The Damned by Tarn RichardsonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
In THE DAMNED Tarn Richardson brings us a devilish melange of historical fiction, thriller and horror, all blended together with copious amounts of gore against the backdrop of the early days of the First World War. Richardson's writing is fluid and literary, but without pretensions, and the plot is as action-packed as any airport novel, or even graphic novel (I am pretty sure there are nods to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's fabulous Watchmen in the story's denouement, which I don't think I imagined). The protagonist, Poldek Tacit, an embattled and flawed Catholic Inquisitor, is a powerful creation, but he would be weaker without the rich cast of supporting players. Here there are strong, sexual women, pompous cardinals, altruistic and pious priests and nuns, English Tommies, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity while their thoughtless, callous military leaders send them onward to certain death. Richardson's descriptive prose paints equally vivid images of mud-clogged trenches as sun-drenched Italian fields glimpsed during flashbacks into Tacit's troubled past. THE DAMNED is a truly genre-busting novel, with characters to root for and villains to despise. Highly recommended. There are two more books in the DARKEST HAND series, so this can be seen as the first course in what I am sure will be a delicious and wholly satisfying, if somewhat dark, angst-filled and gore-splattered, meal.
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