Himmelstrand

Gave up at 21%.

I have been waiting for a new John Ajvide Lindqvist book for a long time. A Swedish friend of mine had suggested that this one might not not come out in the UK because she thought so many of the references were so Sweden specific they might not survive the rendition into English. I'm happy to report that this isn't the case. Either it was an unfounded fear, or the translator has done a superb job. Yes, I'd never heard of Peter Himmelstrand prior to reading this, but I don't feel I was missing anything. In fact, most of the appeal of the book is in its strangeness and foreignness. The characters are well drawn with convincingly mundane backstories, but the world they find themselves in is abstract and mysterious. It's a surreal nightmare, where logic and reason don't seem to apply, and fresh horrors arrive out of nowhere. I kind of hope that future volumes ( a sequel is already out in Sweden, I believe) don't explain too much of what is going on - it's the random, unexplained nature of the world the stranded campers find themselves in that gives the book the edgy unsettling quality it has. Another hit for Mr Lindqvist.