Matt Danmor’s brush with death uncovers a fantastical truth, plunging him into a world of intrigue and chaos.

With his ex, Silvy, back at his side and Kylah from The Dept. of Fimmigration ever watchful, he stumbles into a plot to undermine civilisation across several worlds. Matt is faced with a simple choice. Believe that everything he sees is a figment of his traumatised imagination, or accept that it is all terrifyingly real.

In which case, he’s got a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Plus a whole hive of demonic zealots to fight.

The multiverse is holding on for a hero.

Trouble is, Matt never got the memo…

‘Fiends In High Places‘ made my wishlist on the title alone. It’s the first book in the ‘The Hipposync Archives‘, a British satirical Urban Fantasy series that was relaunched this year with six books in print. I picked it up hoping it might help fill the void in my reading where the next newly-released Terry Pratchett novel should be.

It’s a series with a lot of potential. The protagonist is a lost and lonely guy. He’s a former med school student at Manchester currently working as a hospital porter in Oxford, after a car crash left him with some cognitive difficulties. His claim that his girlfriend was in the car with him and has disappeared has resulted in a daily dose of dibenzothiazepine because his psychologist is sure the girlfriend is a product of a delusional depression. Then our hero stumbles upon creatures humans shouldn’t be able to see, trying to sacrifice an old man strapped to a roundabout in a children’s playground and his life changes.

This is the kind of stuff that I would normally be eager to read. It’s light, amusing fun with just a hint of a more serious set of messages about how we perceive the world and how we deal with the abnormal.

Yet, a quarter of the way through, I’m setting it aside. Why? Three reasons.

Firstly, the writing style. I feel like I’m drowning in quirky, nerdy, “Hah! bet you didn’t expect that set of images and did you get the obscure Star Trek reference?” similes. The sentences are stuffed with them, like the not-really-cream pumped into doughnutsto make them taste of something other than fat. They’re not bad similies. Some of them are funny in a see-what-an-erudite-but-cool-Sixth-Former-I-am? nerdy way. But there are so many of them that it’s tiring. It slows the pace of the storytelling to a crawl. I can see where the story is going and I’m more interested in getting there than in unravelling yet another quirky simile or unexpected metaphor.

Secondly, I know I’m supposed to like our hero or at least feel sorry for him and hope that his situation will improve but I don’. He’s wet and woeful and self-pitying and, most of all BORING.

Thirdly, the humour doesn’t work for me, possibley because I don’t like our hero. I can see the humour but it stays on the other side of the glass from my emotions and is yet to make me smile. Other readers may get a chuckle a page from the text but it’s not doing anything for me.

So, I’m still looking for a British Urban Fantasy series with a sense of humour as strong as its imagination.