Overview: A vigilante ghost stalks the East End of London. Before the lightning, he was just a boy, now he’s ready for revenge. The Book of Thunder and Lightning is a Gothic mashup of Oliver Twist and Top Boy, a love letter to London, wrapped up in a mind-bending ghost story.

Verdict: In 1888, unlucky Tom Baxter is thrown into a world of toxic masculinity, where his only weapon is his imagination. But at least he’s got his crew, a gang of misfits just like him, to back him up. As lightning stretches across time and space to a gritty 21st-century London, history is repeating itself.

Tom has the chance to save his modern-day twin, with help from a reluctant hero, a posh girl from Chelsea, and a donkey called Dorris. His luck has to change sometime, right?

In what has fast become my favorite novel of the year, this uniquely intriguing, enrapturing and beguiling new take on what is a witty Victorian/Dickensian tale, is pure dynamite prose from the very first few pages onwards.

Told through the eyes of Tom, a ghost from 1888, we read along as he soon befriends, and subsequently teams up with a gang of misfits just like himself, such as an English teacher and, believe it or not a donkey called Dorris, to drive the storyline forward along its spooky path into a world left far behind in history, and yet in which, once we are embedded, we, the reader instantly find hard to let go of.

But aside from all that, as it is the core of what drives the plot, sure, this book has a building narrative from the very off that engages your curiosity and strives only to fuel your vicarious imagination with a storytelling that is as intriguing propellant as it is infectiously gripping.

About the Author - Seb Duncan holds a PGCert in Teaching Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge and a Masters in Creative Writing and Education from Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a regular writing contributor to GoldDust.

His research paper on writing process, Google Street View meets Wandering Rocks appears in the 2022 edition of Creative Power, the anthology of students on the Creative Writing and Education MA programme at Goldsmiths, University of London. He lives in London, UK.

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