Lore is one of the original podcasts I got into and I’ve heard every single episode; Aaron Mahnke is a great story-teller who can make even the most macabre story fascinating. I was very excited to get my hands on an advance copy of the new companion book.
‘Wicked Mortals’ is the second of Lore books (the first being ‘Mysterious Creatures’) and comes as the news that the Lore TV series has been renewed by Amazon. In this book, Mahnke uses the thread of infamous murderer H.H. Holmes as a link throughout the weird behaviour of human beings: crime, fairy tales, hoaxes and unexplained phenomena abound- all told in the usual friendly, dry-humoured tone that Lore’s fans have come to expect. That’s the thing about Mahnke’s storytelling- it feels like you’re sitting round a campfire with a friend who knows all about this stuff, who can entertain you at the same time as really creeping you out.
The book itself is a collection of stories that are familiar to fans of the podcast (the lady who gave birth to rabbits, anyone?), with some stories I don’t remember hearing. This is super useful, as I often find myself going away after listening to research the stories in more depth. You get to realise just how weird a species we really are- if an author pitched some of these stories as a novel idea, they’d get turned down for being too ‘out there’.
The art work is also gorgeous; I read this as an e-book, but I may have to check out the actual physical copy just to take a look at the pictures in their proper format. They reminded me a little in style of the great ones done for the Horrible Histories books (fitting, right?)
Anyway, this is a great book for fans of the show, or just those fascinated by weird folklore, baffling behaviour or just being slightly bewildered by just what humans get up to.
The Bookish Badger 
Awesome review!
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