#novels — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #novels, aggregated by home.social.
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It is Monday. Monsters. The Drum. Illusions. And more. Thank you for reading my work.
#writing #reading #fiction #books #horror #apocalyptic #journal #monsters #novels
https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2026/08/24/the-greenland-diaries-day-72/
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The Greenland Diaries: Day 72
Gerald was a fool, and I cared for him, but he couldn’t listen to me. I’ve killed and survived these beasts, but he couldn’t listen to me. He couldn’t give me any credit or any dignity with the situation. It might’ve been because he was older, and supposedly wiser, but I don’t really know. I know I say it all the time, but there are so few of us left in this green, warped world.
Now there is one less.
I stayed out on the plant-wriggled road until the very start of the Drum. The sunlight had an orange skin to it, like it would peel apart in the dust and heat. The trees are so heavy with overgrown branches. It makes the rays of light nearly vanish before they hit the ground.
They have to take everything away, even our sun.
Typically, I don’t like to wait outside the shed until the Drum starts. The Unnamed appear so fast, they literally rise from the shadows. I had to wait out there till the last possible second though, it was a must. I couldn’t let Gerald think I’d vanished, or that I had just locked up the shed and wouldn’t let him in.
The moment the Drum started, I sprinted to the shed and shut the door. I was lucky enough to dodge them, especially since the Unnamed had been spying on us so ardently the last four days. I thought they would’ve had sentries or spies watching my house the moment the monster thunder started. The holes in their strategies can sometimes be surprising.
It just seems like they can do anything they want.
I waited inside my shed with my M16. I watched through a crack in the siding. The sun dropped down fast and deliberately, like it wanted to watch the night unfold as much as I did. Nothing moved for a while beneath the Drums, and the illusions didn’t stir much either. Only a few streetlights flickered on with artificial power. Nothing moved for the longest time, not even the insects. I checked the edges of the houses for their shapes, but there was nothing.
Then I heard the rifle shots. They popped through the night like firecrackers. The clang of their canisters echoed for a few minutes in the midnight air. Running soon followed. I could hear someone panting wildly in the darkness just outside the shed. Feet smacked between the plants and concrete. I knew it was Gerald. I got my gun ready. I put Snowy in my backpack with the Kevlar so she wouldn’t have to sprint after me once I got outside. I was about to undo the chain from inside the shed and slide open the door when I heard a voice whispering.
“Don’t get out of your hiding place, don’t do it.”
I knew immediately by the huskiness of it that it was Gerald. He must’ve started running to the shed and stopped.
“The Unnamed are everywhere out here, they’ll swarm you, don’t you dare open that door.”
I wanted to yell back. I wanted to say something, anything to make him feel better.
“They’ll kill you if you speak, don’t do anything, don’t you dare.” He was getting more control over his voice. He was coming to peace with his situation.
There was silence and the Drum echoed.
Something big brushed against the shed. I chewed my lip open with nervous bites.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve listened to you, don’t be sad, you’re not alone,” he said.
I started to cry. He was my friend. I didn’t want him to die.
“They’re coming towards me. It’ll be over soon. Don’t be afraid, you’re not alone. I should’ve listened to you. I should’ve.” There was a crunching sound, followed by a splashing and faint gurgle. Something soggy thudded against the ground repeatedly, and a ripping sound filled the blackness.
They were tearing him apart.
In the morning, I found his body mostly together, but still obscenely shredded.
Bizarrely enough, his face had been cut off in jagged streaks and slapped against the side of my house. The plants held it up like little macabre hangers.
They wanted me to find it.
I shot it down with my pistol and put it with the rest of his body. I buried him in the yard outside his house, with pictures of his kids. The digging was hard, and the hot air pressed my shoulders down. I couldn’t even go very far. I was too afraid of fuel or power lines. Eventually, the hole was wide enough to flatten out what was left of his body. I used pieces of broken pavement and round rocks to cover up the dirt.
I wanted to say a little prayer for him when it was all finished.
Too bad I don’t know any.
#apocalyptic #books #fiction #horror #journals #monsters #novels #reading #writing -
WHAT am I reading?
Just Finished 'The Viaduct Killings' by Wes Markin. Cosy crime set in my home county of Yorkshire. Nice easy reading & I'll read another of Wes's books, which says something, I guess.
Currently reading 'Ancient Rome' by Simon Baker. It's remarkable how similar the power structures are today to those that brought Rome to power & destroyed it. A self serving elite that craved power & influence over everything, rising inequality between those who have & those who didn't... and so on. It's a lesson to us all & a good read, if a bit heavy in places.
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EVERYONE-
I SOLD A BOOK JUST NOW!
BE HAPPY FOR MEEEE 🕺🏽🕺🏽
#booksky #books #Kindleunlimited #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #readingcommunity #writingcommunity #author #readers #indie -
On Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and the Particular Cruelty of Goodbye
August 23, 2026My second Kazuo Ishiguro novel was Never Let Me Go. The first was The Remains of the Day, a book I admired more than I loved. I thought it was beautifully written, impeccably controlled, but Stevens and his regrets never quite got under my skin. I appreciated the novel. That is not the same thing as being moved by it. There is a difference, sometimes an enormous one.
So I did not come to Never Let Me Go expecting to weep. I did not even know what it was about. Perhaps that was the ideal way to read it. Perhaps not, because I nearly failed to read it at all.
The first hundred pages were a struggle for me. Not because Ishiguro writes badly. Quite the opposite. His prose is smooth, almost unnervingly smooth. The sentences move easily. The pages do not present the kind of linguistic resistance I encountered in, say, Blood Meridian, where I felt as though I needed a machete and a dictionary merely to get through a paragraph. Never Let Me Go is perfectly readable. And yet I could not get through it.
I was in a reading slump, or, as I called it at the time, a reading slop. I would pick the book up, read a few pages, put it down. Days passed. Then weeks. The story did not seem to be going anywhere sufficiently interesting for me. Kathy H. was telling me about her childhood, about school, about friendships, about little resentments and jealousies and romances. Fine. All right. But where was this going?
Then there were these words. Carer. Donor. Guardian.
They appeared with a peculiar casualness, as though I were supposed to understand what they meant. The characters certainly did. Nobody stopped to explain them to me. Ishiguro does not put up a sign saying, Attention, reader. Here is the premise of the novel. Instead, he lets the vocabulary of this world drift past you, almost innocently.
I was confused. And, regrettably, I cheated. I asked Google.
There are moments when one should exercise more patience as a reader. This was one of them. Google, that great destroyer of narrative surprises, promptly informed me what was going on. The plot was revealed. I knew what Hailsham was. I knew what Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were. I knew what “donations” and “completion” meant. I cannot blame Ishiguro for this. This was entirely my own impatience. And yet, even knowing what was coming, Never Let Me Go devastated me.
That, I think, says something about the novel’s power. A plot twist can be spoiled. The emotional experience of a story cannot always be. Knowing that a person is going to die is not the same as watching him or her walk toward death. Knowing the destination does not spare you the journey. Sometimes it makes the journey worse.
The strangest thing about Never Let Me Go is that the horror of its premise is almost never presented as horror. There are no laboratories filled with cackling scientists. No dystopian rebellion. No grand revelation followed by revolution. No protagonist standing on a barricade, screaming that the system must be destroyed. The characters simply live. They go to school. They make friends. They quarrel. They fall in love, or think they do. They become jealous. They remember small humiliations with astonishing clarity. They cling to objects and songs and private jokes. They misunderstand one another. They want to be special. In other words, they are human.
That is the terrible joke of the novel, if one can call something this sad a joke. The society of Never Let Me Go has created human beings for a purpose, assigned them a fate, and then proceeds as though that fate settles everything. But the novel itself quietly asks a more difficult question: if these people can love, grieve, desire, remember, envy, hope, and fear, then what exactly are we denying them when we deny them a future?
The answer is almost too obvious to say. Everything.
Kathy’s narration is central to why the novel works so well. She tells her story retrospectively, in a voice that is calm, conversational, occasionally meandering. She doubles back. She corrects herself. She remembers one incident and then suddenly recalls another that complicates it. At times, her narration feels almost like someone talking to you during a long drive, saying, “Actually, before I get to that, I should probably explain something else.” I loved this. It is a deceptively simple style. Ishiguro makes memory feel like memory. Not memory as a perfectly organized archive, with neat labels and chronological order, but memory as something porous and unruly. One recollection opens another. A trivial detail acquires importance years later. Something that seemed insignificant becomes, in retrospect, unbearable. Kathy does not narrate like a person delivering a thesis on her own life. She narrates like someone trying to make sense of it. And perhaps that is all any of us are doing.
There is also something heartbreaking about the limits of her rebellion, if rebellion is even the right word. Kathy is not stupid. Neither are Tommy or Ruth. They understand, eventually, what their lives are. But understanding does not necessarily produce resistance. That is one of the novel’s most uncomfortable truths. You like to imagine that knowledge makes you free. If you knew the truth, you would act. You would fight. You would refuse. Wouldn’t you?
The characters in Never Let Me Go are shaped by the world before they are old enough to question it. Their vocabulary, expectations, ambitions, even their fantasies have been constructed within the boundaries of their existence. They do not dream of becoming kings or astronauts or old men and women surrounded by grandchildren. Their hopes are smaller because the world has made them smaller. This is not entirely science fiction. It is not even entirely dystopian. Most people live inside assumptions they did not choose.
You inherit ideas about success, beauty, love, work, family, nation, morality. You are born into systems already functioning, rules already established, expectations already waiting for you. Perhaps some people escape them. Others do not. Most of us, probably, spend our lives negotiating with them and congratulating ourselves for choices that were not as free as we would like to believe.
The tragedy of Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy is extreme. That is why it reveals something more ordinary. They know they are going to die. So do you. Their lives have an expiration date attached to them. So do yours. The difference is that their deaths have been organized into a system, given a sequence, a purpose, and polite euphemisms. They will become carers. They will become donors. Eventually, they will “complete.”
Complete. What a monstrous word.
There is a particular cruelty in euphemism. To “complete” is not to die, at least not linguistically. Language tidies up what reality would otherwise force you to confront. And the people in the novel have inherited this language. They use it because it is the language available to them.
Ishiguro understands something important about cruelty: it does not always announce itself with violence, yet when it arrives, it is final. Sometimes it becomes most efficient when everyone has learned how to speak about it gently. But for all the philosophical implications of the novel, what destroyed me was not the premise. It was the people. I felt their friendship. I felt the love between them. I even felt the ugliness of their relationships, because friendship is not always noble. Ruth can be infuriating. She manipulates. She lies. She creates little fictions around herself. She wounds people because, perhaps, she senses that there is so little available to her that she must possess whatever she can, even if only emotionally. She can be a cunt, and yet I could not hate her.
That is another thing Ishiguro does brilliantly. He allows his characters their pettiness without reducing them to their pettiness. Ruth is not merely the villain standing between Kathy and Tommy. She is frightened. She wants to be loved. She wants to believe that she matters. She wants a life that she cannot have, though she does not always know how to articulate this desire.
Tommy, too, is more than the awkward boy with the temper. Kathy is more than the sensible, observant narrator. Their relationships shift because people shift. Love arrives too late. Understanding arrives too late. Apologies arrive too late. That is life, unfortunately. A great deal of life consists of timing.
There are things you could have said earlier. There are people you could have loved better. There are apologies that become meaningful precisely because there is no longer enough time for them to repair anything.
Ishiguro’s restraint makes these things hurt more. He does not wrench emotion out of you through grand speeches. He does not shout. The novel is often almost quiet. And because it is quiet, the sadness has room to accumulate. Then, suddenly, you realize what you have been reading. A story about people being prepared, from childhood, to say goodbye. A story about people who are told, in one way or another, that they do not belong to themselves. A story about how love cannot save everyone.
That last part is important. Love does not save Kathy and Tommy. It does not produce the miracle they hope for. There is no hidden loophole in the machinery of the world. No exception granted because their love is especially pure. The world is not moved by the fact that two people finally understand what they mean to each other.
How could I not be devastated by that?
I have always been susceptible to goodbyes in stories. Apparently, I can fancy myself stoic. I can imagine that I have been desensitized by enough books, enough films, enough fictional deaths. Then a story places two people before me and tells me, quietly, that this is the last time. That they have to part. That one of them will go on and the other will not. And I am finished.
There is something especially painful about the goodbyes in Never Let Me Go because the characters have so little control over them. Every goodbye is connected to the larger goodbye waiting ahead. Even happiness becomes fragile because you know, or eventually know, that it cannot last. But then again, whose happiness can?
Perhaps this is where the novel becomes more than its premise. Strip away Hailsham. Strip away cloning. Strip away the donations. What remains is recognizably human. We all live among people we will lose. We all experience periods of life without knowing, while we are living them, that they will one day become memory. A school. A room. A song. A friend you assume you will always know. Then time moves. The thing is over. And nobody announces the final moment while it is happening.
Kathy’s memories are painful because they are all she has left. But perhaps memories are all any of us have left eventually. You move forward, and the past becomes increasingly inaccessible. People disappear. Places change. The version of yourself who inhabited a particular moment ceases to exist, too. There are many deaths in a life before the body finally catches up.
This may sound excessively gloomy. It probably is. But Never Let Me Go does not leave me with despair exactly. I would not call it hopeful either. Hope is too easy a word to throw at a book like this. The novel leaves me with something more complicated: an awareness of the terrible value of ordinary life. The characters are not remarkable because they are destined for greatness. They are remarkable because they care about ordinary things. A cassette tape. A gesture. A memory of a field. A person sleeping beside them. The possibility of more time. Is that not enough?
Perhaps the novel’s deepest cruelty is that it makes you understand the preciousness of life through people who have been systematically denied the right to live one fully. Their tragedy illuminates your own good fortune, if that is what you should call it. You are not guaranteed anything either, but you are at least permitted the illusion that the future is open. Kathy and Tommy are not. And still they love. Still they hope. Still they try to imagine a little more time together.
I had misgivings about Never Let Me Go when I began it. I thought the story would not move me much. I nearly abandoned it in the first hundred pages. I spoiled the plot for myself because I was impatient and confused. Honestly, this was not my finest hour as a reader. But once I returned to it, the novel kept me turning the pages. The storytelling is patient and deliberate, and Ishiguro’s writing is wonderfully smooth. Of the two Ishiguro novels I have read, this is the one that reached me. The Remains of the Day made me admire Ishiguro. Never Let Me Go made me feel him. And feeling, I suppose, is the more dangerous thing. By the end, I wept.
Then, apparently deciding that I had not suffered enough, I went ahead and watched the 2010 film adaptation. And I wept some more.
Perhaps watching the film immediately after finishing the novel was not the wisest decision. I had barely recovered from the book, if “recovered” is even the appropriate word, before willingly subjecting myself to the same story all over again. There is something different about seeing those goodbyes made visible, about watching Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth embodied rather than merely imagined. The film could not replace the novel, nor should it. Ishiguro’s voice, Kathy’s digressive memories, that gradual accumulation of dread, these belong especially to the book. But the film gave the tragedy another form, and I was apparently susceptible to that too.
So there I was, devastated by the novel, and then devastated again by the adaptation. I really should learn to leave well enough alone.
But perhaps that second round of tears confirmed something for me. The story was not merely effective because Ishiguro had surprised me, and certainly not because I did not know the plot. I knew exactly what was going to happen by then. I had read it. I had watched the characters walk toward the inevitable. The inevitability remained inevitable. And it still hurt.
Not because Ishiguro tricks you into sadness. Not because the novel manipulates you with cheap tragedy. I wept because I had come to care about these people, their ridiculous little jealousies, their memories, their failed timing, their affection for one another. I wept because they had to say goodbye.
Because ultimately Never Let Me Go is a novel about letting go, about goodbyes. The goodbye to childhood. The goodbye to friendship as it once was. The goodbye to the person one loves. The goodbye to the fantasy that there will always be more time. And finally, the last goodbye, the one waiting for everyone.
Ishiguro gives his characters a world in which death is scheduled and unavoidable, then asks you to watch what they do with the little life allowed to them. The answer is almost unbearably simple. They live it. They love badly and well. They remember. They lose one another. They say goodbye. And apparently, no matter how stoic I fancy myself, that is still enough to break me.
#bibliophilia #bookReview #books #fiction #KazuoIshiguro #literaryFiction #literature #NeverLetMeGo #novels #reading -
There is no better feeling than knowing your stories are out in the world finding their readers!
#booksky #books #Kindleunlimited #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #author #readers #indie -
While I am increasingly having problems with #military #SF (especially #USA-centric), the #grunt POV #novels are still a source of wry amusement and marvelously colorful language for me. #frontlines #MarkoKloos
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Just a few pieces left. The showdown rages. I loved writing these scenes. It took years to get it right. Thank you for reading my work, and for sticking with this story.
#writing #reading #fiction #books #novels #horror #fantasy #darkfantasy #steampunk
https://patrickwmarshauthor.wordpress.com/2026/08/21/beware-the-ills-part-57/
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Beware the Ills: Part 57
I haven’t fought like this for a while, where not a hint of error is allowed. Haukter reaches behind his left shoulder into his back. I take a stance pointing my blade diagonally at his hulking form. I see his hand for the first time as he reaches. It’s white and callused. It glows against his dark brown hides.
Haukter reaches into an opening in one of his hides and pulls something out. He’s watching me methodically. It’s a spear, a huge spear, nearly twice as long as me. It has a metal point on the end of it, but it’s rounded and sharp where the metal connects to the staff. A jagged rocky shape shields the base of the point. Almost like mud had been wrapped around a clumsy blade. The staff looks fire-hardened black. He probably burned it for days in a controlled forge. It’s quite a weapon, and he kept it completely concealed.
I’m not even sure how that’s possible.
He grips the spear in both hands and sprints at me. The point comes at me. I knock it away, and slash at him in fast rising swings. The point of the spear doesn’t counter my slashes though. Instead, his left hand breaks from the handle, and that mangled claw dangles out. He’s fighting me with two weapons.
What an enemy.
We split from our quick melee and charge sideways back into the trees. He’s stabbing at me quickly, and I deflect each stab with my sword. He slashes at me with his claw, but I duck and twist my body, keeping my sword free for the spear. I leap at him, slashing down and taking away the short advantage of the claw. The claw flies up at me on a hidden chain. I knock it away with my sword, but not before the handle of his lance slams into my stomach. I grab it as I spit blood and wrench the spear away from him in an armored twist. He swings the claw around at me and throws some darts with his free sleeve. I throw the spear into him. It lands, and he sheds another one of his hides. I leap away, keeping my face to him. He can’t have many hides left, it’s not physically possible.
He grabs his spear and chases me.
I’m coughing and spitting blood as I run. Something was broken when the lance smashed into me. He leaps at me and ends the distance between us. He throws both his spear and claw at me in a whirling, stabbing maelstrom. Darts follow like little children. I’m swarmed with them. I spin around a tree and the spear and claw miss. The darts I knock away with my sword panting.
More? Are there more?
Haukter stops and pulls a weapon out of his right shoulder. It’s a huge, curled blade, like the one he had chained for throwing. It can only be described as a butcher’s cleaver. It’s smaller than the chained one, and it has a small black handle at its curved base. Two more rods drop out of the sleeves, the long wooden ones with hundreds of holes for the darts to fly though. They’re empty and obsolete.
Is he telling me that’s it, no more hidden weapons? How irritating, I won’t believe him, how many combinations does he possibly have? How many tricks does he possibly have?
This is the little boy I spared so long ago. This monster who devours men. I didn’t know he’d alter and corrupt. I only knew somewhere inside of me it was wrong to kill a child, even if it meant my own death. Blue, why did you have to die? Blue would’ve lived longer than me. Untaro’s lifespan is twice as long as any man. He would’ve been able to help me with Haukter. Now, I’m alone with this monster.
I run.
He matches my speed easily, and swings at me. He’s fast with the cleaver. My blade, thin and needle-like, jabs and swings at him in our sprint. Each time Haukter’s blade easily matches my attack. If he swings too wide, I can sneak a few slashes at his hides, but his sleeve whirls around to knock my blade away. His attacks are violent and powerful, he knows he has the upper hand in this brutish battle. I need both hands to repel his slashes. Both hands to stop the oblong and curved point from ripping me open.
We dash to a group of old man-like machines sitting idle in a large frost covered circle. I weave into the structures of old machines and bodies. He follows. I jump backwards watching his swings and parrying the ones getting too close.
My arms are slowly tearing and breaking, they feel like limp fire.
I’ll be releasing my novel Beware the Ills in segments every Friday. You can find out more about the book right here, or check out Amazon’s info. I love this book. Happy to simply share it.
#books #darkfantasy #fantasy #fiction #horror #novels #reading #steampunk #writing -
I sold a book today!
Thank you to the person who ordered my book from Amazon.
#booksky #books #KU #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #readingcommunity #writingcommunity #author #readers #indie -
My pre-ordered copy is supposed to arrive September 2nd. Can't wait.
"Dr. #DaraHorn didn’t want to write this #book. She wanted to write more acclaimed #novels. But after she published her bestselling #essay collection People Love Dead #Jews, readers kept cornering her with their own horror stories of #antisemitism and one unfair question: can you help? She became the antisemitism Lorax.
So she wrote the answer, and gave it the humdrum, unprovocative title: The Final Solution to the #Jewish Question. It’s out September 1.
Dara joins the #podcast to talk about why antisemitism isn’t a bigotry but a lie told by people who want power (”Jews are destroying what you value the most”); how a 1940s #American Jewish strategy to be seen as a #religion rather than a people left today’s Jews defenseless; why American #Holocaust education “eliminates pattern recognition” and outsources everything else people should learn about Jews -- about living Jews, not just dead ones..."
https://havivgur.substack.com/p/139-dara-horns-final-solution-to
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"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."
-Master Oogway
#booksky #books #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #author #readers #indie -
Talk about a plot twist! Yesterday I celebrated selling FOUR books... and it turns out ONE incredible reader bought them all to spread the love!
From the mail lady to local libraries, The Midnight Diner is finding its home. Humans are amazing.
#booksky #books #thriller #romance #novels #fiction
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p6si4w333k4rcflapekprz3e/post/3mtdgoutsgs2z -
"A View From Afar" is a heartwarming contemporary romance that explores the unexpected beauty of human connection during extraordinary times.
A View from Afar a.co/d/0cfmX3zs
#booksky #books #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy -
Not to brag, but I’ve sold a whopping four books yesterday!!! Woot!
#booksky #books #Kindleunlimited #thriller #suspense #romance #novels #geopolitical #mythological #darkromance #women #contemporary #fiction #fantasy #crime #amazon #sifi #readingcommunity #writingcommunity #author #readers #indie -
AI slop exposes fraudulent publishing offer to Australian author Mary Colussi
Touch Grass, the debut novel of Sydney based Australian author Mary Colussi, was published in June this year. And a fraudulent publishing deal was not too far behind. In this instance though AI slop played a part in giving the scam away. An email sent to Colussi, apparently from a representative of a well-known publishing house in the UK, was full of praise for Touch Grass. Curiously though comments about the novel's plot were limited only to what had been published online in its […]https://disassociated.com/ai-slop-exposes-fraudulent-publishing-offer-mary-colussi/
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Six Must-Read Scottish Books
Author Doug Johnstone picks six books that speak to the diversity & range of Scottish fiction
https://orendabooks.co.uk/news/six-must-read-scottish-books-by-doug-johnstone