Generational coincidence always ends up awakening that special harmony in any creative field. Those of us born in the 70s have a lot in common as coming from that blackout of the analog world. A blackout that seems to plunge our childhood and youth into shadows, shadows full of mythology, fantasy and great memories of course. Because then came digital cameras, microwaves and the Internet...
The point is that for someone like me, a contemporary of Manuel Loureiro, reading his novels has that special aftertaste of sharing imaginary and scenery. In this case, especially with respect to those films that in the eighties and early nineties filled the screens with badly dead beings. From Reanimator to Nightmare on Elm Street. OR novels of Stephen King, that back in the eighties his fame as a horror writer was justly earned.
Of course, it is only an essential support, references that sometimes awaken winks and connections. Because at the end of the day we all evolve and adjust to what is coming.
Y Manel Loureiro is already one of the most prominent authors in a horror genre that under his unmistakable stamp he faces the dystopian from the fantastic, the apocalyptic from an end announced as the metaphor of the catastrophe that perhaps one day awaits us, the mysterious from the catacombs of human life.
And it is already known that faced with the catastrophic, a sinister and morbid side always awakens us that invites us to continue looking at the screen, to continue reading to discover everything. Well, the time has come. Let's take a tour of a bibliography of the already international Manel Loureiro that does not stop growing ...
Top 3 best novels by Manel Loureiro
the bone thief
A few years have passed since the resounding theft of the Codex Calixtinus in the Cathedral of Santiago. But things like this always leave a trace in the popular imagination. Because undoubtedly those Galician lands overlooking the non plus ultra of yesteryear evoke past enigmas not only of Christianity but also universal ones. The thing is that Manel Loureiro knows how to fill, with greater environmental tension if possible, this plot of his halfway between psychological thriller and adventure. A combination, a literary cocktail that breaks to one side or the other to shake us with it between surprise, a point of anguish and that uncertainty turned into a total hook.
After being the victim of a savage attack, Laura completely loses her memory. Only the affection of Carlos, the man with whom she has fallen in love with her, helps her to perceive glimpses of her mysterious past. But who is Laura? What happened to her? During a romantic dinner, Carlos disappears inexplicably and without a trace. A call to the young woman's mobile announces that, if he wants to see her partner alive again, he will have to accept a dangerous challenge with unforeseen consequences: steal the relics of the Apostle in the cathedral of Santiago.
Without hesitating for a second, Laura embarks on a mission impossible for anyone. But she is not just anyone. An impressive novel, with a frenetic pace and surprising revelations, in which Manel Loureiro conquers the reader and irretrievably traps him.
Twenty
In the morbid taste for fear and terror as entertainment, stories about catastrophes or apocalypse appear with a special omen point about an end that seems achievable at all times, either tomorrow at the hands of an insane leader, within a century with the fall of a meteorite or at the turn of millennia with a glacial cycle.
For this reason, plots like the ones presented by the book TwentyThey get that ghoulish appeal about an exterminated civilization. In this specific case, it is a singular global event that drags humanity into a generalized suicide, such as a chemical imbalance, a magnetic effect or a generalized abduction.
But of course, you always have to contribute a side of hope so as not to succumb to fatalism. The hope that something or someone from our civilization can survive and offer testimony to our History completes the theme with the necessary brilliance of our tiny passage through a merciless cosmos.
And we already know that the future is youth... Andrea has not yet turned eighteen and finds herself in absolute chaos. In her tragic journey through a world silenced by death she encounters others who, like her, have avoided the origin of devastating evil. A new world appears for these young inhabitants of silence, ruins and sadness.
Their survival instinct and their desire to discover the truth leads them on an unparalleled adventure. The clues, or the inertia, are leading them towards that critical point, the epicenter of general destruction, the origin of the extinction of human life.
What they can discover will position them very close to a solution to the enigmatic fact that extinguished so many lives around the world. It is never too late to tackle a problem, however extraordinary it may be. If the boys are right, they might have a chance to revitalize a planet given over to devastation.
Apocalypse Z. The beginning of the end
Great things undoubtedly come about by chance. Not because they are bigger than others of a similar nature, but because they did not expect to get where they got.
Manel Loureiro had the singular, and in view of the results, great idea of creating a blog as a blog of the resistance against the invasion of the zombies. Something like if Loureiro had been transformed into Robert Neville, from the novel "I am a legend", from Richard Matheson.
It all starts with that strangeness of remote fear, that what happens on the other side of the world can, at some point, splash our reality ... But everything happens fast, frantically.
In a world connected from one border to another, the virality of the first case of zombie contagion is reproduced exponentially. And Spain, for once things happen even in the most unexpected town in deep Iberia, is not free from the greatest threat ever imagined.
Other recommended books by Manel Loureiro
The last passenger
I am sure that many readers of Loureiro will not highlight this as their best book. The truth is that the reviews do not reach the level of some of his other books, especially the Z series.
But perhaps that is what it is about, to see the work above what you expect once the author parks a specific theme. It happened with Bunbury in music when he left the Heroes and it happened with this novel that surely time will know how to value in its proper measure.
Because the journey in the Valkyrie offers an incomparable round trip ticket. In that emergence from the mist of the great ship in 1939, many doubts remained.
Without a doubt, the first part of the book that addresses this comeback has an undeniable hook. And, for me, the development also lives up to its fantastic, spooky touch.
Over the years the ship sails again in search of answers that have us completely attached to the plot. At times agonizing, always dark and claustrophobic, with the leading role of the journalist Kate Kilroy in her attempt to be true to the facts, we rush to an end that, although it seems a bit hasty, ends up offering us a hand, an invitation to the depths of a sea transformed into one of the last great mysteries of our world.
