Fiction Reviews
This Bursted Earth
(2025) Garth Marenghi, Coronet, £20.00, hrdbk, 432 pp, ISBN 978-1-399-72193-6
Horror author Nick Steen is having visions… A sinister Black Steeple; eerie lights in the sky that look like a Catherine wheel but are not remotely a Catherine wheel… Plus a giant skeleton with a moustache. Are they omens? Auguries? Portenderings of things to come? (Spoiler: yes, they are.) For Nick Steen's imagination is bursting out of his brain and threatening to burst in turn the entirety of Stalkford. Can Nick stop the aforesaid bursting? Or have things already slightly burst regardless? Is all that we see or seem merely a dream within an Earth that's been bursted?
Before the action even starts, we get a map of Stalkford (post-leak). This map has a handy “KEY” detailing things such as “Pockets of Evil”, “4th Dimension”, “Church”, “Deconsecrated Church”, “Time Loop”, “Temporal Warp”, “Diner”, “Cemetery/Graveyard”, and “Gibbet”. If some of those weren’t bad enough the map shows several other places you don’t want to visit, like “Bloater’s Cove”, “Ludden”, “Dankton”, “Sodden”, “Vampton”, “Gibbeton”, and “Slaugherton” (which is near the caravan park, maybe best not to stay there). There are also moors and fens and abandoned mines, woods with castles deep inside them, druidic stones and pebbles, not to forget the old Nazi wrecks off the coast and the Victorian Mime Theatre on the old pier.
If the map isn’t enough to put you off continuing, Merenghi starts with an introduction as the Warner of Mankind (or Ladykind) all the way from his flat in Staines. It isn’t a warning as such, as he has warned us in the past, and now it is too late, for the Earth is… (wait for it) Bursted!!!! And then we are off into the first of three parts “Bonelord” to be followed by “The Black Steeple”, and finally “SpeciMen”. But is it over? What do you think, dear reader? There are a few things to get through before you reach the back cover, but too dark, and horrible for me to reveal here. Especially the poem, or is it a song? Shudder!
First there was TerrorTome, then we had Incarcerat, and now we have the final book in the TerrorTome trilogy with This Bursted Earth which gives us a trio of novellas relating the exploits of pulp horror writer Nick Steen as he fights against the forces of darkness in the town of Stalkford and the surrounding area. Proceedings start off with “Bonelord” where he investigates a series of “debonings” which leaves the victims as nothing but a bloody pile of goo with the odd kidney stone lying in the mess. This leads him up against the town’s criminal underbelly and a skeleton in a red cape who somehow has a moustache. Is this dapper baddie a nod to Skullduggery Pleasant, discuss, but even if it isn’t, Marenghi has created a memorable baddie.
“The Black Steeple” follows involving Steen and his wife, Jacinta, on holiday with their very strange son, and an even stranger black steeple which appears and disappears. Arguably, Marenghi saves the best until last with “SpeciMen” where Steen believes he has been abducted by aliens and has the haemorrhoids to proof the anal probing he still has nightmares about. The actual alien abduction idea is a nice change from the outlandish OTT horror we have been subjected to in all three books with Marenghi channelling his inner Clive Barker and throwing in a whole bathroom showroom of kitchen sinks overflowing with every horror trope and cliché imaginable.
As you would expect from a book with the title The Bursted Earth, this is an over the top, outrageous, groan-inducing at times, sort of novel. If Freddie Krueger was the bastard son of a thousand maniacs, then Garth Marenghi is the bastard son of not-quite-as-many British horror writers, a sort of mash-up of the likes of Dennis Wheatley, James Herbert, Guy N. Smith, Shaun Hutson, and the aforementioned Barker, so expect bodies to be pulverised as well as the English language. Marenghi devotees will love this. Newbies, do not pass go until you have read the first two books in the series, unless you want to end up like Dermot O’Leary who proudly boasts that he read them in the wrong order.
Recommended.
Ian Hunter
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