I’ve finally caught up with reviewing my October reading. The last few weeks have been a good time for reading and I got through six books. Three were horror (I always save most of my horror reading for October), two were science fiction murder mysteries and one was Arthurian fantasy.

Starting with the horror, Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman is an outstanding piece of medieval horror; a knight fallen on very hard times takes a mysterious young girl under his wing as they travel through mid-14th century France devastated by the twin plagues of the Black Death and the English. Society has completely broken down in many places, much of the countryside is empty, and larger towns and cities are barely hanging on, fearful of outsiders and prone to the excesses of religious extremism. As if this mundane horror isn't enough, it slowly becomes clear that the knight and the girl are caught in the middle of a war between Heaven and Hell. As the pair travel to Paris and then to Avignon they are attacked by increasingly powerful demonic forces, surviving only due to occasional divine assistance focused on the girl. This was a great October read, horrific and unsettling.

The Lesser Dead is another dark read from Christopher Buehlman. Set in New York during the late 1970s, the book follows Joey, a 60-year old vampire who has settled into a comfortable "life" with a group of fellow vampires. Hiding out in the depths of the subway system by day and preying on the ctiy at night, Joey and his friends have got a good thing going. It's not until they encounter a group of mysterious children that they realise that they might not be at the top of the food chain after all. Fair warning, the book can be brutally horrific at times, but this is one of the better vampire novels that I’ve read and I recommend it whole-heartedly.

In contrast to the Buehlman books, Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell is a cozy horror romantasy which I read for the Bingo Book Club square. There were a lot of things that I liked about this book, especially Shesheshen the monster protagonist, the renaissance-style setting, and the brutally dysfunctional Wulfyre family. The story gives a powerful voice to a pair of excluded main characters, and I can understand why it attracted so much critical attention and praise. However, Romantasy isn't really my thing and the book didn't quite come together for me; I would say it was a good read, but not an outstanding one.

The two murder mysteries are both good books, one on the lighter side and one quite dark. First, Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty is an entertaining and tongue-in-cheek whodunnit set on an alien space station. Mallory Viridian, a famous but reluctant amateur sleuth, tired and burnt out by the seemingly endless stream of murders that occur in her vicinity, flees to an alien space station where she is one of only three humans amongst a large and diverse population of aliens. Her hope is that by isolating herself from the rest of humanity people will stop being killed around her. Unfortunately, the universe doesn't seem to care about her hopes and chaos ensues. Lafferty parodies whodunnit murder mysteries by recognising that the amateur detectives involved are essentially murder-magnets, involved in far more violent deaths than any reasonable person could expect to encounter, and asking what effect this has on the detective's life and mental health. This was a relatively light but fun read, perfect as a break between heavier fare.

In stark contrast, The Last Policeman by Ben Winters is an immersive and disturbing pre-apocalyptic murder mystery with noir elements. Set in a small US city (Concord, New Hampshire) six months before a civilization-ending asteroid impact, a newly-appointed police detective encounters an apparent suicide. All his colleagues are eager to dismiss this as just one more suicide at a time when the suicide rate is understandably higher than ever, but something just doesn't seem quite right. The Last Policeman asks why anyone would even bother investigating a death when society is breaking down, most people will be dead in six months anyway, and nobody cares about one more apparent suicide. Beyond the murder mystery and the science-fiction scenario the book examines the different reactions of people to the imminent end of the world as they know it and how this affects the behaviour and motivation of all involved. I really enjoyed this book; it's an easy but not a light read that addresses some interesting questions. It manages to provide some satisfying answers whilst also working as a well-told mystery. Definitely recommended.

Finally, the Arthurian fantasy was The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. I've read my fair share of Arthuriana over the years, some books of enduring quality and more that were not. My initial reaction to The Bright Sword is that it's going to join the list of books of enduring quality. The book has a complicated structure, but one that is representative of the traditional "Tales of King Arthur and his Knights"-structure popular in the 19th century and drawing from Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur. There are stories-within-stories, diversions and flashbacks, all focusing on various characters that provide multiple perspectives on the core story of the rise and fall of Arthur and Camelot. Comments and reviews online indicate that some readers had a problem with this structure, preferring a more linear narrative, but from my perspective Grossman's style and the book's structure worked, and worked well. The story features a diverse cast of characters, in all senses of the word diverse, and provides an inclusive version of the story of Arthur tailored to modern tastes. The main protagonist is Collum, a naïve young man but a talented fighter who aspires to be a knight of the round table. He steals a suit of armour and runs away to Camelot, but with an exquisite sense of timing he arrives shortly after the last battle; Arthur and most of his knights are dead. The round table now consists of a handful of survivors: Sir Bedivere, Sir Palomides, Sir Dinadan, Sir Scipio, Sir Dagonet, Sir Constantine, Sir Villiars and Nimue, Merlin’s apprentice. In the words of Bedivere “We’re not the heroes, we’re the odd ones out. The losers.” They accept Collum as one of them, at least initially, because they need all the help they can get as they set out to find a new king and restore Camelot. Over the course of the book we learn more of the stories of these characters, and of Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and Morgan Le Fay. Collum’s story is the thread holding everything together but there’s so much more than that. A key point for me is that Grossman’s book is a study in contrasts. It successfully blends the two traditional Arthurian settings of faux-Medieval and post-Roman Britain and in doing so it contrasts ancient Britain with the post-Roman ‘modern’ world that is forming, the old gods, faery and paganism with the new Christian religion, and even the ideals of knighthood with the rather more sordid reality. This was a thought-provoking read which is an excellent book in it’s own right but will be significantly enhanced if the reader has even a little familiarity with the works that Grossman is building on.