There are big books and big books. This week we cover a HUGE book.

China Miéville is the guest. The award-winning author of Perdido Street Station, Embassytown, The City & the City, and other modern speculative classics – and he’s back with a book two decades in the making.

The Rouse is an epic of true proportions, a 1300-page saga of the twentieth century, rife with war, atrocity, tragedy, and a secret war fought with ghosts?? That’s the premise but it barely touches the sides of this ginormous undertaking.

This is not just a conversation, it’s a search for answers – in which we plumb the personal, political, and supernatural influences behind this story of shady military conspiracy and ghosts of many strange kinds.

I hope you enjoy, ‘cos I worked my ass off for this one!

Other books mentioned:

• King Rat (1999), by China Miéville
• The City & The City (2009), by China Miéville
• Ducks, Newburyport (2019), by Lucy Ellman
• Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), by Thomas Pyncheon
• Against the Day (2006), by Thomas Pyncheon
• House of Leaves (2000), by Mark Z. Danielewski
• “The Ash Tree” (1904), by M.R. James
• A Dark Corner (1971), by Celia Dale

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James Tynion IV is a modern master of the horror comic. He’s the maniac behind so many contemporary classic series, but perhaps none are such pop-culture behemoths as Something is Killing the Children.

I mean… with a title like that, how could it fail?

With the new omnibus collection out right now, and an in-world novel (co-authored with Kiersten White) coming in October, I thought now was a good time to get James on the show and talk monsters, masks, mythology and the most baddass hero in graphic novels.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Woods (2014-2017), by James Tynion IV
• Memetic (2014-2015), by James Tynion IV
• Hide (2022), by Kiersten White
• At the Mountains of Madness (2019), by Gau Tenabe
• Monster (1994-2001), by Naoki Urusawa

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Wendig is here!! The man my wife refers to as “Chuck Apples” (as opposed to “Chuck Fight Club) is back to talk about his most fun, yet nastiest book to date. The Calamities is what would happen if The Godfather had cenobites, if Logan Roy had made a pact with monsters, it prompts me to ask the questions “who’s your favourite demon Chuck?”

That kinda book.

Chuck tells us how the study of demonology has underpinned almost his entire writing career. We discuss the increasingly tight links between his novels, the influence of D&D structure, and the challenge of making the reader care about some of the worst-behaved characters in the world.

And I drop the C-bomb for the first time on air. That damn baby deserves it.  

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• Staircase in the Woods (2024), by Chuck Wendig
• Daytide (2026), by Chris Panatier
• The Three Body Problem (2008), by Cixin Liu
• Books of Blood (1984-88), by Clive Barker
• Cabal (1988), by Clive Barker
• Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology (2021), by Ed Simon
• Blacktail (2026), by Scott Hawkins

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No one let the Pope listen to this week’s episode.

Our guest is Natasha Pulley, genre-defying author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Bedlam Stacks, The Kingdoms, and now, in the The Salt King she pits the Vatican and Catholic Doctrine against something much, much older, lurking in the salt mines of the world.

It leads us to a conversation about faith of many kinds, about reality-adjacent fiction, the horrid truth of Sodom and Gomorrah, dark representations of the Catholic Church, and the challenge of fusing folk horror and global apocalypse.

There are also some holy dick pics.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• Gentle Things (2026), by Danielle Giles
• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2024), by Susanna Clarke
• The Hill in the Dark Grove (2026), by Liam Higginson
• The Name of the Rose (1980), by Umberto Eco
• Foundation (1951), by Isaac Asimov
• A Canticle for Liebowitz (1959), by Walter M. Miller Jr
• Father Alberto and the Flying Girl (2026), by Timothy X Atack

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Happy Friday! Let’s talk about the end of the world.

Our guest is Ben Bradford, creator and host of Are We Doomed? – the new hit podcast examining the existential risks facing humanity.

“Dammit Neil”, I hear you say “Are we not suffering enough.” To you I reply … sure, Ben and I make talk nukes and rogue AI, climate change and supervolcanoes, but believe me, you’ll feel more optimistic at the end of this episode!

Somehow, the general answer to Are We Doomed seems to be “no, not if we don’t want to be.” So have faith, listen, and have a great weekend.

Enjoy!

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Finally, we dare venture to the darkest land of all. Wales!

After years of avoiding the terror of the Valleys, Liam Higginson takes us to The Hill in the Dark Grove – his debut novel of isolation, folk-memory, and things unearthed from the soil of a mountain farm.

We talk about the link between folklore and nationalism, about marriage and madness (not linked) and why it’s always men who go barmy in these situations.

This is up there with my favourite books of the year.

Enjoy!

Other books mentioned:

• The Shining (1977), by Stephen King
• Incidents Around the House (2024), by Josh Malerman
• The Salt King (2026), by Natasha Pulley
• Small Gods (1992), by Terry Pratchett
• Meet Me at the Surface (2024), by Jodie Matthews
• Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil (1998), by Avram Davison and Grania Davis
• North Woods (2023), by Daniel Mason
• Country People (2026), by Daniel Mason

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This may be my scariest episode ever!

We’ve covered non-fiction before, but rarely is the truth more frightening than the stories we tell. This week it just might be… cos Annie Jacobsen is here with Biological War: A Scenario.

It unveils a narrative of speculative reality, in which an engineered pathogen escapes a lab, and runs rampant through our civilisation. Cities fall, millions die, the lights go out.

I dared myself to read it. I dare you to listen to Annie tell us about her research, and the stuff she found that scares the hell out of her.

Enjoy (sort of!)

Other books mentioned:

• Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024), by Annie Jacobsen
• “A Modest Proposal” (1729), by Jonathan Swift
• World War Z (2006), by Max Brooks
• The Deluge (2023), by Stephen Markley
• A Brief History of the Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters (2021), by Andrew H. Knoll

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In our main Wolves of the Calla Deep Dive, we came within touching distance of the Dark Tower’s biggest secret yet. Chris doesn’t know what to think, which is just where Nat and I want him.

 So we stuck around to talk in full-spoiler terms about all the stuff Chris is yet to discover, and our own thoughts on books to come, on choice lines from Calla, and just what that reveal in the final pages really means for the nature of Roland’s world.

Enjoy. But for your father’s sake Do Not Listen if you haven’t read the entire Dark Tower saga!!

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Hallelujah, come commala, we’re back together!

Finally, after stopping for side missions with Jack Sawyer, and a pair of stories of Roland’s younger days, we’re back in Midworld’s here-and-now to push on towards the Dark Tower. It’s time for Wolves of the Calla, a novel of old friends, new enemies…and a quite surprising amount of boobs.

This is also where certain things start to get REAL!! We’re on the precipice of great discovery and you can hear Chris Panatier try to deal with it.

Enjoy folken!

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Time for a horrid history lesson.

Daniell Giles is the author of medieval gothic Mere (2025), and the brand-new Restoration horror-show, Gentle Things. In this episode she talks about the nightmare of research, the similarities between the 1660s and our own sh**ty decade, and how much we both love Sarah Waters.

But mostly it’s a guided tour of a dirty period in history, of murder, misogyny and… medicinal cannibalism!

Yes, it’s a thing, and it’s nasty.

Enjoy

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I hope you have your headtorch this week – cos we’re going to some deep, dark places.

Megan Bontrager’s debut novel, The Sea Hides its Dead, is a story of a mysterious cave, an unprepared expedition, and the monstrous secrets they find within. It’s shadowed by Lovecraft, it has big freaky monsters, and a whole deep mythology to unpick.

In short it’s my kinda story. The exact level of geekery I like to discuss.

Discuss we do. Meghan and I talk about video game inspirations, global sea cults, monsters and mysteries in The Bible, and worst of all – sleazy academics.

Plus, I give my honest opinion on spelunking! (It’s not favourable)

Enjoy

Other books mentioned:

• The Eye of Ouroboros (2024), by Megan Bontrager
• The Caretaker (2026), by Marcus Kliewer
• The Fisherman (2017), by John Langan
• The Ruins (2006), by Scott Smith
• Babylon, South Dakota (2026), by Tom Lin
• The Faceless Thing We Adore (2025), by Hester Steel

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