Hand me my nose ring

 So, we finish up Mick Farren's Renquist Quartet with the really silly in its premise Underland, in which not only do we get to deal with covert Government black ops involved in the paranormal, but Nazi descendants living in the Hollow Earth that fly Flying Saucers. It sounds silly as hell, but the writing makes it work.

We start with Victor being kidnapped in broad daylight by the NSA-FEMA to be taken to their underground bunkers in Virginia. After some torture, creating a new Darklost, and sort of befriending a human mercenary on the payroll, Victor gets voluntold to enter the Hollow Earth to figure out what's going on down there, since communication between the surface and the caverns is increasingly spotty, with one field team vanishing, and another evidently defecting. Requist agrees, and he and Coulson (the human mercenary), Bridewell (the female Darklost created early on), and Lupo head to Ice Station Zebra to enter the Earth. Which leads to a dark, polluted world with advanced technology and a snake cult run by 3rd or 4th generation Nazis. 

Into this mix comes Julia and De Reeske (last seen at the end of Darklost with the head of her rival that also has a shard of Cthulhu in it), and a bunch of "missing link" vampires who retreated into the Earth during the last Ice Age. Which, of course, leads to chaos. 

By the end, all the dangling plot lines from the last two volumes are resolved, and we're left wondering what will come next, which sadly will never be told, since Farren died. 

Really fun book, despite the really absurd premise.

Brokeback Hill

 I can't for the life of me remember why I reserved Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, but I did, and here we go. 

Narrated entirely by Colin, we hear the story of an 18 year old man on his 18th birthday stumbling into a BDSM relationship with a likely older motorcycle enthusiast on Box Hill outside London. The Dom, Ray, never reveals much in the way of personal information to Colin, so we remain in the dark along with Colin on what the impetus was for their 6 year relationship. 

Then, about halfway though, when Colin's family takes him on a 10 day holiday to France on the hovercraft, Ray has an accident and dies. We hear about how Colin tries to find out anything about his lover, only to find that Ray's mother had burned everything he owned, he has no idea how or where Ray's body was disposed of, etc. 

While the descriptions of the relationship were well crafted, and it seems that Colin at least acknowledged the problems, particularly 20 year on as views changed and AIDS happened, it doesn't change the fact that once the central relationship ends, his horrible family life isn't particularly enough to keep interest alive. 

On the other hand, like a lot of gay men, I too have people who more or less turned into ghosts and have questions as to what ever happened to them. 

It's a short read, but if you like books with 20 pages of ecstasy and 100 pages of angst, go for it.