After seeing the cover art and reading the synopsis this book seemed right up my alley. Occultism couopled with crime drama, my cup of tea right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately I could not get into this story as hard as I tried. The writing is all over the place. It’s hard to focus on the story and the plot just does nothing to drag me in.

I will not be finishing this. Perhaps it may be suited for others but for myself it is not.

while the plot was a little hard to follow, I did enjoy the humor. The way this author describes emotions and love felt so accurate and I enjoyed that. Good Read.

DNF - This wasn't a book for me as in, I don't think I'm the target audience. I thought that it would be something other than what it was & for that reason I'm halting my reading as it stands.

Where to start with this tedious nonsense? Well, I suppose a summary of the plot might be a good place. In a rundown housing estate in a ‘typical’ small town in southern England young people are going missing and the local police decide it’s time to investigate. This provides an opportunity, not only to introduce the main protagonist, Detective Chief Inspector Terry Balance, but a whole series of cliched, stereotypical yet increasingly bizarre characters. Balance’s investigating technique appears to be to let them run off their mouths and pontificate on Life, the Universe and Everything, during which he offers a few of his own philosophical titbits, in the hope that something vaguely relevant to the case is revealed. It doesn’t help that the characters are also parroting the author’s obvious political beliefs during their endless diatribes.

Somewhat ironically the words the hapless Balance uses to describe his case, about a third of the way through, could be used equally appropriately to describe this so-called novel: ‘a powerful assemblage of invention, dug out of a box of dead ends, encompassing everything’, apart from an interesting, engaging, well-written story. The last seven words are mine! The most apt way to describe this polemic thinly disguised as drivel is a kind of police procedural cum half-baked ‘state of the nation’ novel written by a hung-over pound-shop Jed Mercurio.

Having said all of that, there is one aspect of this lamentable effort that does deserve praise and suggests the author might have some facility with words: he describes what it is like to fall, and the state of being, in love, remarkably accurately, for which he deservedly earns a bonus star.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC of this book in exchange for a review!

I DNF'd this book at about 40%. I was already not really getting along great with this story, but the questionable way sex workers were discussed and the use of a racial slur for Roma people to describe a character just put a bad taste in my mouth.

The characters are all annoying, which is a shame. This book reminds me of the movie Hot Fuzz crossed with Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot plus a bit of magic. It tries to tackle class divides that plague cities like London. The premise of this story is interesting.

However, it just didn't work for me, and again, the casual racism in 2022 is a no-go for me.

I’m sorry to say that I struggled to finish this book. I couldn't relate to the characters and was not drawn into the story in the first few chapters. I like to get hooked into the storyline quickly or I lose interest. I wasn’t sure where the story was going and nothing happened to hold my interest and make me feel I wanted to keep reading.

There's potential, there's humour I found hard to follow the plot and it fell flat.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tariq Goddard for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for High John the Conqueror coming out November 8, 2022. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

It’s 2016 in Wessex and teens are disappearing from the council estates of a small provincial city. It’s said there’s herbs that contain magical powers. It only grows once every fifty years. A creature guards the herbs and can only be seen in nightmares. There are rumors of rituals performed by the rich and powerful. Even the Queen of England decides to celebrate her birthday in this town.

Two detectives spiral down the rabbit hole into the madness of the town, seeking to solve the mystery of the vanishing teens. 

This definitely wasn’t what I was thinking it was based on the title and description. I was thinking it would be more historical based and scarier with the disappearing teens. I enjoyed the dialogue, but I have to admit I was lost for most of the description. I didn’t really know what was going on. It just seemed like the story was a little disjointed. I’m a mood reader, so I probably wasn’t in the right mood to read it. Overall, I didn’t really enjoy it and it wasn’t a book for me. I would check out other books by this author though.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This sounded like it was right up my street - a twisted and occult influenced police procedural. And I guess that’s what it sort of delivers…. but I’m afraid it just didn’t work for me. I don’t often give up on a book, but I’m afraid I struggled about 2/3 of the way through and then had to abandon.

This isn’t a very constructive review I’m afraid - I just found myself ploughing through what felt like incredibly extraneous content, and ultimately just did not care about where it was going.

In my view High John the Conqueror is a satire. It pokes fun both at the police procedural novel and at the real police. Expect the usual corruption both at police level but also at high levels; people that could be classed as white trash(excuse my political incorrectness), drugs and layers upon layers of conspiracy. All crowned by a little twist that I won't reveal.

But what shines here is the actual writing. Some of the monologues cracked me up and the dialogues are just bonkers!! Just for the exquisiteness of the writing I wouldn't hesitate to pick up another book by Goddard!

After reading the blurb I really thought that I was in for a good read. I was so wrong. This read was like walking through very thick treacle. I nearly gave up several times but I perservered as I thought I owed it to the author. The storyline was so confusing and very complicated. Unfortunately it did not get any better. I really hope other readers will enjoy it more just not for me.
Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

I managed to read a third of the book before realising it just was not a read fro me. It was well written. The main problem I found was understanding the storyline. The more I read the more confused I became. Not a book for me but I am sure it will appeal many readers.

I loved this book, but not as much as I loved Homage to a Firing Squad.
I almost gave it five stars but I felt it just fell short.

This can probably be classed as a crime book.

The phrase 'What's Occurring' regularly spoken by Nessa Jenkins in Gavin and Stacey is a more appropriate description of it than a who-dunnit.

Witty, quite unusual and spell-binding.

I will continue to look out for Tariq's books as they are well-thought out and well-written, and enjoyable.

Thanks to the author and the publisher for an advanced copy for an honest review.

I loved the title of this book and the unique cover art, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get through it and had to DNF it at the 50% mark. It's not a badly written book, but it was a bit meandering and had some pretty inconsistent character work. I think the author was just trying to do too much in the book and/or the editing could have been better. 2.5/5 stars.

This had a lot of promise, but unfortunately I found it very difficult to get through. It's not badly written, and it has enjoyably colourful characterisations and settings, but the style is somewhat all over the place, the plotting uneven, and those colourful characters are bafflingly inconsistent, at times seeming to act at random. I suspect this novel is trying to be too many things at once, and my expectations were consequently too high. I did want a bit of fun, which I got, but I could have done with it being several hundred pages shorter if I was to keep my sense of humour throughout.

I think that a different reader would enjoy this a lot more than I did.

My thanks to Repeater Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

This book was such a mess I couldn't read it. Not to mention, it veered off into far too many personal and political opinions that it felt more like a rant on a soap box masked as a merely okay horror novel.