I was excited to see a locally-set folk horror novel event while trawling through the Waterstones event page a few months back, there’s plenty of fiction set in the North East, but less in the genres I gravitate towards.

Joey Batey’s It’s not a Cult manages to be very much grounded in the local area and its language, while also being about fame, infamy, parasociality, memes, internet culture, and creativity. I was not familiar with him before, but Batey is most famous as an actor, playing Jaskier on the Witcher – which I haven’t watched yet, and then also is in the band The Amazing Devil, which I was equally unfamiliar with. I had a quick listen and liked what I heard, ‘Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious’ is especially amusing.

A novel about a musician by a musician, and about obsessive internet fandom from an actor in The Witcher, risks being self-indulgent or trite, but It’s Not a Cult is lovingly crafted and much too layered to fall into those traps. Everyone in it is complicated, the landscape is real (literaly but also descriptively), and the mythology works however you approach it – and each character does read it slightly differently.

The language is wonderful, and the tone darkly funny in spots, surreal and violent in others, but the viewpoint character has a wonderful interiority and perspective that carry you through everything.