Ink

Oh, I'm a happy bookseller today as an early Xmas present arrived from the lovely Emma at Macmillan publishers, an advance copy of Glasgow author Hal Duncan's book Ink, the second in his Book of All Hours. The first book, Vellum, was one of the most extraordinary debuts I've come across - a book, the Book, the one which details all of reality and all that happens. Think Michael Moorcock's multiverse with elements of Bryan Talbot's Luther Arkwright, Neil Gaiman, Alice in Wonderland, ancient myth, history, personal identity, gender, folklore, quantum physics and knowing, cynical humour then take all of that, held together by rich, lush prose and imagine stuffing that into your head then shoving your head through the Looking Glass, but the other side of the Looking Glass isn't Wonderland but a multi-dimensioned view of endless realities varying on the same characters and stories as if you were looking through the compound eyes of an insect while tripping on a mix of Blake's poetry and Coleridge's drugs. It's challenging, pushing the reader to engage and think then rethink, stories built upon stories upon stories, it's a quantum headfuck and I love it; I'm tripping right now on a heady cocktails of intoxicating words rewiring my neural pathways.