Gogmagog The First Chronicle of Ludwich

Steve Beard, Jeff Noon — 2024

From the highly celebrated and award-winning authors Jeff Noon and Steve Beard comes Gogmagog, the first book in adventurous duology, perfect for fans of Mervyn Peake. Gogmagog tells the story of an epic journey through the sixty-mile long ghost of a dragon. We travel by boat, a rickety steam launch captained by Cady Meade, a veteran taxi pilot on the river Nysis. In her heyday she carried people and goods from the thriving seaports of the estuary into Ludwich, the capital city. But that was years ago. Now she’s drunk, holed up in a rundown seaside resort, telling her bawdy tales for shots of rum. All that’s about to change, when two strangers seek her out, asking for transport, one of whom – a young girl – is very ill, and in great danger. The other, an artificial being of singular character, has secrets hidden inside his crystal skull. And so begins the voyage of the Juniper. The Nysis is unlike any other river. Mysteries unfold with each port of call. Not many can navigate these channels, not many know of its whirlpools and sandbanks, and of the ravenous creatures that lurk beneath the surface. Cady used to have the necessary knowledge, and the powers of spectral navigation. But her glory days are well behind her now. This might well be her final journey. File Under: Fantasy [ Peake Fantasy | Secret Mythologies | Take Me to the River | Another London ]

Reviews

Colleen@mirificmoxie

Dec 29, 2024

2.5 Stars

*A crude story with many elements that sounded exciting but were tedious in their execution*

This book was not originally on my radar, but I liked that the main character was a feisty old woman. I seriously needed a break from all the angsty teens stuffing the fantasy genre.

Sadly, I was utterly bored with this book. There was the typical issue with coauthored books being disjointed. But mostly it came down to absolutely nothing about the story grabbing my attention. Which sounds crazy considering this is a story about a crotchety immortal woman ferrying some mysterious passengers through the ghost of a giant dragon. I’m usually all for bizarre stories, but I struggled so hard to focus on this book. I can’t even pinpoint why this story didn’t capture my attention, but Gogmagog was to my brain as geography class is to most seventh graders. Also, if there was any link to the Gogmagog of mythology, I missed it. Which, to be fair, is entirely possible because of how bored I was with the story.

My brain is laboring to even think of content for this review, because I didn’t take a single note while reading Gogmagog. Nothing about it seemed noteworthy. Honestly, I have already forgotten most of the plot and world-building. The only thing that I vividly remember was all the excrement. If you are one of those people who complain that people in books never go to the bathroom, then this is the book for you. Because not only will you be informed of every trip to the necessary, you will be forcibly regaled with every detail of the frequency, color, consistency of every piss and shit the characters take all described in the unabashed crude language expected of a dockworker.

But it really says it all, that the only thing I remember about this book is the shit.

RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 2 Stars
Writing Style: 2 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 2 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 2 Stars
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 3 Stars