Broken Meats

A Harry Stubbs Adventure

By: David Hambling

Narrated by: Gethyn Edwards

Length: 4 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

Weird things lurk in the dark streets of London in 1925.

After a bizarre shooting incident, Harry Stubbs, former heavyweight boxer and sometime debt collector, is coerced into helping a visitor from Shanghai. Mr Yang, an agent of the feared Si Fan Society with unusual powers, is seeking information about a dead man.

Roslyn D'Onston was a journalist and black magician - and a leading suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. D'Onston has been dead for 13 years. But exactly how dead is he now?

When Yang joins a cell of renegade Theosophists for a seance, things start to go terribly wrong and Harry finds himself caught in a battle between occult powers, with strange enemies and stranger friends. It will take all his deductive skills - and skill at throwing a killer punch - to survive against the all-too-real arts of necromancy....

Broken Meats is the sequel to The Elder Ice, described by critic ST Joshi as having "smooth-flowing prose, crisply delineated characters, effective portrayal of the historical period, and a powerful horrific climax".

©2015 David Hambling (P)2017 David Hambling

Broken Meats

Another enjoyable adventure with Harry Stubbs. I like the fact that Harry is an every day guy finding himself in unusual supernatural situations. I also like the time period that these series takes place. Solid performance from the narrator. I received this audio book from Audiobook Boom for my unbiased review.

Very entertaining

Very entertaining and a fun follow-up to the first Stubbs novel. Good mix of tension, humor, and enjoyable characters.

An excellent occult adventure

The HARRY STUBBS series is probably the best H.P. Lovecraft fiction which is currently on the market today with the possible exception of Andrew Doran by Matthew Davenport or my own Cthulhu Armageddon (I tell it like it is). This is because it dials down the squid and the splatterpunk horror elements so many authors dial up to return to the occult mystery element that Lovecraft's best works were famous for.

Basically, the appeal of Harry Stubbs is he's actually fairly outside of the occult weirdness of your typical Lovecraft protagonist. He often encounters cultists, the weird, and the supernatural but rarely gets face-first with the horrors of Yog-Sothoth or the Elder Things. The first book, Eldritch Ice, had him mostly deal with the attempt to get a Antarctic expedition going versus actually reaching the Mountains of Madness. Yet, this actually makes it more interesting because you never know when the other shoe will drop.

In this book, it's vaguely related to THE STRANGE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, the Theosophy movement, seances, and Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu (except not really on that last part). Harry Stubbs is hard up for cash and ends up hiring himself out as a tour guide to a mysterious Chinese visitor who gets him involved with a man who claims to be able to raise the dead. This is after, conveniently, a local pimp claims to have murdered an already dead man in Harry Stubb's presence.

The story is good from start to finish and feels like an exceptionally well-researched Chaosium module for the old Call of Cthulhu gameline from the eighties. As for the audio, it is crisp and well done with the narrator doing an excellent job throughout.

9/10

Another great Harry Stubbs Adventure

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

I really enjoyed the first book, The Elder Ice. So, naturally I was eager for this one. Tough as nails Harry Stubbs rides again! The story was well written and is very engaging. The dialog is great and I thought the narration was perfect for the content. My only complaint is that I wish these books were longer.

David Hambling breaths life into Mythos Adventure!

If you could sum up Broken Meats in three words, what would they be?

Can't be done. The story has too many facets to chop down into three words. that is a completely preposterous question.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

As always, Harry's tale keep you completely enthralled. i cannot wait for Alien Stars: A Harry Stubbs Adventure to come out.

What about Gethyn Edwards’s performance did you like?

Normally i have an issue with an audiobook switching narration; but this guy is pretty close to the original narrator. HOWEVER, i do not like that they changed Arthur's voice, by changing the voice you changed his whole persona!!! with that said, the voice did for Mr. Yang was fantastic.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

it kept me very entertained.

Any additional comments?

If you love Mythos adventure stories, this book is for you. LOVE this series.

Harry Stubbs returns.

Delightful mythos tale, and great follow up to the first Stubbs book. great characters.

Another cracking adventure

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I'd recommend this book because it is a fresh story weaving history with eldritch horror.

Which character – as performed by Gethyn Edwards – was your favorite?

Harry Stubbs

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I liked the seance scene. It was very evocative.

Any additional comments?

I hope that Harry will have many more adventures.

Broken Meats = The Strange Case of Charles D Ward

Broken Meats - A Harry Stubbs Adventure
( book II in the series )

"Broken Meats" - This is a description of a type of meat you could purchase from an English butcher. (circa 1900-1930 approx). It refers to the bits & chunks of meat that would go into a sausage.
It might also describe what a particularly nasty evil-magician might do to the human body of a victim.

The first book was based very loosely on H.P. Lovecraft’s story: “At The Mountains Of Madness”.
It's more like a look-see at what might have happened after that book’s events.

This one, book II in the Harry Stubbs adventures, is based on H. P. Lovecraft’s finest book-long chiller: “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

This adventure takes place in Ye Ol’ London Town where our two-fisted hero is being paid to be guide and guard a Chinese gentle-man from an occult society. He encounters a blind Chinese strangler, sits in on a seance that goes terribly wrong, and must defeat a phantom that was raised from the human salts of the late black wizard who just might have been “Jack the Ripper”, among other dangers.

The finale of this hair-raising tale has Harry Stubbs put on a pair of bronze knuckle dusters and travel down-ward into some deep dark catacombs and take on the mutant-experiment-gone-wrong-creature from the 1991 low-budget horror flick “The Resurrected”. Yeah, the really creepy one that was held in the sub-sub-cellar-tomb-crypt in the hole in the stone floor. Same sort of horrific thing as was in the Lovecraft horror story this book is based on - “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

It’s a great thriller and puts you in the mind of a muscle bound pugilist as he follows the twisted and blood-chillin’ story line of Charles Dexter Ward. I often wished the main character in H. P. Lovecraft’s stories be a rugged fighter instead of an intellectual detective. If you have to duke-it-out with a monster you should come ready and able to do so. Yet even then, a simple human retired boxer may not be enough to take on such supernatural forces.

I highly recommend this book.