Sunday 29 May 2011

Tales of Woe part I

The Broken Ones - Steven M Irwin 
Hachette - Little, Brown
Available: September 2011

When I first started reading this as a blind proof my initial thoughts were: This is disturbing on a deep and residual level.... however as disturbing as the events were I still didn't feel like putting it down, and that I think says something - it could be that I am one sick individual or (and I'm hoping this is the case) that Steven's writing is beautifully crafted and his main character Detective Oscar Mariani's journey is completely compelling.


This is an almost post apocalyptic tale set in Queensland Australia near the present day and three years after an event called Grey Wednesday - a day that changed the world forever, with a reversing of the magnetic fields in the polar ice caps wreaking havoc on the seasons and digital devices slowly halting industry, produce growth and descending the world into chaos. Apart from all of this (as if it wasn't bad enough) there is the unwelcome appearance of ghosts, your own personal ghost to be exact that 'haunts' you for all your waking hours driving some into desperation and despair. This is where Oscar appears - part of a division created to investigate the truth in spectre related killings "My ghost made me do it..." 


The world that Steven paints is bleak, dirty, chaotic and smelly. The plot line is anything but predictable as Oscar follows one morsel of a clue to the next in a seemingly unrelated series of events and finds something so much deeper than I was expecting and ends with a warmth that I thought impossible in the start.


This is a book that haunts and stays with you for days after reading, get into it - you wont be disappointed!  
 

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