Brother is a  difficult novel to review as thanks to some pretty unpleasant and nasty sections, which are outside of my regular reading habits,  however, if you enjoy extreme horror you may well enjoy this unsettling and unforgiving novel. Ironically, when I started it I thought it was a YA novel! The main character was 19 years old, so I was lulled into a false sense of security and when the first victim is tortured and killed very slowly in the first chapter the prospect of a YA read quickly evaporated.

The plot is pretty straight forward, a highly dysfunctional and downright evil family who live in the middle of nowhere in West Virginia kidnap, torture and murder young women. as well as other stuff that  I’m not going to go into, I’ll  just leave that to your imagination. ​

It has to be commended when authors try something new or challenge themselves to write something that is just outside the canon of their previous work.  A good author should grow with every book; they should try to better themselves with each word committed to the page, it doesn't always work, though, sometimes what could have been a fantastic piece of work can be hampered by one or two little niggling factors.  

Duncan P. Bradshaw's Hexagram is a novel of epic proportions, in regards to both the story line and the structural makeup of the story.  This time-spanning novel of ancient rituals and prophecies is certainly massive in its scope when an ancient Incan ritual is rudely interrupted it sets in motion a series of interlinked events that take in many of the histories most notorious events that threaten to destroy the very fabric of our existence.  ​

​In horror fiction, there are varying shades of light and dark, not only within the genre as a whole but also within individual titles.  Some books are inherently dark throughout their length, while others balance out the dark with a light and happy ending, and others such as The Grieving Stones from Gary McMahon lurk in shadows between the dark and light.  Gary's previous work has, in the main had both feet firmly planted in the dark, he is not an author you should ever turn to if you are looking for a cosy horror story where the hero wins the damsel in distress and beats the bad guy.  His books are a dark disquisition on the deepest and most honest facets of the human condition.  His books have the power to rip out your heart and crush it on the page. His novel The End is one of only a select few books that have had the power to leave me in tears at the book's conclusion.  The Grieving Stones is his latest novella and while it treads familiar McMahon shadowy avenues of the human condition it also breaks new ground regarding resolution and consequences.......