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Tuesday 27 April 2010

My Book of the Month - April (plus contest)

Over the weekend I was looking back through some other book blogs and was reminded that at the end of 2009 many bloggers were finding it very difficult to name their Top 10 books of the year. With this in mind, I have decided that at the end of each month I will name a Book Zone Book of the Month. This will be a book that has had its official publication date during that month. So to kick everything off, my Book of the Month for April 2010 is Mortlock by Jon Mayhew.


This was not an easy choice as I have read many really good books that have been published this month. In the end I had a shortlist of Crawlers by Sam Enthoven, MeZolith by Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank and Mortlock by Jon Mayhew. Anyone who has been lucky enough to have read all three of these will know what a difficult choice this was, but somehow Mortlock is the book that has stuck in my mind the most. It has everything I would look for in a horror story - nail-biting scenes of extreme horror featuring terrifying supernatural creatures, a fast paced plot, thoroughly believable main characters, a well imagined Victorian London setting vividly described, and his creepiest creation of all - Lorenzo's Incredible Circus. My "To Be Read" pile is invariably huge but I have already made the time to re-read this book and it was just as good the second time around.

~~~
And now you have a chance to win a signed copy of the book. Thanks to the generous people at Bloomsbury I have two signed copies of Mortlock up for grabs. In order to be in with a chance of winning one of these I want you to get creative. Mortlock contains a number of characters with great Victorian names (Sebastian Mortlock, Thurlough Corvis and Edwin Chrimes are all names that Dickens himself could have used in his books), so all you have to do is:

Come up with your own name for a character that would sit well in a Victorian gothic story like Mortlock and leave it as a comment on this blog post. Please also include your email address or twitter name.

The first two names drawn at random after the closing date will win a copy of this gorgeous book. Deadline for your comments is 8pm Friday 30th April. This contest is open to UK residents only.

Terms and conditions

Contest open to UK entrants only.
I will not be held responsible for items lost in the mail.
I hold the right to end a contest before its original deadline without any prior notice.
I hold the right to disqualify any entry as I see fit.

I will contact winning entrants for their postal address following the close of the competition. Winners have 48 hours to reply. Failure to do so in this time will result in another winner being randomly selected.


19 comments:

  1. Doonsbury Withervine
    @morphic43

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jocelyn de Hawthrone
    @treyeathlete

    ReplyDelete
  3. Persimmon Cracklewreath @CazApr1

    ReplyDelete
  4. Elvira Cantham

    @luckyduckyme

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  5. OMG I can't stop laughing now... that just popped into my head.

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  6. I am not from the UK but I'll be glad to share a name for a Victorian Era character.

    Alexander LeCroix

    @halkerstone, Peregrine Sebastapol is a catchy name. I would love to see a character with that name.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jonas Merryweather @ali991

    ReplyDelete
  8. belladonna briar

    @andiecaz on twitter

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi
    I'm Piperty on Twitter

    My name would be Rotunda Piggerswell

    ReplyDelete
  10. The names I would pick would be Sir Malbert Bentwhistle or little Albie Mulligan

    Great competition for a great book


    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  11. Forgot to say I'm @Pagecrawler on Twitter
    :0)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Maximillon whistleback

    @Coistycat

    ReplyDelete
  13. Barnacle Crump. I just had to join in!

    ReplyDelete