So don’t think of what follows as ‘spoilers,’ but as soft-edged shadows of the cyclopean nightmares within this book’s pages. The problem is that it's also clear from those sketches why an actual Marenghi book would be unreadable as a result. The publication of Incarcerat is scheduled for 31st October 2023, and the book tour will follow shortly after. PORTENTUM: In an escalating series of dangerous experiments, Nulltec tries to unleash and harness Nick’s psychic powers.

I can say this much on this blurb (and no more) - not before Nick Steen has faced the ultimate monster. I think if you treated this as a collection of short stories and had about a two week gap between segments, it would be a good time. Really though, Incarcerat was as funny and absurd as expected, the only issue is that a parody of this type of writing can occasionally become a bit tiresome as it indulges in the vices it parodies. The authorial voice of this ridiculously incompetent man is still there and recognisable from the source material. I can see why Holness might find it a bit Vulgar to just "play the hits" and recite the catchphrases.It was so excellently written in Garth's classic style and Matthew Holness' brilliance shines through - I mean, whoever he is.

It perhaps gets a little overstuffed with ideas in a couple of places, but its worth it for the middle novella, which is an astonishingly good (and very funny) gothic / folk horror pisstake. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Unlike the first, I have yet to have time to listen to the audiobook for this instalment, but I hope so when I reread it in the future. As a huge fan of the original series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace and it's accompanying sister series Man To Man With Dean Learner I'm a huge fan of the character and his ludicrous tropes and writing choices, which are in fact a key part of the original joke.

The story is competently told and nicely plotted with great insight into the multiple layers of Marenghi's character and family life.

AND the fact that Garth Marenghi thought it was okay to put that IN a script as an opening line is even funnier. I mean I'm giving this five stars because it's the best, bad horror writing you will ever enjoy (well, I say enjoy), not that it really matters because as Garth himself says at the end of the audiobook he doesn't care how people rate or review his books. The three tales are joyously distinct this time around and Garth’s stabs at gothic horror and dream-infesting boogeymen (a priapic twist on Candyman and Freddy Krueger) are particularly fun experiences. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Will Nick regain control of his faculties, and crucially his particulars, before everyone, including his erstwhile editor Roz, dies horribly?

This tome (a compilation of three novellas) is particularly clever in that the meta literary stylings go deeper and further back than ever before in Garth's oeuvre. Yes, it can be mind-boggling how Marenghi can embed a story written by one of his characters within the main narrative. The end result was very finely tuned to be both listenable AND recognisable as Marenghi's work - The genre and the gags were evenly delivered. Garth Marenghi's Incarcerat takes another deep dive into the disturbing realities of our world…only in an absurdly warped sense of humour. It’s Marenghi’s sense of plotting, his ear for dialog, and his use of tropes that are so deliciously broken.

But this second book feels much more like a man with a story to tell than a comedian trying to make me laugh. Much of the humour here comes from how overwritten it is rather than actual joke or parody, which eventually loses it's humour once you're past the halfway mark. But this Marenghi instalment took advantage of it to be a doorstopper and even more wildly hilarious!Oh, and one more thing: If we can have a huge amount of time devoted to Roz - can we please have some input from one of the finest characters in Merenghi's world; Thornton Reed?