Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome: Dreamweaver, Doomsage, Sunday Times bestseller

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Eventually, he set off to see where she’d got to, knocked on Strain’s door…then he disappeared, too.

Can he and Roz, his frequently incorrect female editor, hunt down these incarnate denizens of Nick’s rampaging imaginata before they destroy Stalkford, outer Stalkford and possibly slightly further? Had she stumbled, unknowingly, into an as-yet-unwritten horror novel of Nick’s own subconscious making?So finally, it almost adds up,’ Nick said, racing against time to work out precisely what it almost added up to. Originally excised from the book and offensive to most readers' sensibilities, it is now boldly reintegrated into the main text of this pleather-bound edition. He reached into the glove compartment and drew out some extra rounds for his revolver, plus some Murray mints. So when the TV concept is replicated for a pulp paper-back horror some 18 years later, it was an unexpected but very welcomed surprise!

The second and third segments are somewhat closer to actual stories with surreal, farcical metafictional overlays that mostly work, but I think they suffer from the overall superiority of the first bit. Beware before partaking in these twisted delights, travelers, and don't forget to bring a change of shorts. Presumably then something happened to him inside the house, which stopped him coming out again alive, because he was never seen again. Fans of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace will inevitably hear his unique voice while reading, but for a proper experience that follows naturally from the TV show format, you should listen to this one.Garth is obviously not that author, but the result is that the plots aren’t as boring or perplexing as they might be were he to try something genuinely “revolutionary”. Admittedly, some of the descriptive passages felt tedious at times, but they support the hooks and the comebacks to a lot of ongoing jokes, as well as keeping the main characters present in your mind’s eye. Of course, in the beginning, you'll wonder what the hell that reference was possibly about - but keep reading. Nick Steen is the author of hundreds of horror books, when his storylines and ideas escape his mind and start wreaking havoc, Nick along with his editor Rox must find a way to fight back. He drew his former driving instructor’s Beretta 70 revolver, which he’d been given as a prize for passing, from the holster beneath his dressing gown (he’d come out in his pyjamas) and yanked open the Peugeot’s door.

The humour is always grounded in the absurdity of both the story itself and egomaniacal nature of the persona writing it. The humour works on so many levels and reaches a form of genius and it genuinely pushes some limits in the horror genre (immediately deflated by asides and arguments about editing). When dealing with such an innovative author the only question it is sensible, nay permissible, to ask is whether this is the greatest book ever written in the English language? I initially struggled to find the sweet spot of the rhythm to his writing style which is hand-in-glove with the sardonic, sarcastic, at-times-puerile, clever humour utilised almost constantly. Those wiper blades may or may not remain an issue and there’s plenty more car battery talk to sink your teeth into in the full book (but not literally, you’ll ruin the genuine foil embossed book cover).The final scenario with its recursive dark alter egos really left me wanting more and I really hope this is not the last we see of this fictional dark genius. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It’s just as good as the tv show and I frequently found myself laughing out loud, it’s everything a fan of Garth Marenghi could want and I’d highly recommend it. First introduced in the short-lived cult classic Garth Marenghi's Darkplace almost twenty years ago, Marenghi's pretentiously hackneyed mind was always the main attraction.

I got the audio book read by Garth himself, and I am glad I own it, as his pompous attitude reflects perfectly with the main character.

The audiobook seems the ideal way to experience it, with Marenghi’s - shall we say - unique style of acting to enhance the grisly details. She may well have whispered, ‘I’ll miss you,’ once I’d gone, but I couldn’t hear that from where I was, and as this is first-person narration and therefore not omniscient, we just won’t know. Collectively, they put (torn and bloody) flesh on the bones of Marenghi’s leaden prose, and added duff, dopey theatricality to the duff, dopey writing that formed the show’s raw material. Beautifully bonkers, with a razor-sharp understanding of the genre, Garth Marenghi's prose is schlocky, corny, cliché-ridden and over-written.