‘The Last Rubble King’ – Michael Reyes (Demain Publishing)


If you were about the week before last, you would have seen me being very enthusiastic about Michael Reyes’ ‘The Black Veldt’. If you weren’t then no worries, have a click Here for the review 😉 All caught up? Brilliant 😊

Nothing against any other books, that I’ve read recently, but it felt like an absolute age since I’ve been so caught up in a book so when I heard tell of ‘The Last Rubble King’, I didn’t hang around in grabbing myself a copy. I didn’t hang around waiting to read it either, I polished it off last night and… it’s just as good as ‘The Black Veldt’. Let me tell you about it.

The Rock Ready Crew: A lean, tight, and deadly outfit of rogue misfits and mutts. Masters of their terrain, the sickest clan of Rubble Kings in the Bronx. They fear nothing.

Until this night.

The Leader has heard that soft voice calling him from the heart of hell…and he yearns for her touch. The Leader has made a great promise to his queen. He has every intention of keeping it.

Devil take the hindmost. The gang has never fought a battle like this before.

July 13th, 1977. Darkness spreads across New York City. And hell erupts onto its streets.

‘The Last Rubble King’ is one brutal bastard of a read that makes absolutely no compromises for its reader. And that’s exactly the way it should be given its backdrop and what is starting to crawl out of it. If you’re going to make your book about ‘hell’ then you’ve got to be prepared to do that term justice. Reyes does just that and ‘The Last Rubble King’ is all the better for it, becoming this flaming cocktail of hell on Earth and hell in, well… you know.

Against this backdrop are a bunch of feral youths who are already pretty demonic as they are. Are they prepared to accept the consequences of their actions though? One of them not only wants to but is prepared to sacrifice his followers in the attempt. And one other will do whatever he can to escape this, even trying to do the right thing…

Watching this play out lends a surprisingly moral feel to ‘The Last Rubble King’, at least the first part. Do bad things and you must be prepared to face what comes next. As things progress though, Reyes seems to take a step back from this approach, as the gang members who turn revel in what they become, and things become more chaotic (and urgent) as events devolve into a final chase and confrontation. Reading those last few pages is like drinking all the coffee in the house and eating a large lump of cheese just before going to bed. It will fuck you up and the next day, you’ll be pleased that you’re still standing. Which is more than can be said for certain members of the Crew, whether they wanted it or not.

Can a demon open a fridge…? Personally, I would have said yes and that was the only thing that left me a little non-plussed come the end of the book. It’s a minor quibble though as ‘The Last Rubble King’ ends on a delicious cliff-hanger that stuck with me for a while after I’d finished. You know how it should end but the fact that it hasn’t offers the reader hope that really shouldn’t exist and it’s like an itch that you can’t scratch. Well played Reyes, well played 😉

‘The Last Rubble King’ is another unsettling read, from Michael Reyes, that proved to be impossible to put down. I’m looking forward to reading more books by the author, hopefully sooner rather than later.

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