Regicide

by Nicholas Royle

Carl meets Annie Risk and falls for her. Hurt by a recent relationship, she resists becoming involved. A chance find offers distraction. Carl stumbles across part of a map to an unknown town. He becomes convinced it represents the city of his dreams, where ice skaters turn quintuple loops and trumpeters hit impossibly high notes.... where Annie Risk will agree to see him again. But if he ever finds himself in the streets on his map, will they turn out to be the land of his dreams or the world of his worst nightmares?

British Fantasy Award winner Nicholas Royle has written a powerful story set in a nightmarish otherworld of fathers and sons, hopes and dreams, love and death.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Weird Fiction, New Weird

238 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 30, 2011

About the author

Nicholas Royle is an English writer. He is the author of seven novels, two novellas and a short story collection. He has edited sixteen anthologies of short stories. A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks. He works as a fiction reviewer for The Independent and the Warwick Review and as an editor for Salt Publishing.

Reviews

[Jack Tripper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of Regicide is a top-tier David Lynchian nightmare, and is easily 4-plus star material in my book. It concerns a man in London named Carl who, after walking a mysterious girl he just met back to her hotel, reality, or his perception of it, begins to break down. He gets totally lost even though he knows that part of London like the back of his hand, and finds himself answering a ringing phone in a seemingly abandoned house in the middle of a strangely quiet, almost desolate neighborhood. After the eerie phone call, things start to get really freaky and weird. Especially once he finds a map lying in the middle of the street, a map that seemingly represents no known city on Earth as far as Carl can tell.

I don't want to give away any more of the plot, as I believe some of the synopses online -- and even the back cover copy -- reveal way too much. I feel I would have enjoyed this more had I not known where it all was going. Just know that reality and unreality are constantly in flux for Carl, and there are a number of creepy-as-hell scenes throughout, as well as quirky, memorable characters that pop in and out of his story. I just felt that the second half of the book became too much of a typical "on the run"-type thriller, and my interest started to wane. Also, anyone who's read or watched their fair share of reality-benders will probably guess where it all is heading.

Still, the "what the hell is going on" mystery of the first half, the relentless pace, and likable, well-drawn main character (whose love of early '80s post-punk endeared him to me almost immediately), were enough to carry me through. In fact, reflecting back on the read (which was 3 weeks ago), I find my enjoyment of the novel has increased since then, which happens occasionally. I'm definitely open to reading more from Royle, as this and the few short stories of his I've come across in horror anthos over the years have all been intriguingly weird and worthwhile.

3.5 Stars

[Gavin Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genuinely creepy, written as a narrative from the main character Carl, this is a constant blur between the ‘real life’ goings on and what is happening in his psyche. Carl meets a girl, walks her back to her hotel, gets a little bit lost then from walking himself back things just start to go weird. Carls perception of reality is broken down bit by bit and his ever more apparent obsessions such as Siouxie Sioux, the 80’s new wave Manchester music scene and the book Un Régicide by French Novelist, Alain Robbe-Grillet that Carl is reading himself (which the title seems to be in homage to) are a constant aswell as Carls ever apparent fears and paranoias. The more that the book goes on the more obvious it is that you are reading somebodys mental breakdown and it is so well done that you have to wonder how much of this could be a catharsis for the author. All in all this is a brilliant piece of writing and the brave move to keep this under 200 pages long when it could have been very easily filled out with what would have only inevitably taken away from the story worked a treat.
Definitely one to sit on your own while working through a bottle of good whiskey with.

[Gav]

Carl meets Annie Risk and falls for for her but Regicide isn’t a love story instead it’s about a map and Carl’s obsession with finding the streets it matches. Though it isn’t really about love or obsession either. What Nicholas Royle does is slowly peels away Carl’s psyche but what it feels like is Carl’s psyche unhinging as you read.

What really stands out is that it gets weird fast and then remains teetering back and forth on the edge of sanity/reality before finally leaping off the deep end. This isn’t an easy at times to follow especially as it’s not clear where Carl ultimately heading.

But through apparent asides and personal revelations Royle is really putting the reader in the same mental space that Carl inhabits and that makes this a haunting and disturbing tale.

It’s not often that books effect me after reading them but this one lingers especially when you start asking how unhinged Carl actually is and when you first started to notice..

Now as this is a meditation on the life of a record store owner as he deals with love and inner demons the way Royle does things is going to effect your connection to Carl. And as this isn’t a straightforward novel in terms of hero or narrative it requires an element of , especially when you’re fast approaching the last few pages with no apparent ending in sight.

But it’s those pages that make, rather than break, Regicide. It’s not a trick ending but it does pull back that final layer that leaves Carl raw in front of the reader.

There are however things that do feel oddities in this strange tale. One is a feeling of being slightly dated or least it being date ambiguous. The plot requires the absence of some pretty everyday technology and then wondering at the beginning why Carl does one thing, even though coherent with later behaviour it jars a little in it’s unexpectedness.

Even though those things stuck in my mind they weren’t enough to pull me out of the story and they are minor considering the effect of the whole book. And it’s nice to see a book that is confident enough to be shorter. Regicide weighs in at under 200 pages and carries more power for that.

Regicide is one of those books that is perfect for dark nights but if you hear a dog bark whilst reading I doubt you’ll want to go to the window to investigate.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've always thoroughly enjoyed Royle's work from his novels to short stories, but I felt this book seemed a game of two halves written to serve a market which wasn't conducive to the story. The first half is interesting and effective: record store owner Carl becomes obsessed by a map he finds which doesn't appear to bear any relation to a known location, whilst his new relationship with Annie Risk progresses in a realistic and viable manner. However, halfway through, both he - and the book - loses their way, as he enters a Zone away from the 'real' world where he is pursued as the king killer of the title. This second half - whilst adequately nightmarish - seemed much at odds with what had gone before and towards the end Royle packs in false ending after false ending undermining credibility. The overall impression being that the book was written for a more visceral horror market than Royle's usually beautiful and contemplative prose veers towards, and it feels shoehorned into that genre much in the manner of the ugly stepsisters in the original versions of Cinderella who cut off their heels to fit the shoe. I also felt it mined an Alice in Wonderland vibe with a trial element which seemed cartoonishly out of place. However, there is still much to enjoy, whilst wishing the second half took a different direction on the map.

[Richard Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I rarely regret reading a book but this was a real 'Well, that's hours of my life I won't get back...' The book has two halves: the first seems to be an extended advert for Camel cigarettes. (If you removed all references to the hero smoking, you'd be left with one short chapter.) The second half is an attempt at Kafka but the writing is clumsy, over-long, never convincing. Finally, just when you think there's a resolution, a ridiculous ending is tacked on. The writer's intention seems to be to make the reader go ' Gasp! It wasn't a dream after all!' but it's the literary equivalent of 'Aargh, the tentacles, they're reaching for me... sglurbbbb.'
I've wasted my time so you don't have to.

[Dylan McMahon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aggravating. The writing is incredibly plain, lacking creativity or metaphor. It is too literal and unimaginative for this kind of surreal horror. Meanwhile the constant references to rare post punk records, cigarettes, and obscure 20th century literature got incredibly annoying. Overall a disappointment. The cover is sick tho

[Alex Sarll]

I picked this up based on a blurb about a man who finds himself haunted by a mysterious city behind the scenes of the city, a city which intrudes at the edgelands and the in-between districts. What I didn't realise is that one of the non-areas used as an example is the elusive Hornsey, and that the protagonist is a massive fan of post-punk obscurities the Passage - both details highly relevant to my interests. However, there also seems to be a significant debt (including the title) to the nouveau roman of Robbe-Grillet et al - a topic on which I am almost wholly ignorant. Perhaps if I were more up on the resonances then I wouldn't have found the book's final section, once the interstitial city is reached, quite so hackneyed. I think in future I may stick to Royle's short stories, where the arresting image isn't at the mercy of the structure to the same degree.

[Sue]

Regicide is a wonderfully strange book. There's a surreal sense to the locations and the interactions between characters. Nicholas Royle creates very engaging characters and intense situations that challenge the reader's sense of reality. This is what I consider slipstream fiction at its best - the reader is pulled into the book with such a strong sense of place and character, then repeatedly challenged to keep up with a rollercoastering plot where nothing is quite what it seems and even the narrator can't always make sense of his own reality.

Highly recommended.

[Jamie Rosen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out quite enjoying this, but as it went on and got more caught up in the dystopia of the City I felt it lost its way. Then the last couple of scenes are a great big waste of paper -- sub-Outer Limits obligatory twist ending that might have worked on a story 1/10th the length of this one.

Sadly, I can't recommend it, despite my early enthusiasm.

[Carl · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slow starting story featuring a protagonist who is just odd enough to make things interesting. As the story builds it turns into a guilt filled psychological fever dream and then decides its time to get really weird. A fun read but less than perfect and muddled in parts. Still well worth your time and effort.

[Hugo · Rating 2 out of 5]

If not for its brevity, this could well have ended up consigned to my Abandoned pile. The beginning is good - solid character work and a creeping sense of unease - but then it drops straight into weird fantasy, and the lack of context is disorienting and irritating, and Royle pulls off a couple of cliched twists near the end that any experienced writer should be ashamed of.

[David Marshall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book I found interesting rather than gripping. Although it does contain elements that might offer some hints of horror, it's really a more philosophical musing on loneliness, guilt and death.

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[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Silent Hill like. I enjoyed it a lot more then I thought I would.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting premise, clunky writing. Couldn't finish it.