the success of Labyrinth, Greg created the innovative readers-and-writers website mosselabyrinth.co.uk MosseLabyrinth. The first of its kind MosseLabrynth was the world’s first online accessible 3D world, and the inspiration for Pottermore - the popular Harry Potter website. 

A multilinguist, Greg has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid and has worked as both an interpreter at a variety of international institutions and a teacher in the UK.

Greg and Kate live in Chichester, where Kate’s parents founded the Chichester Festival Theatre, they have two grown up children. Visit @GregMosse on X

About the book

In this chilling dystopian thriller climate change is coming for us all.

Greg Mosse’s debut novel The Coming Darkness, was a Sunday Times Thriller of 2022, and a Waterstones Thriller of the Month 2022. Mosse’s second novel The Coming Storm, sees the return of his anti-hero the French special agent Alex Lamarque.

By 2037 the world’s been torn apart by global warming, religious wars and viruses. Against this turbulent setting French special agent Alex Lamarque is hunting eco terrorists attacking energy services and supply lines.

Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex must re-emerge from self-imposed exile to reunite with Mariam – the woman he loves – and Amaury – his truest friend – to face the fight of their lives.

From the streets of Paris, the lithium mines of Southern Mali, and the mighty Aswan Dam, they come up against forces whose intentions are as devious as they are malign. Time is against them, and there’s more at stake than ever. Can they survive The Coming Storm?

A massive new talent in British fiction, Greg Mosse’s storytelling is complex and finely crafted, combining twisting plotlines, intelligent dialogue and ambiguous characters, all skilfully brought together in an epic climax. Never before has dystopian fiction been so chillingly real.  

Review

This is the second book in The Coming Darkness, and where the first book was a preparation of the storm - now it's here. Was it just me or was this book darker, more morose and calculated? It absolutely leads into the futuristic dystopian aspect of a world and societies hit by the catastrophic changes of climate change. It's certainly more concerning and frightening because it is written in the impending future and we can already see where the road is headed in our real life scenario.

The author creates a variety of threads - webs of collusion, of connections and of common ground - each thread its own microcosm of the fallout. The characters also seem to take more of a centre stage, as we delve into motivation, family ties and personal accountability.

I found some of the responses to the immediate situations and impending crisis quite interesting. Possibly because the constant threat, the steady flow of threats and danger has made the majority of people desensitised to violence and death. That includes the main characters, despite how much the contrary appears to be true.

It's a captivating piece of dystopian fiction, which commandeers the stage with a believable concept - some parts we could eventually be living one day - some we are battling at the moment. It's complex, and yet simultaneously easy to comprehend. 

Buy The Coming Storm by Greg Mosse at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Moonflower Books | pub date 25th April 2024 | £9.99| Paperback Original. Buy at Amazon com.

#Blogtour The Coming Darkness by Greg Mosse

 It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Coming Darkness by Greg Mosse. 

About the Author

A theatre director, playwright and actor Greg Mosse is the founder and director of the Criterion New Writing programme at the Criterion Theatre in London, running workshops in script development to a diverse community of writers, actors and directors. In addition, since 2015, Greg has written, produced and stage 25 plays and musicals.

Greg set up both the Southbank Centre Creative Writing School - an open access program of evening classes delivering MA level workshops - and the University of Sussex MA in Creative Writing at West Dean College which he taught for 4 years. 

The husband of the bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, Kate’s hit novel Labyrinth was inspired by a house that Greg and his mother bought together in the French medieval city of Carcassonne, where the couple and their children spent many happy summers. Following the success of Labyrinth, Greg created the innovative readers-and-writers website mosselabyrinth.co.uk MosseLabyrinth. The first of its kind MosseLabrynth was the world’s first online accessible 3D world, and the inspiration for Pottermore - the popular Harry Potter website. 

A multilinguist, Greg has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid and has worked as both an interpreter at a variety of international institutions and a teacher in the UK.

Greg and Kate live in Chichester, where Kate’s parents founded the Chichester Festival Theatre, they have two grown up children. The Coming Darkness was written during lockdown and is Greg’s debut novel.  Follow @GregMosse on Twitter

About the book

A massive new talent in British fiction, Greg Mosse’s storytelling is complex and finely crafted, combining twisting plotlines, intelligent dialogue and ambiguous characters, all skilfully brought together in an epic climax. Never before has dystopian fiction been so chillingly real.

Set in an alternate near future in which global warming and pathogenic viruses have torn through the fabric of society, The Coming Darkness follows French secret operative Alexandre Lamarque on the trail of global eco-terrorists. Lamarque’s target is set on destabilising the controls placed on global governments that protect human life from climate change. One wrong move and the world could be plunged into darkness.

From Paris to North Africa, Lamarque is drawn into an ominous sequence of events: a theft from a Norwegian genetics lab; a string of violent child murders; his mother’s desperate illness; a chaotic coup in North Africa, and the extraction under fire of its charismatic leader.

Experience has taught Alex there is no one he can trust – not his secretive lover Mariam, not even his mentor, Professor Fayard – the man at the centre of a deadly web of government control. Lamarque rapidly finds himself in a heart-thumping race against time, the one man with the ability to prevent chaos and destruction taking over.

Perhaps the world’s only hope of preventing The Coming Darkness… 

Review

When you wade through the vast amount of information, characters, scenes, era and abilities - it would be easy to miss what I believe to be the core of the book. Ironically, despite the story taking place in 2037, that core isn't really much different from a possible current scenario. Good vs evil, advancement vs the comfortable status quo.

Who is right? The people wanting to use technology allegedly for the good of mankind and advancement or the group intent on creating a carte blanche. Strange conundrum - when is an eco-activist a terrorist and when are they just rebels with a cause? Depends on your perspective and perhaps more importantly; what is the end goal and how many victims will your crusade or agenda cost the movement and the world. In this case the group is an invisible entity willing to die for their cause.

The use of misinformation to connect a legion of believers, those who find patterns where others don't - conspiracy theory vs fact. Uncomfortably close to the truth, and in this case how it can fuel a lethal narrative.

Just a side note - I read this with the image of 2037 being the future, like really far into the future, and then it dawned on me afterwards that it's actually only fifteen years. That was a bit mindboggling, then again, A Space Odyssey 2000 and the 21st century once seemed yonks away too. I wonder if that was the intention to create a scenario that appears unfathomable, but it's probably closer to reality than we realise.

I enjoyed the speculative nature of story. It combines current with futuristic, facts with intuition and perception. In the midst there is the moral dilemma of how we know who is on the right side of morality or is it a case of you only get to judge the situation when it has become a reality. Looking forward to what this author brings to the table next.

Buy The Coming Darkness at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Moonflower Books, pub date 10th November 2022 - Hardback £18.99. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour RedSpace Rising by Brian Trent

It's my turn on the BlogTour Redspace Rising by Brian Trent.

About the Author

Brian Trent’s speculative fiction appears regularly in the world’s top speculative fiction markets, including ANALOG, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Daily Science Fiction, Apex, Escape Pod, COSMOS, Galaxy’s Edge, Nature, and more. Trent lives in New England. Follow @BrianTrent on Twitter, Visit briantrent.com

About the book

Harris Alexander Pope is the man who ended the Partisan War on Mars. All he seeks now is solitude and a return to the life that was stolen from him. Yet when he learns that the worst war criminals are hiding in other bodies, he is forced into an interplanetary pursuit.

Teaming up with other survivors eager for their own brand of vengeance, Harris begins to suspect a darker truth: Maybe what he remembers about the war isn't what happened at all...

Review

This is most definitely the kind of book that needs a 'be careful what you say review' - don't want to give anything away.  Saying that I'm not sure I could do the truth of the plot real justice even if I did.

Harris is notorious for being a warrior, for changing the course of a volatile war. Now he is on a mission that can only be considered impossible, but that's why he is the man for the job. The only problem is he isn't quite sure whether he is the man he thinks he is. 

The information he is given seems to jar an instinct, a subconscious thought process - a resurfacing of memories perhaps. The problem is that they don't gel with what he is being told in the moment, so what to do? Go with the information you think is correct or with the information that is trying to reach the surface. Who can you trust when your inner self doubts motives and memories, and more importantly when the people around you might not be who they seem to be.

This starts with an awakening and goes full throttle till the very last page. Of course, after that ending the real question is whether readers will get another taste of the world inhibited by survivors, deceivers and those willing to use anyone to get what they want - oh, and let's not forget the others.

It's a riveting sci-fi and speculative read - the author definitely deserves a seat at the table with the big guns.

Buy Redspace Rising at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: ‎Flame Tree Press pub date 13 Sept. 2022. Buy at Amazon com. 

#Dark Observations by Catherine Cavendish

It's my turn on the BlogTour Dark Observations by Catherine Cavendish.

About the Author

Hello, my name's Catherine Cavendish and I write horror fiction - frequently with ghostly, supernatural, Gothic and haunted house themes.

My latest novel - In Darkness, Shadows Breathe - is published by Flame Tree Press. Carol and Nessa are strangers with one thing in common, they are in the hands of an entity that knows no boundaries and crosses dimensions - bending and twisting time itself - where danger waits in every shadow

My latest novella - The Malan Witch - is now out from Silver Shamrock Publishing. An idyllic cottage on the Atlantic coast hides dark and deadly secrets. Once, two evil witches lived there. Now one has returned...

Also, from Flame Tree Press - The Garden of Bewitchment. Historical haunted Gothic horror set in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors - pure Bronte country - with a Bronte theme. And - The Haunting of Henderson Close. Ghostly horror set in Edinburgh's Old Town.

Available now from Kensington-Lyrical - the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy: Wrath of The Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned bu the Ancients - set in Egypt and Vienna and featuring the sinister Dr. Emeryk Quintillus whose obsession has stayed with him long past the grave.

My novellas The Darkest Veil, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail's Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, Linden Manor, The Devil Inside Her and The Second Wife are published by Crossroad Press.

My novels The Devil's Serenade and Saving Grace Devine have also been released in new editions by Crossroad Press, as has my novel of the Lancashire Witches - The Pendle Curse.

I live with a long-suffering husband and a delightful black cat who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue. Who am I to argue?

When not slaving over a hot computer, I enjoy wandering around Neolithic stone circles and visiting old, haunted houses. Visit catherinecavendish.com

About the book

Eligos is waiting…fulfil your destiny - 1941. In the dark days of war-torn London, Violet works in Churchill's subterranean top secret Cabinet War Rooms, where key decisions that will dictate Britain’s conduct of the war are made. Above, the people of London go about their daily business as best they can, unaware of the life that teems beneath their feet.

Night after night the bombs rain down, yet Violet has far more to fear than air raids. A mysterious man, a room only she can see, memories she can no longer trust, and a best friend who denies their shared past... Something or someone - is targeting her.

Review

This is the perfect example of when you forget what genre you're reading and suddenly the flame tree aspect comes creeping in, ergo the obscure and horror element. The moments of evil you can sense lurking behind the doors, curtains and sometimes they just stand there bold as brass.

When Violet returns to London with her daughter and granddaughter she flits from being overcome with emotion, as she remembers long since forgotten moments of her past, to being frozen with fear and horror. Sometimes doors to the past should be left closed for a reason.

As a young woman Violet is plucked from a typist pool and becomes part of a small group who get to work with some of the most powerful men in the country. Perhaps that makes her a target for a group of individuals that are more than they appear, and the fact she is considered vulnerable and easy to manipulate. Spies are everywhere and they are willing to do anything to change to course of the war - if they are your bog-standard spies that is.

The author combines the emotional nostalgia of family relationships, the trauma and simultaneous joy of the return to the past, and of course the inexplicable. Drawing on magical realism and giving it a more nefarious angle, and then taking it one step further into another genre altogether.

Buy Dark Observations at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Flame Tree Press pub date 13 Sept. 2022. Buy at Amazon com. Buy via Flame Tree Press.

#BlogTour Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver

It's an absolute pleasure to take part in the BlogTour Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver. It's a dark read and a cracking one.

About the Author

Will Carver is the international bestselling author of the January David series. He spent his early years in Germany, but returned to the UK at age eleven, when his  sporting career took off. He turned down a professional rugby contract to study theatre and television at King Alfred’s, Winchester, where he set up a successful theatre company. He currently runs his own fitness and nutrition company, and lives in Reading with his two children. Will’s latest title published by Orenda Books,

The Beresford was published in July. His previous title Hinton Hollow Death Trip was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize, while Nothing Important Happened Today was longlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Good Samaritans was book of the year in Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Express, and hit number one on the ebook charts. Follow @will_carver on Twitter

About the book

When AA meetings make her want to drink more, alcoholic murderess Maeve sets up a group for psychopaths. Maeve has everything. A high-powered job, a beautiful home, a string of uncomplicated one-night encounters. She’s also an addict: a functioning alcoholic with a dependence on sex and an insatiable appetite for killing men.

When she can’t find a support group to share her obsession, she creates her own. And Psychopaths Anonymous is born. Friends of Maeve.

Now in a serious relationship, Maeve wants to keep the group a secret. But not everyone in the group adheres to the rules, and when a reckless member raises suspicions with the police, Maeve’s drinking spirals out of control. She needs to stop killing. She needs to close the group. But Maeve can’t seem to quit the things that are bad for her, including her new man…

Review

What's not to enjoy about the refreshing honesty with which Maeve goes about her daily life. The automatic and expected boxes are ticked to keep up appearances, but what happens when the small moments of truth and pleasure threaten to interfere with the way she runs her life. Can she sustain any kind of long-term relationship or friendship without being swallowed up by the darkness she likes to cater to.

I think I enjoyed this book for all the wrong reasons. At the top of that list is the fact the author peels back the layers of the shallow exteriors and presents a very real reality. In fact I wonder what would or will happen if psychopathic or sociopathic traits become an acceptable part of society? 

Next on the list, and I have mentioned this in a review of a book written by a recovering alcoholic who swallowed the scheme whole and shouted it out to the world, is the way Carver takes AA to task. It doesn't work, and the statistics are very interesting. It divides the addicted into categories, some of which are set-up to fail like some self-fulfilling prophecy. Not because of the addiction per se, but because of the way it is infused with a cult like dependency on a reverence to religion and God. 

Clearly only the door reading you must accept God and faith into your heart or fail automatically, means everyone who steps through another door is on a fast path to failure. It also means blame and guilt for loss of sobriety has an automatic perpetrator, as opposed to having personal accountability or looking at the cause and not the symptom.

And the third point is the logistical aspect of certain victimology, which should probably raise alarm bells about the writer, if I were so inclined, but I'm not. (My next FoM meeting is coming Wednesday at six pm - just saying.) 

If Friends of Maeve groups start to pop up everywhere we all know whose door to knock on, right? Talk about giving people ideas and some direction in their lives. Trust Carver to create the kind of book that people will probably either feel uncomfortable about or not admit to liking it for being a bit more than a crime read. I loved it. It's deliciously dark. It lacks any kind of societal norm or boundary. Most importantly it speaks softly to the dark side - they might not acknowledge it, but they are listening. It's a superb read.

Buy Psychopaths Anonymous at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher ‏:  Orenda Books pub date 25 Nov. 2021. Buy at Amazon com. Buy at Orendabooks.