The A-Z Blog Challenge, Letter N

Letter N of My Favourite Books by title
Two authors - Two genres 
Horror & Sci-fi

The first one is, Nobody True, by James Herbert. Here's the blurb:

What happens when you lose your body?

Jim True knows. He has returned from an out-of-body experience to find he has been brutally murdered and his body mutilated. No one can see him, no one can hear him, no one, except his killer, knows he still exists. Freed from his body, True embarks on a quest to find his killer and discover why and how he has managed to survive.

As he closes in on his murderer, True discovers that even the very people he loved and trusted have betrayed him. He meets his killer, a strange and sinister figure who can also leave his body at will.

In James Herbert's Nobody True, an epic and deadly battle ensues between True and a seemingly unstoppable and hideous serial killer - a man now intent on even more murders, including True's wife and child.

If someone asks me for my ultimate favourite of James Herbert's books, this is it. This has the perfect mix of horror and paranormal for me. You have the brutality of the murder, and also the twisted killer, and you have the main character who is a ghost - but not a ghost - and what it must be like to be a ghost. If the person was having an out of body experience when their body was killed, are they really a ghost? Will they pass over? These sorts of things fascinate me.

It is written in first person, the main character talking to the reader. James Herbert did this for the first time in Creed, but for me personally it didn't work well in that book or with that story, but in this one it works perfectly.

Some Herbert readers felt he sort of lost his way, or went off track with his writing from Moon & The Magic Cottage onward, and I sensed that too, but this book brought it back. If you like spooky horror, this one has it all.

***

The second is Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett, the twenty-ninth in the Discworld series. Here's the blurb:

Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all.

But now he's back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck...

Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion.

There's a problem: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future...

A Discworld Tale of One City, with a full chorus of street urchins, ladies of negotiable affection, rebels, secret policemen and other children of the revolution.

Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a Hard-boiled Egg

Another Discworld novel and there are plenty that could get a mention, but I picked this one for its array of wonderful characters. 

Throughout the Discworld novels we meet different collections of characters, some who return time and again. And Terry Pratchett has devoted several books to different groups, like Witches, Wizards, and Death. This one covers the Night Watch - the police of Ankh-Morpork (the main city in the Discworld series), a funny and varied bunch of characters who continue to pop up in other novels - especially Samuel Vimes & Corporal Carrot. 

Terry was able to provide such comical quirky characters and combine them with such brilliance, while world building within funny tales, which usually have a theme that reflects real life. What's not to love?