GOTHIC | Daily Mail Online

SOOT

by Dan Vyleta (W&N £18.99, 560 pp)

A strange mutation is sweeping the Victorian world. People don’t so much emote as emit: clouds of scented smoke that are brewed in newly evolved glands and reveal true feelings. 

Now a culture war rages: some want to embrace the smoke, others to control it. Either way, the race is on to discover its secrets.

Daringly conceived and brilliantly executed, Soot is the follow-up to Smoke and just as gripping — an immersive epic with a high-gothic tang, imperial reach and filigree steampunk detailing. 

From Nottinghamshire coalfields to Himalayan glaciers, a cast of vivid characters draws us across this astonishing new/old landscape where the smoke has changed everything except for the good and evil inside us.

YOU LET ME IN

by Camilla Bruce (Bantam Press £14.99, 272 pp)

When novelist Cassandra Tipp dies, she sets her descendants a test: if you really want my legacy, read my last story. 

And what a story she tells: of growing up an outsider who finds solace, companionship and love from the fairies, and one in particular called Pepper-Man.

Disaster follows her through life. Her husband is found dismembered in the woods and her brother commits suicide after murdering their father. Her explanation? It’s the fairies. Do we believe her? Well, kind of.

In this storytelling masterclass, everything is inverted. The cold light of reason seems rather flimsy, a grasping of straws, and it’s the dim fairy world of twigs and moss that has real, visceral substance.

NVK

by Temple Drake (Titan Books £8.99, 320 pp)

Zhang is an elegant Chinese yuppie; Naemi an exotic beauty from Finland. When they meet in a Shanghai nightclub, lust turns into something far, far stronger… 

Written by award-winning author Rupert Thomson under a pen name, NVK brings together polar opposites to create a cool brew of sex, glamour and danger.

It’s not just East meeting West: it’s myth invading reality, the supernatural penetrating the physical, ancient mysteries stalking the futuristic streets of Shanghai. 

Better still, we’re taken inside the head of the restless Naemi, a true femme fatale, and feel what it’s like to have needs that can never be met and hunger that can never be assuaged.