Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

I would like to thank Gollancz for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Gollancz

Published – 26th November

Price –£16.99 Hardback £8.99 Kindle eBook

GOING UP?
A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building
.
None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building's walls.

By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death has remained one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

But are you ready for their stories?

What scares you? Its probably different to what scares me. Our lives and backgrounds influence our fears. And that may possibly explain why some groups of society will never care for others. Any community is a strange group of social statuses all alongside one another and potentially working against each other on purpose or not. Fear may not really make companions of us all. Jonathan Sims explores our modern fears and what this tells us about life in the twenty first century in the brilliant Thirteen Storeys a thrilling interlinked yet tale of horror that really understands why life now can be so horrifying even without the supernatural.

Our story is set in Banyan Court in Whitechapel, London a strange mix of living accommodation for the ultra-wealthy and the poorest paid. We are told at the start that its owner the mysterious billionaire Tobias Fell died horribly after a party with thirteen guests for which no one has been punished. It’s a strange tale ending a strange man’s life; but no one knows what really happened. But finally, dear reader we’re going to find out. The book explores the months leading up to Fell’s death and the various inhabitants whose lives are changed thanks to Banyan Court that led to an invitation to Mr Fell’s last event. Banyan Court isn’t a normal place and within each room or those who work for it there is something eerie and dangerous lying in wait.

I loved this both for its ambition and huge amount of variety. It is an interesting portmanteau horror novel where we get thirteen tales of immense variety not just focusing on different characters but different types of horrors but as we progress we start to see an interlink both regards setting but also characters and causes. We cross the lives of a night shift worker losing her energy and starting to see shadowy figures in the corridors; an arrogant art dealer whose latest purchase takes over his life, a little girl whose imaginary friend is getting very dangerous and a security guard whose shift colleague is getting increasingly angry and edgy. We go through a host of stand out characters from different levels of society and for each Banyan Court plays on a fear that is connected to their lives. On pure plotting it’s wonderfully varied and creates a giant web of tales suggesting something else is going on.

What really impresses me is the way each tale’s voice changes in third person. Sims adjusts style for each type of story which means you never get a feeling of reading the same kind of tale again (I love MR James but how many haunted objects can you find in one go?) so Sims creates different types of tales. Some feel familiar to us and others do not – scary children and objects are classics but adds a lot of ones including a strange late night talk show that knows far too much about a viewer’s life; the immigrant plumber finding out what a building has been built with; and a particularly memorable encounter between an exec and his new health app AI that wants to take his life over. Each tale really set ups a very different character we quickly get a handle on before they are taken on a trip outside normal reality and pushed way too far. Sims brilliantly builds the strangeness of the encounters, the tension of something coming and then a satisfying conclusion in each tale.

I absolutely loved though that this was a horror story that has a unifying theme and as we explore these lives in Banyan Court twenty first century capitalism is shown to be pulling the strings. The characters reflect people trapped in jobs that influence their fears - a night shift worker who never sees daylight and now sees ghosts, the executive who airbrushes PR nightmares finds a stain in his home he cannot remove or an estate agent who evicts those tenants who cannot pay now being haunted by a dead tenant. I don’t think it’s by accident that above all this chaos we have a ruthless billionaire looking down on his inhabitants making his own plans. Abuse of power and using people for own needs comes across as a unifying theme and we see those who make themselves cogs of that machine happily trickle down the pain ever on to fee the machine. It is done subtly but makes the wider story that gets wrapped up in a memorable bloody finale hugely impressive.

If you are familiar with Sims work in the podcast The Magnus Archives you won’t be surprised that this novel has the same level of quality and inventiveness. For new fans and I think this book will have many be prepared for a thrilling walk through strange rooms and corridors and prepare to face many fears - you may be lucky and escape. An excellent example of twenty first century UK horror and I look forward to more from Sims in the future.