"In Blanow, there is no Ulderun, Prinsess nor lightblades. No defiance nor brave soldiers nor glory deaths . No trees that talk nor birds that die for love . Here is mess, greed, fear, struggle, worry, spite, hate, say one thing and do another, say too little, say too much, steal, argue, lie, hurt. This is what Howul see."

Something terrible has happened, something that destroys our world (it's never specified what exactly has happened, but to be fair, the possibilities are endless). Some people survive, who try to rebuild some form of society, referring to us as the People Before. A man called Howul lives in a small town called Blanow. It's a harsh world, where there is barely enough food for everyone, where people are forbidden to have more than one child (of course many more children are born, who eventually are left behind on the Field of Black, where they presumely die), and disease is rife. Howul helps ill people, at times being able to cure them. Sometimes people arrive from the sea, looking for food, for help, the so called People Outside, who are unceremoniously murdered after arriving by Blanow enforcer. There is no more room, the elders of Blanow say.

"Since he is knee high to a grasshop, everyone tell him books is dangerous. If you read them, they fill your head with dribble. You cannot eat them and when you throw them in the fire, they give bad heat."

Books are seen as the source of all evil in Blanow. It is what brought down the People Before. Books are forbidden, and almost nobody can read or write. Almost nobody. Howul is taught reading and writing by one of the older residents, and is given small notebooks to keep a diary.

Howul has lost his wife to illness years ago, and he has a daughter, Erin. Erin is told by the village elders she will marry one of the village's men, a real bastard, while she's only fourteen years old. Howul cannot let this happen and tries to stop it. He is then locked up, to be executed. The old man who has taught Howul to read and write, helps him escape to the beach and Howul leaves Blanow on a makeshift seacraft.

"Above him the night stars dim and fade. Hims father say that, if you look at them careful, alway you know where you is. He know just where he is. Sick in hims heart, alone, desperate. In deepshite."

That is only the beginning - now the story opens up to a much larger world, to a story that goes deeper than you'd might expect. A story of how power corrupts people, about how people are lied to, about trying to fight back.

The entire book is written in a simplified version of English, that you quickly adjust to as a reader - the most obvious comparison is to Riddley Walker, but I'd say Howul is a much easier read. One of the interesting aspects of the book is that you start to wonder who is telling you this story, has someone written this down, someone else than Howul himself. The book does address this.

"He open pouch and take book and pencil from it. He look for words to write but other words get in the way. Hims brain is a fire. Some time the smoke is so thick that he can see nothing. Some time what he see is so bright and blaze so fierce that he do not dare write it."

The use of such a specific style makes the book's voice unique, but it also means that at times the text is less descriptive than I'd wished it were, it can make locations and characters seem slightly colourless.

In the end, I was surprised how moving the book was, even with the stilted language. If you like your books post-apocalyptic, and harsh but still uniquely British, this is the book for you.

This is certainly unique and memorable. This little book won't be for everyone due to its unusual story and style, but for those that are seeking a possibly challenging read, it might pay off nicely. It will evoke happiness and sadness along the way. I hope the author continues to write.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

If there's one thing I can say about this book, it's that you won't have read another one like it in terms of the use of language and way in which it was told.

This is both a good and bad thing...

If you're a grammar purist, don't even think about picking this up, the language that it's written in shares commonalities with english, but is sufficiently different that you need both a primer for the language, and a glossary of terms, places, and concepts. I think that if a mention of both the primer and glossary was made at the front of the book, not detracting from getting straight into the story, but allowing people the choice of if they want to muddle through things or read the details before embarking, then the book would reach a far wider audience.

The world is brutal, in various places it's graphic in its depiction of things going on, and while there are hints of the world and what it was before, it's never made completely clear, and that's not a bad thing. If everything was explained, it would remove the need to have the language the way it is.

I haven't spoken much about the events of the book, and in part, that's because I think I've got the general gist of what happened, there were several places where I somewhat lost where the story was going, and after finding the details at the back of the book, I wasn't entirely convinced about going back and working through it again.

All of this is painting a reasonably bleak picture of a book that has a vast store of imagination behind it, and I think that that's a problem, because this deserves to be read wide as an example of bold storytelling that defies existing conventions.

Recommendation? If you're going to have a read of this, take a look through the language notes and glossary at the back of the book before you start on it, it'll make things significantly easier to go through. If I were to give it another try, I'm sure I'd find more in there that I'd missed the first time around.

David Shannon brings HOWUL to us like a treatise from the subconscious, and a journey to another perspective and voice. This is engaging, emotional, and creative writing -- really intriguing work.