We like Tim Lebbon at the Hothouse. He’s a very adaptable writer who contributed some seriously good stuff to the Alien/Predator franchise with the Rage War trilogy and novelised big genre movies like Kong Skull Island and The Cabin in the Woods, but its he really comes into his own when he lets rip with his own imagination. Equally at home in horror, sci-fi and gritty crime his John Wyndham style catastrophe novel The Silence was anything but cosy and one of our favourite reads of 2015.
So of course we were delighted when our good friends at Titan Books slid a copy of Tim’s latest book Relics under the dungeon door. Relics kicks off like a piece of crime fiction, Angela is a post-graduate criminologist living in London with Vince, her boyfriend. Vince works for a property firm. Or so Angela thinks, until the day when Vince goes missing. This is out of character for him and as Angela investigates his last movements she discovers a world where the relics of mythical beings are traded by shady characters for big money. Vince was a relic hunter and Angela is not the only person looking for him, the dealers Vince played off against each other would lie to find him too and they don’t all play nice. Whats more not all mythical beasts are the relics of a long gone past and some of them have an interest in Vince too. So in order to find her lover before something really nasty happens to him Angela will have to make some uneasy decisions about who she can trust and draw together an unusual band of allies.
I thought Relics was a great read with nicely drawn strong characters that you get to care about and an intriguing storyline that starts like a piece of London noir but merges seamlessly into something far more dark, Gothic and wonderful. ~It left me wanting more and the best thing about that is that Relics the first part of a trilogy so there is plenty more fun to be had with Angela, Vince and their new friends both human and otherwise.
Gritty, intriguing and ultimately pretty exciting too I give Relics a 666/666 and don’t forget to look out for the literary pals who get name dropped.
Relics is out now as a paperback and an eBook from Titan Books at £7.99UK
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