Changes

|title=The Kingdom of Bones

|sort=Kingdom of Bones, The

|publisher=Ebury Press

|date=December 2012

|website=http://www.stephengallagher.com/

|summary=A larger-than-life pastiche of Victorian penny dreadful fiction, ''The Kingdom of Bones'' takes the reader on a headlong transatlantic tour of music halls, boxing rings and slaughter houses. Rip-roaringly good fun.

}}

'If you like this sort of thing…' reads a line from Stephen Gallagher's ''The Kingdom of Bones'', 'then here comes the kind of thing you’ll like'. It’s describing the opening music for a theatrical number, but it’s an almost perfect tagline for ''The Kingdom of Bones'' itself. If you like Victorians, vaudeville and villainy, if you like prize-fighting and police chases and possession by the Devil, then here comes ''The Kingdom of Bones''. It’s the kind of thing that you’re really going to like.

Gallagher’s ticked all the required boxes so well that I found myself not minding about the slightly slower and less purposeful second half, or that strangely nebulous ancient evil. Unashamedly enjoyable, gloriously tawdry and cracking good fun, this is a gem of pastiche late-Victorian pulp fiction.

{{amazontext|amazon=0091950139}}