Donald Ray Pollock is now two for two. He's only written two novels, and both are perfect. I blew through this one in two days, could not put it down.

Like The Devil All the Time, this is populated with a massive cast, a dozen or so main characters and another twenty side characters, and it's clear Pollock has found his wheelhouse. It might read as repetitive if you've read his other book, but it's so damn good I don't care. If you liked The Devil All the Time, you need to read this. It's essentially the same book, but different, and somehow better.

It's 1917, the US is entering World War I, and the story follows three brothers traveling up through the center of Ohio after their father dies. They're illiterate farmhands who've been let off the leash, and they decide to live out the plot of a cheap dime-store crime novel they carry around, a Jesse James-style outlaw tale. The irony is that their journey becomes its own dime-store cowboy story, complete with all the same tropes and clichés, whether they realize it or not. They eventually end up in Meade, where a military barracks being built has thrown the whole town into chaos.

There's a huge supporting cast, including Ellsworth and Una, a dirt-poor farming couple whose son is heading off to fight in Germany, a country they don't even know how to find on a map. Their arc captures what this book is really about: a new world encroaching on people who never asked for it and aren't ready for it. Like Outer Dark and Child of God, there's this constant collision between the old world and the new, men shaving, cars, noise, a teacher lounging in a hammock with a flower behind his ear while these characters can't fathom not working every waking hour.

What really sets Pollock apart is that every single character, every waiter, busboy, shop clerk, scumbag on the road, gets a backstory. You'll pass a random person and get a full paragraph on who they are, how they got there, why their life went the way it did. It's written so well I just wanted to keep reading for the prose alone. I'd genuinely read a 1,200-page Pollock epic with hundreds of characters if he wrote one.

This book is gross. Murderous, nasty, full of knives and gunshots and drunks and hookers. Everyone has gonorrhea, or worms, or missing teeth, or is covered in outhouse filth. But it's funny, Sopranos-funny. There's a barber who keeps cracking jokes about a guy's wife every time he comes in for a shave that's a perfect example of the tone.

Despite the constant looming death as all these characters converge toward the same violent point, the ending is genuinely bittersweet. Some characters you've grown attached to, even the murderous, disease-ridden scumbags, don't make it, and it stings. Others do, and it feels earned. The three brothers are bad guys, but no worse than everyone around them, there's a posse hunting them that's just as racist, drunk, and thieving. And there's a real Robin Hood undercurrent. People don't mind the brothers robbing banks because those same banks put tax liens on their farms and took everything. This is a world that's already a lottery, with winners and losers baked in from the start.

My favorite side character might be Jasper, the outhouse inspector who walks around town with a dead rat on a stick, measuring how full people's toilets are and issuing fines. He's just doing an honest job, but the whole town hates him for it, pure classism over a $4 fine. There's also a wonderfully corrupt cast of judges and cops throughout.

The whole thing reminded me of the movie Running Scared, my favorite bad movie, where a handful of main characters chase the same object and keep colliding with a rotating cast of psychopaths along the way. Bloody, gory, and funny in the same way.

I've been on a run of feeling like modern fiction is toothless, too scared of controversy, too careful. Pollock clearly does not care. Every character here is a disgusting, racist, murdering, backstabbing thief, and he commits to it fully, there's even a genuinely horrifying serial killer subplot that shows up almost out of nowhere in the final hundred pages. It shouldn't work. It does. A perfect novel. If you liked The Devil All the Time, this is mandatory reading.

I was excited when this came out. American Underworld is my favorite trilogy, or at least near the top, so this was my first Ellroy book since finishing it. Since then, I've read the L.A. Quartet and had mixed feelings about each entry. I didn't like The Enchanted much at all. After reading Red Sheet , I think I know why.

Ellroy's prose is one of a kind. You pick it up and immediately know it's an Ellroy book. It's at times fun to read, at times horrific, but you can't take your eyes off the page. It's violent, vulgar, and visceral.

Where American Underworld had about a dozen main characters, plus numerous side characters, and took place over roughly twenty years across locations worldwide, L.A., Miami, Las Vegas, Thailand, Vietnam, Cuba, and encompassed an expansive plot of conspiracies and movements, his other books seem to be based around L.A. with one specific character uncovering one specific crime. That crime is grisly, violent, and awful, but the smaller scale just isn't as captivating.

Reed Sheet is a simple travel around LA crime book about Freddy Otash doing awful things to everyone he meets but it’s repetitive and i struggled to find the point.

I had fun reading this book, but at no point did I think, "Yes, this is a five-star classic, I can't wait to give this to my friends." Not the way American Underworld gave me that feeling.

I think I'm done with Ellroy, at least for now. I had a good time reading it, but I clearly know what he does, and it doesn't hold my attention anymore.

A completely functional modern "neo-noir" crime book with no teeth. A tough as nails former mafia hitman who's actually a private eye with a girlfriend and a dog who doesn't wanna get in too much trouble. Like the last book, the best section was the 25 page setup where all the grit is but it was at no point thrilling, scary, and quite slow.

Blood Standard is a pulpy, hard-boiled detective novel that throws a lot at the wall. I thought it was OK but not great. Too many unnecessary and boring sections dragged it down.

The book I wanted to read was the first couple chapters. The story opens with Isaiah Coleridge, a gangster working for an outfit in Alaska, doing gangster shit. I was super into this section. I have always loved books set in Alaska, like Bone White by Ronald Malfi. But then Isaiah gets kicked out of the outfit and relocated to upstate New York. Upstate New York is just roads, trees, and shit-kicker bars on the sides of highways. He lands on a farm, befriends the owners, and before long he chases down their kidnapped daughter.

From there, the book is uninspired and cookie cutter. Isaiah and a handful of acquaintances move from old pal to old enemy, kick up storms, and track down a few leads. No insightful twists. Just a straight line.

The final quarter of the book is where everything happens. This really could have been a 100-page novella. Everything before section three feels meaningless.

People recommend this book paired with True Detective season one because it supposedly has horror elements. I believe the sequel kicks in those horror elements. But this book was devoid of any of that.

I will read the sequel just because I am trying to find something that feels like True Detective. But this one was a bit mid for me.

If you need a short, brutal break from denser reading, Child of God fits. At about 180 pages, it’s lean. It’s not as good as No Country for Old Men or The Road, but it’s pure McCarthy.

The story follows a small group of people in a secluded southern holler. One character descends into a violent murder spree almost by accident or opportunity, with no clear purpose. McCarthy, like David Lynch, doesn’t want readers to analyze his work too much. So I won’t. I’ll just say I blasted through it.

The novel has a lot to say about isolation and how things get out of hand. It’s grisly, dark, and very gross. There’s no mystery. Everything is in your face, through the lens of humanity’s worst parts. If that appeals to you, it’s a must-read.

“Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.” —

It’s always a chore to review classic books that have so much already written about them and that have spawned a movie that is quite iconic. When you just say the words “A Clockwork Orange,” so many things come to mind for people who have never seen the movie and never read the book through its sheer preponderance in pop culture.

I really loved this book. It’s quite short, and it will be hard not to compare it to the movie, but I think the book has so much more to say than the movie, which feels much more like shock. Right at the beginning I want to say that I enjoyed the character and the story; however, it is only about the one character, Alex, and though the story takes place over about a year, it is still only a handful of events. There are 21 chapters that make up roughly 21 scenes, so it is a very straightforward book. Even though there is a lot made about the language of the book, which uses this made-up form of slang, at no point did I find this to be any type of barrier to entry.

It got me thinking about the way we think or talk about youth culture then and now, because part of the reason the language did not bother me is that in 2026, with the internet, you are expected to learn and be a part of the making up of new language at all times, like sussing things out or saying he’s got the rizz or 67 and all this made-up stuff that is contractions, abbreviations, and sometimes just garbled garbage that means nothing except to the people in subcultures that could be as small as a Discord channel or as large as all of Reddit, where the narwhal bacons at midnight.

It also got me thinking about how the biggest fear of the adults in this world was to be attacked by these roving bands of youth with nothing to motivate them and nothing to do, who turn to late nights at the milk-plus bar ingesting who knows what and then being unleashed on the public where they beat, rob, kill, and rape. There is a scene near the beginning where his parents are just asking him, “What do you do at night?” and “Why haven’t you gotten a job?” and kind of begging him to come home and live a very simple, humble life. Now we have this issue where we have a youth culture that is obsessed with staying home and being addicted to an online space, and young people are having less sex than ever, they’re drinking less, they’re doing less drugs. It is a juxtaposition of how the older generation is always going to be nervous about the future of the youth before them, because the youth cannot be like the older generation; there has to be something new. A Clockwork Orange shows the darkest possible future for this youth.

There is an interview with the author, Anthony Burgess, where he discusses the film and says that the film A Clockwork Orange removes all of the ambiguity or maybe the poetry of the violence that was hidden between the slang and the text, and I would agree with that. I remember when I first saw the movie I was really repulsed and disgusted by the plain-as-day violence and sexual assaults in the movie, where it just felt exploitative and there was nothing much behind it as the minutes dragged on with just violence and violence and violence. I would agree with the author that in the book the violence is there at all times, but the narrator Alex will cut away and say you know what is going to happen so I am not going to explain this to you. It is the classic Reservoir Dogs argument of should the camera stay fixed on the knife cutting the ear off or should it veer off to the wall, and I think the wall will almost always be the better artistic decision.

The plot itself is not entirely deep. I don’t think there is a lot to really say there, but there is a lot of discussion about the final chapter, which is left out of the American version of the book. The final chapter to me was one of the best parts of the book because it provided a contrast and a point to this journey that Alex takes.

— “You,” he said, still with this bezoomny look, “are a living witness to these diabolical proposals. The people, the common people must know, must see.” He got up from his breakfast and started to walk up and down the kitchen, from the sink to the like larder, saying very gromky: “Would they like their sons to become what you, poor victim, have become? Will not the Government itself now decide what is and what is not crime and pump out the life and guts and will of whoever sees fit to displeasure the Government?” —

This morning before I finished the book, I happened to read about some rap beef where Gucci Mane was held hostage by another rapper and now he is going to the police to press charges, and there is all of this online spectacle about what this means for a rapper to go to the cops, whether it makes him a snitch, whether it means he has lost his edge. It reflects the final chapter of A Clockwork Orange, where Alex has grown up only a year but he is re-encountering his old life and everyone is growing up, like that scene in Step Brothers where they meet at the Catalina Wine Mixer and they are discussing heart health and tax returns instead of Chewbacca masks.

Life must go on, and the young will one day no longer be young. As Alex ages, he will become disgusted with the youth of the 1990s in Britain, and the cycle keeps repeating.

I don’t think A Clockwork Orange is an amazing book through its plot and characters, but it definitely has a lot to say about the perpetual motion of youth culture and what is cool, how adults perceive it, and what society does because of it. Does society simply want peace and quiet, or is it that they want conformity to what came before? Or do we eventually find ourselves in a state of needing that change in our music and art and writing so that we have novelty, but what type of danger comes with that novelty?

It is a very easy read. I read it in just two days and that was with taking notes along the way. I think the language is very fun and it provides a big contrast to the movie, so I think this is a real must-read book. Highly recommend it.

Between Two Fires has a great reputation. Fans of Berserk and The Book of the New Sun recommend it constantly. The promise is grim, hopeless, dark, hell on earth. The back cover copy made me do a backflip.

I struggled through it multiple times.

Every eighty pages or so something interesting happens. A demonic statue sequence. A sudden violent miracle that feels like the book will change course, but, then it goes right back to three characters walking across Europe. A European wasteland that feels just like regular Europe.

The demonic forces have no staying power. The horror never feels horrific. It just felt like things happened but nothing matters.

I did not find the three main characters compelling except for Delphine. Individual scenes of high demonism occur but the plot does not move. No stain of evil sticks to the world. No dread drives the pages forward.

This book has a big following. If you love fantasy you will probably get more mileage. I am coming to terms that I am not a fantasy reader. The exceptions I like are just exceptions. Between Two Fires was sadly boring.

I came to Neonomicon as a big Lovecraft fan, reading it right on the heels of From Hell and as preparation for Providence (about which I’ve heard nothing but amazing things).

It's a solid 3.5-stars.

It’s a fun, quick read, you could knock it out over two cups of coffee on a morning, but at no point did I think I was reading a great comic.

The artwork is just bland. It looks like every other Avatar Press comic I’ve read (Crossed and The Boys). There’s no depth or distinct style to it. It’s flat. It’s easy to look at and follow, sure, but nothing is enticing, atmospheric, or memorable about the visuals.

The opening issue, the setup, the allusions to Lovecraft, the literary analysis from the characters, the mystery of the drugs and the FBI agents, is genuinely fun. The wrap-up in the final issue is almost as good, getting back into those deeper conversations about what it all means. For a Lovecraft fan, this is a very good Lovecraft story.

Issues two and three, however, are a slog. They’re gratuitously violent, with a heavy dose of sexual violence, and I wasn’t interested. I’ve read reviews calling this section horrifying, ghastly, and brain-breakingly disturbing. I never felt that. I yawned my way through it.

For Alan Moore, this feels surface-level. It’s worth a read if you’re deep in the Lovecraft mythos, but don’t go in expecting the depth of From Hell. I’m still very excited to read Providence, but Neonomicon felt more like a checklist of shocking moments than a truly great comic.

When I was younger in my teens and twenties, I loved comic books. I always avoided Alan Moore because he seemed like a grumpy dick. I preferred writers like Grant Morrison and the DC superhero stories. I did not want that kind of negativity in my world. Now I am forty and I think I am kind of a dick myself so I decided I was ready for Alan Moore.

From Hell was a masterpiece from start to finish. I loved every single page. I read the newest edition that is colored in. I cannot recommend it enough. I have seen comparisons between the black and white version and the color version and the color adds so much vibrancy.

I could talk about all the things that make From Hell so engaging. The artistry of the London scenery is at the top of the list. I especially love how they incorporate almost photographic prints of advertising throughout the city. You see them on carriages and on buildings. The effect grows as you watch London morph from a hole of thieves and whores into the modern city we know now.

The plot about Jack the Ripper incorporates all the conspiracies and theories from the past hundred years. These are annotated with incredible depth in the appendix at the end. Anyone who says Alan Moore is taking artistic license does not have a leg to stand on. The book is meticulously researched. Yes, the conclusions sometimes rely on yellow journalism. But that yellow journalism is something what we all share. That is the heart of From Hell. The book is not about the murders. It is not about the characters. It is about the growth of our obsession with the media spectacle of the murders. It is an examination of the first true crime sensation of the modern media world.

The plot and characters feel sprawling. Every few chapters you meet a new character who occupies that space. Everyone gets a fair shake. The female victims are all fleshed out and made human. The detectives and other side characters are treated the same way. They all have a part to play and a moment to shine. They all do something to impact the ending. When the book was over, I wanted to flip back and read it from the beginning. It is exciting to read in the moment and when it is over, you can sit and meditate on it. You keep thinking of new reasons to love it. It makes you think about our modern world in a different way.

Alan Moore has said that in the largest possible sense, the book is about ushering in the twentieth century. It feels like we have a Jack the Ripper every day if not every few hours. But boiling it down to these soft walks on the bloody pavement allows you to examine life as one million tiny moments that add up to one disgusting crime scene. I absolutely loved it. Highly recommended.

A very good premise but never goes into total psycho territory. The setting is the hook but the plot is plodding and there's very few twists or turns.

A very good reference for it's era but clear why it's not a classic.