Just finished this one last night and wrote a review as soon as I was conscious this morning. This is a must read for everybody, except small children.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ragged-Claws-The-Book-Colossus-ebook/dp/B00J16F5TA
The world John Collick has created is not one the reader can ever get to know. It is as limitless as the imagination of its author. There are none of the familiar physical features of our world, not even of our fantasy worlds. Take a medieval vision of Hell, give it the Spielberg treatment, remove all the laws of physics you ever learnt at school, people it with the monsters you used to draw when you were ten, and you’re ready to dive in. Take the cover illustration. That isn’t a fanciful image produced by a cover artist who hasn’t got a clue what the book is about—that weird white thing is one of the central characters, and a very accurate portrait it is too. I’m not even going to begin to describe the story; suffice it to say it’s like nothing on earth.
I must admit that I hesitated slightly at the opening scenes of this latest episode in Max and Abby explore the end of time. How many fantasy novels have I read that begin with the hero leaping out of the window of an inn in a low-life quarter of a scruffy town to rescue a damsel in distress? How often does the hero end up with a long-term girlfriend or eternally grateful prince/priest/mage in tow after saving her/him from ruffians? However, I should not have doubted: Ragged Claws is anything but predictable. After only a few paragraphs we part company with the trope, and Max and Abby are plunged into the next absolutely mind-boggling leg of their journey in the company of two enigmatic characters who grow more and more unsettling as the story progresses.
This is a wonderful book, a massive canvas of purple and blood red skies, oceans of liquid metal, decomposing cities full of fear and squalor inside the body of God (yup, that’s right), nightmarish beings, and exquisite beauty. It isn’t for the squeamish either. Be prepared to be splattered with blood, red and white, and fountains of tripes and engine oil. One of my favourite images is of a beach on the edge of a sea of some molten metal, composed of minute cogwheels from the millions of dead machines and war engines lying at the bottom of the ocean. It is a vividly visual book, deep blues and purples shot through with the artificial lights of a dying universe, filled with crumbling skyscrapers miles and miles high built from rusting girders or filthy green glass, and the furtive, almost invisible remnants of humanity.
Every good story has a quest, and Max and Abby’s is not to defeat evil and bring back the good old status quo. It is no less than to ensure that the construction of God is completed so that he (it?) can carry humanity through the god door and into the next universe before this one flickers and dies.
This is a very strange and beautiful book, and I can’t recommend it highly enough to readers who appreciate the world of fantasy comics, early sci-fi films, or simply being carried along on rusty tracks faster than the fastest fighter jet and tossed into a universe of immense empty darkness, and savage metal claws.
Jane Dougherty Writes 