This was a very hard going read and although I could admire the raw and gritty setting and the fluency of the language, it was very difficult to get into. This is the first thing I have read by Lisa McInerey, which may have been part of the problem, as the book is the third in a series about these Cork based characters.
There was a whole back history to these people that I was not invested in and although some of the events of previous books were explored and dissected a bit in this book, I did not fully understand how their characters had been shaped by those experiences.
I found the rapid change of viewpoint confusing and disrupting and the author seemed to live more in the heads of her characters rather than their lives. There is a particular style of writing in the current generation of Irish writers that is unique to them but can be a bit alienating if it’s not the rhythm of language that you’re familiar with.
This meant I was focusing more on the style of the narrative rather than the story itself. I would probably recommend that readers start with the other two books first before coming straight into this one.
Thank you to Netgalley and John Murray Press for an e ARC of The Rules of Revelation in return for an honest review

Ryan Cusack, once a teenage drug dealer, working for a dangerous and much feared crime boss, returns to Ireland and his home town of Cork to record an album with his band, Lord Urchin. But his past refuses to let him go and there are people who don’t want to see him succeed. Alongside this, Ryan is forced to contend with a number of difficult personal relationships: his father, their neighbour as well as his ex-girlfriend and their young son.

Sections of the book are titled using track titles from the album and are written from Ryan’s perspective: honest, very personal accounts addressed directly to his ex/girlfriend, Karine, these reveal Ryan’s feelings and innermost thoughts, giving the reader an insight into the workings of this mind and motivations.

Woven through Ryan’s story, are the voices of other characters connected to or impacted by Ryan’s previous life and behaviour, highlighting his inability to escape.

All the characters are portrayed as flawed, their vulnerabilities exposed. No-one is perfect. This lends a real and gritty atmosphere to a book that deals with dark issues: addiction to drink and drugs, organised crime, the sex industry and struggles with identity. I felt some of these were not fully developed, particularly Mel’s story, but perhaps we will see this play out in a later book.

There are numerous references to the male dominated world in which the story takes place, however, the reader cannot fail to notice that some of the strongest characters are female and, though they may employ subtler means, their actions have the greatest influence and bring about the most meaningful changes.

I did not initially realise that this was the third Ryan Cusack book and this may be why I found the very beginning a little confusing. Despite this, I don’t feel it was necessary to have read the previous instalments to either understand or enjoy this one.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

'The Rules of Revelation' by Lisa McInterney depicts the impact of Ryan Cusack's returns to his home town as a musician, after leaving it a drug dealer and thug. Described as "a riotous blast of sex, scandal, obsession, love, feminism, gender, music, class and transgression," the novel is narrated from multiple perspectives, all of whom are affected by Ryan's return.

I very much enjoyed McInterney's writing and use of dialect and place. I was drawn to the characters and enjoyed their perspective on events. However, this was not a novel that got under my skin and I'm not sure I would seek out other McInterney novels, despite the fact this is the third in her series of Cork novels.

2.5.

Ryan Cusack is returning to Ireland to record an album with his band Lord Urchin but he has plenty of reasons for being wary of returning to Cork although his ex Karine and young son Diarmaid are not why. Maureen Phelan’s son Jimmy definitely doesn’t want Ryan to return but Maureen will be his guardian angel for reasons of her own. Journalist Georgie has her own reasons for wanting to make his life difficult. Mel joins Ryan’s band and has reasons of her own for animosity towards him. The story is told from multiple perspectives.

First of all, I hadn’t appreciated this is part of a trilogy and this is a case where I think it’s absolutely necessary to read the two preceding books and I think those readers who have will have a different and more positive reaction to the novel than myself. For much of it my head is in a total spin as it seems a baffling, confusing tale of secrets, sex, drugs and gender with some obsession thrown in for good measure. It’s extremely long, way too long if I’m honest as it takes the long route round the River Lee and then plods back again. The constant switching of narrative and the bewildering number of characters added to my dazed confusion and frustration, making me feel dizzy. It lacks much action, it’s definitely character driven but it jumps about so much it’s hard to pin it down. I do like some of the dialogue, some of which is very funny and I love the colourful Irish dialect. I enjoy how 68 year old Maureen reflects on a much changed Ireland since she was a girl and I find her thoughts interesting and thoughtful.

Overall, though I can’t say I enjoy this book much as I find it laborious going and I nearly didn’t finish it. In the words of Led Zeppelin it leaves me ‘Dazed and Confused’.

With thanks to NetGalley and apologies to John Murray Press. I received this arc in return for an honest review.

I found this book very difficult to engage with. The story of Ryan is a promising one but getting there was had work. I found the language difficult to comprehend & had to go over sentences a few times before they made sense. Offered so much but for me, it didn't work.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first book in Lisa McInerney’s Cork series (The Glorious Heresies) but didn’t read the second one. I thought that might be a problem for my embarking on this, her third, but didn’t find it so. She injects just enough of the characters’ back stories for it to stand alone - and in a convincing way, as the action moves along, not with an early potted history chapter that so irritates those who are already up to speed.

I was delighted to see the same characters centre stage - I am thinking here of Ryan, of course, and Karine and Maureen. This is part love story, part social commentary (on past and present Ireland and specifically the city of Cork), part individual struggles with identity, told from multiple characters’ viewpoints. Ryan narrates his thoughts directly to Karine in chapters headed with titles of songs from the band’s album.

‘I thought I needed a good self to sell to the girl I loved because she had to believe that I was a solid fella. A grown man couldn’t be broken. I didn’t understand. I wasn’t broken, but I was in bits. And once you understood them all, that was it. I was complete. A musician, a miscreant, a bad son and a good dad. And yours.’

So, an effective structure here, alternately fast and slow paced according to a character’s mood, with sharp, witty dialogue and characters to invest in. Highly recommended.

Ryan Cusack, musician, polyglot, returns to his hometown of Cork, Ireland, after a time spent in Seoul. He's putting a band together, Lord Urchin, and stands at the brink of success. Returning to Cork brings its challenges, one of those being avoiding a possible death sentence after a time drug dealing for Jimmy Phelan, criminal extraordinaire.

All the characters from the previous two novels come hurtling back into Ryan's life in one way or another, and chaos ensues. Georgie, Mel/Linda, Maureen, Karine. His life is complicated - current relationships, ex relationships, familial set ups and dodgy situations abound. It's messy. It's Irish. It's funny and irreverant.

The chapters are song titles, and I assumed it was Ryan narrating the explanations, but I wasn't sure. It's not an easy read, either. The colloquial Irish means the reader has to make an effort, and it's not always easy to understand. I didn't find it as amusing as the two previous offerings, but this one has its own charm, and it especially has Maureen.

I love Maureen as a character. Ever since she whalloped Georgie's boyfriend over the head and did him in, I've loved her. She talks about Cork being a place for a man, but there is a strong women's theme running throughout this book; there's mention of Mother Baker and the Magdalene laundries for fallen women (of which Maureen is one). It's also about exile, and returning.

There is plenty going on in this novel. It helps to have read the previous books, and I would reccommend it if you are to get the most out of this one.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a prepublished copy in return for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this book but I found it very confusing to track the timeline as well as who was narrating the story. I appreciate the intensity and deep emotions explored but I struggled with the colloquialisms. I’m sure I’ve missed out on the background as I haven’t read the first two books in this trilogy.

I hugely enjoyed the glorious heresies a few years back, and when I realised this was the third in the series I bought the blood miracles and rattled through that last week. Ryan Cusack is a fantastic character - troubled, horny, family problems, horny, interesting relationship with the law, musically talented etc. It’s great to revisit him and the wider range of characters a few years on, but I have to admit that the plot of this book didn’t grab me as much as the first two books - the “Irish goodfellas’ of the blood miracles was just more thrilling than the music business and “past catching up with you” focus of the Rules of Revelation. For me there was too much focus on some of the less interesting characters in the band or back from the mainland.
Having said this, it really picked up in the latter half and the sense of propulsive Irish chaos seemed to be regained. I don’t know how much mileage Ryan has left in him - perhaps he can carry a regular Cork state of the nation update - but I’ll definitely be reading any further visits. Possibly a 3 and a half, rather than a 4

Modern Ireland is brought vividly to life in this intelligent and entertaining novel from Lisa McInerney.

I hate to be negative regarding any author or book, but I'm afraid this is one book I could neither get to grips with or understand the form of writing. Between the Irish prose and the rapid change of character and viewpoint was too confusing for me personally.

I might have got further into this book had I read Lisa McInerey other novels in this trilogy. I found it irritating that even though there were references as to why some of the characters were shaped the way they were, this book alone did not give enough of a back story to understand them. I guess that is my fault for not reading this author's previous books. Then this one might have made more sense to me.

My recommendation would be to read her other two books first if you want to enjoy this novel.

In a close-knit community of Co. Cork, the past is never far behind.

McInerney excels at capturing the funny, quick-fire dialogue between her characters, and the cadence of their inner voice. While she manages to hold the various sub-plots together, the action tends to lag.

My thanks to NetGalley and John Murray Press for the ARC.

This is a real blast; it draws you in gradually then keeps you wanting more. It's not perfect, but it's entertaining and a million years away from the tweeness that's so often a hallmark of books set in Ireland. Having spent a lot of time around Cork and Kerry, I get the location, the language and the rhythm, but perhaps readers outside Ireland might need a little help with the odd Gaeilge word or phrase that pops up now and again. (Yes, I appreciate there's not always another word that will cover it, but a footnote might help.)

In terms of plot, there's not a lot happening, but the journey is a good one as the revelations change the characters and our attitudes towards them. While the central players are lively and detailed, there are a few supporting acts who are sketchily drawn and the reader is left with too many questions about their parts and why they are there at all.

At the finish, I couldn't help but think that in the right hands, The Rules of Revelation would make a tremendous tv series, but casting Ryan will be a tough one!

Having absolutely loved Lisa McInerney's first two novels, I was waiting for this one with a mixture of excitement and trepidation - would it be as good as those? I didn't "settle in" to this book quite as easily as I did with the others, but by the end of it, I was, once again, completely sold. McInerney's character development is astonishingly good - Ryan, Karine and Maureen especially will stay with me for a very long time. Her plot-lines are solid - sometimes complicated but always lifelike and credible. Her writing is excellent, both when it's her character's philosophical musings (both high-brow and low-brow!) and when it's the often-blunt, often-funny, always-realistic dialogue. Just bloody marvellous - another brilliant, brilliant book from an author who has earned a firm place on my favourites.

The Rules of Revelation is a novel about secrets, the past, and the future, as Lisa McInerney delivers the third in her series of books about Cork and one teenage drug dealer now turned musician. Ryan Cusack is back in Ireland, looking to create an album with his new band, but there's still someone in Cork looking for him, wanting him to keep quiet about the past. However, that's not so easy when Georgie is also back in Cork, trying to make Ryan's drug dealing past common knowledge, and another old secret relating to Ryan puts pressure on both his band and his ex-girlfriend. Still, there's one old lady trying to look out for Ryan.

I wasn't sure whether to read The Rules of Revelation, as I enjoyed the previous two books in the series, but I read them in the wrong order (I happened to read The Blood Miracles without knowing it was a sequel) and found it hard to keep track of the plot in the first one. I couldn't remember the other two and wasn't sure how it would go, but I'm glad I did pick this one up, as I found it enjoyable and much easier to get into the world of the characters even when I'd forgotten them than I expected.

The other two felt notable in being more up to date small time gangster stories, and The Rules of Revelation also feels up to date, but less of a gangster narrative this time. Instead, it's a lot more about secrets and scandal, sex and gender, and how to reinvent yourself. It wasn't too hard to distinguish between the different narrators and it worked quite well to bring the stories together, though Georgie's felt like it lost steam partway through. The stakes never felt particularly high, but that suited the fact it isn't a book about gangsters, but about people trying to forge new paths even with their pasts on display.

I did find the book a bit too long, as it does meander and give a lot about what the characters are thinking, but it gripped me more than I expected as I thought I was going to spend most it trying to remember who the characters are. The start had to do quite a lot of 'here's the major things you need to know about this person' seeing as they weren't being introduced from scratch, but I appreciated being given the information even if it was a bit slow.

As someone who likes gangster narratives, but also likes books that address actual modern issues and aren't stuck with a dated mindset, I appreciated The Rules of Revelation for being up to date and looking more at the treatment of female characters, sex, trauma, class, and gender that makes up the fallout from the previous two books. I found it readable without remembering the previous two books, but other people might prefer to feel like they knew the full histories of the characters and ensure they've read the other two books first.

I would not normally be attracted to a novel featuring a city’s criminal underworld, but Mckinerney manages to spin comic and literary gold out of the dross of this unholy alliance of sex, drugs and rock & roll set in Cork. Having relatives there myself and knowing the city well, I can attest to the pitch perfect use of dialogue, if not the seamy lowlife aspect! Although the same cast of characters appear in each of her three novels, it’s not necessary to have read the previous two - but I would advise it, all the same, for the sheer delight of reading the spell-binding prose.

My thanks to NetGalley for this advance copy. The negative reviews attributed to this novel were slightly off putting which made me curious about this writer’s talent as my first Lisa McInerney novel, and for me personally were well founded. Irritating from the start with the Irish prose, scattered with bad language. It was very hard going, not having read the earlier novels in this trilogy.

As said in the synopsis, this is “a riotous blast of sex, scandal, obsession, love, feminism, gender, music, class and transgression”, but not to my taste. Overall a bad choice of novel. Sorry to admit, but I didn’t get very far into this book before giving up in total frustration.

Ireland. Great nationalists, bad mothers and a whole lot of secrets. Ryan Cusack is ready to deliver its soundtrack. Former sex-worker Georgie wants the truth about Ryan's past out there but the journalist has her own agenda. Mel returns from Brexit Britain, ill-equipped to deal with the resurgence of a family scandal. Karine has always been sure of herself, till terrible secret tugs the rug from under her. Maureen has got wind that things are changing, and if anyone's telling the story she wants to make sure it's her.

Unfortunately, this wasn't for me, I couldn't get into it, it didn't flow well and just felt a bit empty in parts.

This was a very hard going read and although I could admire the raw and gritty setting and the fluency of the language, it was very difficult to get into. This is the first thing I have read by Lisa McInerey, which may have been part of the problem, as the book is the third in a series about these Cork based characters. There was a whole back history to these people that I was not invested in and although some of the events of previous books were explored and dissected a bit in this book, I did not fully understand how their characters had been shaped by those experiences. I found the rapid change of viewpoint confusing and disrupting and the author seemed to live more in the heads of her characters rather than their lives. There is a particular style of writing in the current generation of Irish writers that is unique to them but can be a bit alienating if it’s not the rhythm of language that you’re familiar with. This meant I was focusing more on the style of the narrative rather than the story itself. I would probably recommend that readers start with the other two books first before coming straight into this one.

This book is simply not for me. I don’t often give up on a book but I’ve had to on this one. Maybe you have to be Irish to get it?