DNF: THE LAMB by Lucy Rose

 DNF: THE LAMB by Lucy Rose. 2025. 9780063374607.

Mother and her elementary aged daughter live in remoted woods of Northern England and murder and eat lost travelers, hikers, and anyone else who wanders in.

I tried getting into this a couple times and just couldn't. Story was moving slowly and there was not enough about the characters to keep me involved. Narrated by the 10-year-old and, therefore, a bit simplistic.

The Lovely Eggs rock band started a facebook group to talk books. A guy on there wrote that he thinks this is a modern masterpiece. That prompted me to try again. I had to bail anyway.

Wait. Are the Lovely Eggs rock? Or punk? There are a very DIY duo.

Horror-Ish: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING by Raymond A. Villareal

 Horror-Ish: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING by Raymond A. Villareal. 2018. 9780316561686.

I find it on the shelf and liked the title and cover artwork. Started out strong. Kinda petered out.

I've not much to say. Working attorney author leaned into some attorney/legal stuff which was a new perspective for me.

Plot: Mysterious dead people in rural New Mexico. Bodies disappear from the morgue. CDC PHD tasked to take a look starts a years long experience of chasing the missing people and figuring out what the hell is happening. 

There are also an FBI guy, a Priest, and other people I don't quite recall.

Overall a fun read. Glad I read it.

Took A Bit: THE BORROWED HILLS by Scott Preston

 THE BORROWED HILLS by Scott Preston, 2024, 9781668050675.

Guy grows up with an incredibly emotionally distant father in the sheep and hill country of Cumbria. His mother up and leaves when he is a child. Guy leaves home to drive long-haul trucks. Gets called back when father is ill and ends up helping his father and a neighbor with destroying all the stock when Foot-and-Mouth outbreak. The work rounding up, killing the sheep, and burning the corpses. 

The Foot-Mouth experience is awful. The work is 24 hours a day and walking through the smoke and soot of burning sheep corpses. Guy finishes that help, gets fed up with father, leaves a couple more years, returns when father dies.

Guy takes on "work" with Neighbor. No pay to speak of. Guy just works and lives on the farm. His life is work, visits to the pub, and poorly hidden infatuation with Neighbor's Wife that Guy knew in school. 

Neighbor joins with a regional crook on a theft of sheep from down South. Things just get worse and worse from there.

Comments:

1. No. Names are not needed. I barely noticed them, really. Just a way to tell the difference among the two primaries and three others.

2. Probably a ton of symbolism and literary methods I never recognized or parsed.

3. Not sure I'd recommend this or not.

BBC: THE MIGHTY ONION by Mark Crilley

THE MIGHTY ONION by Mark Crilley, 2024, 9780316490313.

Read in 2025. I'm way behind on entries.

I follow Crilley on Facebook after really enjoying the AKIKO comic book novels. Crilley was also doing some really neat instructional instructional videos on drawing. 

I read one post in July, 2025 he shared about this comic novel and HOLY SHIT! RADCLIFFE AND MACONIE?!

Yeah. I was very surprised he named two characters after one of my absolute favorite BBC 6 Music shows. 

I've been listening to The Radcliffe and Maconie Show for years, so I couldn't resist sneaking in a little shoutout to them in my MIGHTY ONION series. If you live in the UK, you really ought to tune in to their radio show-- it's delightful!

Anyhoo. Middle reader comic novel about a kid, Elliott, who is convinced he has a sure fire hit idea for a comic book hero. Except he cannot draw worth a damn. He looks for a classmate to be his artist and finds Pamela who has plenty of talent.

Story unfolds where the comic is a hit at school, even the teachers enjoy it. But, Elliott wants total control and clashes with Pamela's artistic renderings. Things happen. The partnership fractures until Elliott realizes he was in the wrong. Partnership unifies and returns to super heroeing.

Fun story with epistolary episodes of back-and-forth notes between the two. Also drawn by the two different characters with rough sketchwork of Elliott and skilled art of Pamela.