Jordan Prosser’s BLUE GIANT - certified banger! /  by Garth Jones

I devoured Jordan Prosser’s girthy-brained debut novel, the philosophical rock and roll bender BIG TIME, when it came out in 2024.

It was my favourite read that year.

Prosser is back with his sophomore effort, BLUE GIANT, and it’s safe to say the lad is on a tear.

BLUE GIANT’s protagonist is Abby Horne, a younger millennial, who is trauma (and literally) drunk on a climate disaster related incident in her recent past. Apparent to everyone but herself, Abby is a rolling trainwreck, sliding from one half-sozzled indignity to the next, juiced up on a painful cocktail of grief and belligerent optimism.

So when a Danish tech billionaire announces he’s going to send a crew to Mars, Abby latches onto the fanciful mission as a way to make her mark in a world stuffed to breaking point with vapid over stimulation and a steady throb of terminal grief.

I’ll not delve into spoilers here – this one subverts your expectations at a clip – but the author unpicks a very specific strain of generational nihilism with empathy and care.

Abby is at once exasperating, hilarious and relatable, and as her mooted mission to Mars becomes increasingly fraught, we can’t help but empathise with even the very worst decisions she makes.

Weaving through a vividly rendered Melbourne with desperate main character energy, Abby grapples with her generational impotence, subsumed rage at the state of the world and a sense of flailing righteousness.


What else is there to do in a world like this one, teetering on the brink, where power is held by sociopaths and grifters, where every noble deed is boiled down to an engagement blip and the pricks inevitably flip a get out of gaol free card?

There’s a very likely chance this one will be one of my faves of the year.

Prosser writes with a sardonic smirk, unafraid to indulge in the Aussie penchant for scatological japes, while also rendering a bleakly humanist manifesto on the abysmal state of things here on terra firma.


Can’t wait to see what this bloke does next.

The Stack - July edition /  by Garth Jones

A new edition of THE STACK on the @justinhamiltoncomedian Podcast is up.

We kick off with the pressing news of the Baby Duck’s casting as Ghost Rider, detour into some Lanterns, then evacuate the nerd bus to talk @bitterkarella’s excellent QUAINT FOLK, Chris Raja’s sublime EYE OF THE NEEDLE, Joe Hill’s door stop KING SORROW, the inevitable depressing AI read in @trevorpaglen’s HOW TO SEE LIKE A MACHINE, and Hailli Blassingame’s polyamorous Gen Z romance THEY ALL FALL IN LOVE AT THE END, and why do I now feel comfortable calling myself a cult author?

I’ve also got some very fun chats with Bitter and Chris up on Youtube.





The Stack - June edition /  by Garth Jones

On this month’s edition of THE STACK on The @justinhamiltoncomedian Podcast, we discuss @noellevivien’s STAKES, @whichlaurenwilliams NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH, Ed Brubaker and @artofseanphillips FIVE GEARS IN REVERSE, Lizzie Wade’s APOCALYPSE, Dennis Potter’s X, Cory Doctorow’s THE REVERSE CENTAUR and the work of UK indie horror prince @davemusson.

We also talk A.I. (sigh), deranged right wing celebrities, the end of civilisation, why men continue to be average, being subjected to the grim reaper bowling ad by a relief teacher, Kylie Minogue’s banned early noughties knickers ad and MORE.
What’re YOU reading for?

I fucken loved QUAINT FOLK /  by Garth Jones

I devoured this book like a heroic dose of the King’s Breakfast.

Here, let me set the table with a fat stack of crunkle and a healthy dram of elk’s blood for you.

Sorted? Cool.

I recoiled when our kid started getting into the works of Enid Blyton.

They’re horrid, xenophobic things, coursing with an ugly vein of paternalism and misogyny.

The crone was probably test driving an embryonic strain of transphobia with the character George, too.

Did you know that there’s an online caste of apologists who defend her ‘SS’ acronym sporting collection of sleuthing Aryan kids, The Secret Seven, to this day?

Of course there is.

So what Bitter Karella does here is extrapolate: what if Helena Hollyoak, their analogue for Blyton, had woven a fictional world, rooted in dicey Pagan folklore, around the small English island village of Hansenhurst, trapping its townsfolk in a sicko carnival mirror version of a quaint holiday village?

Its residents are a cast of barmy Blyton stock characters - the bobby, the chimney sweep, the beekeeper, the Lord Mayor, the devoted plump wife – all of whom are obsessed with ensuring only “the right people” reside in Hansenhurst.

How do they do this?

Well, there’s this mythical creature known as Round Robin, see.

You’d better watch out…

Into this sinister Albion milieu blunders a dysfunctional American family.

Dad, Greg, is a soft middle-aged doofus who does computer; wife Jessica is his loyal booster, and harbours deep queer yearnings; their kid, Sandy, is a non-binary witch who’s pissed off they can’t log onto their witchy Discord on the deeply tech-adverse island.

They take up residence at Helena Hollyoak’s not-so-ancestral Manor and shit, as it is wont to do, goes unpredictably awry.

Karella has a blast toying with the tropes of Pommy weird horror, putting their gormless Yank protagonists through an escalating ordeal that spirals deliciously as Jessica and Sandy are tormented for their otherness. The author draws from a deep well of empathy, throwing their queer leads into a hostile environment that punishes the different.

If only there was a real world analogue for this experience.

It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.

So said Spinal Tap, and Bitter Karella knows the axiom and has mastered its nuances beautifully, smashing every snaggle-toothed folk horror button with gleeful aplomb while also serving up genuinely unnerving imagery.

The blurb says "Wicker Man meets the Twisted Ones", but I’d definitely throw The Goodies and messed up kids telly nightmare-fuel Worzel Gummidge into that heady brew, probably with a bit of cinnamon for sweetness, a dash of sage (and a pinch of lavender for long life), too.

I fucking loved ‘Quaint Folk’.

I’d love to know what’s in the crunkle, though.

Review at Good Reads.

Interview with the author to follow.

THE STACK, May edition /  by Garth Jones

▶️ Challenge: guess which book we’re talking about in the clip.

In this month’s edition of THE STACK, we cover @kkneen’s stellar ‘Rite of Spring’ (@transitloungepublishing), @writesfiona’s timely ‘Kill your Boomers’ (@ultimopress), @_leelai’s @thestellaprize winning graphic novel ‘Cannon’ and the genius that is Alan Moore’s medium defining Swamp Thing.

We also tuck into @mattrogersauthor’s globe-trotting thriller ‘The Damned’ (@simonandschuster) @kawakami_mieko’s ’Sisters In Yellow’ (Picador), @sharonkernot’s luminous ‘Night Swimming’ (@text_publishing) and Amanda Loughrey’s zeitgeisty alien abduction puzzler, ‘Capture’ (@text_publishing)

You can check out interviews with Kris Kneen and Matt Rogers below.

And if all that’s not enough, you’ll also bear witness to two middle-aged men discussing Grogu, menopause and the very bloody state of things.

Books! Read them!

Check out our new, dance floor eradicating single, ‘Wildly Horny’, too.

(Musical assist thanks to @halfmajesty)

Masters of the effin’ Universe /  by Garth Jones

Pardon me the uncharacteristic detour into nerdgasm, but: while I think the marketing for this delicious slice of eighties nostalgia has been pretty bang on, I do think they’ve missed a trick by not releasing a trailer cut to The Darkness’ immaculate, Queen-riffing theme song.

There could be no more appropriate heirs apparent to the bombast of Queen at their Flash Gordon-iest camp zenith, and this track took me from “curiously excited” to “hell fucken yeah” in just over three minutes.

Time will prove whether the flick is up to the dazzling visions of my inner seven-year-old’s expectations, but Travis Knight has game and it’s feeling like this might be the perfect flick to eat a fistful to and regress into the world of high stakes dopiness that is Masters of the Universe at its finest.

They should have re-dubbed that sex creep Leto with Frank Langella, though.

Anyway, here’s my trailer re-edit.

“I like fisting people” - Masters of the Universe 2026 review

From my Letterboxd.

Maybe there are a very specific set of preconditions for enjoying this.

Maybe you had to have grown up with action figures based on juiced-up bodybuilders, heavily rotoscoped, repetitive animation and the nagging disappointment of the 1987 Dolph version that omitted the majority of the goofy lore.

Gwildor? Fuck that guy.



(Courtney Cox’ Teela on the other hand? Be still my prepubescent heart).

Maybe that’s the issue.

We live in an era of perpetual I.P. farming, and this is property is admittedly niche, lacking the long tail of nostalgia that other brands of the era lay claim to. Sinking a couple of hundred million into this seems like folly, a lark fuelled by a punt for those sweet, sweet Barbie returns.

So sure, this joyful, camp sci-fi fantasy romp, shot through with buckets of Mike Nichols’ ‘Flash Gordon’ (1980), with The Darkness leaning in as Queen’s heirs apparent, might not hit for you based on its highly niche pedigree.

And casting sex criminal Jared Leto is a big ‘why?’ when Frank Langella was right there (but isn’t he sort of a creep too? Sigh).

It’s legit perplexing that Leto is somewhat of a delight in this. Maybe snivelling loser with delusions of grandeur is meta-commentary?

That being said, all of the players know precisely what flick they’re in, from Galitzine’s dopey, good hearted himbo to Alison Brie’s “fuck this guy, I’m out of here” hench-witch, Evil-Lyn.

Kudos to Idris Elba for selling the spew gag, too.

I’m from director Travis Knight’s generation (Xennial, never Gen X, okay thanks?), and what he does here is pretty remarkable.

Sure, it’s a brew of Thor, Guardians and Flash Gordon, and sure it’s a reverently goofy upgrade of the cartoon with a bombastic, synth drenched score from Daniel Pemberton (and Brian May) that’s distilled eighties sonic hyperbole.

And sure, it probably gets an extra star for its admirable dedication to the fisting gag.

If you don’t like it, that’s not on you.

You just had to be there, man.