What do you think?
No Ghosts
After being reunited at Annie's memorial, Kieran and Harlow begin separate searches for their lost friend, all while trying to repair their friendship. Harlow, recently retired from the CGI company she helped found, discovers fragments of the dead - faces, gestures, glances - in AI generated videos; meanwhile Kieran, aimless and isolated, stumbles into an occult community of those dedicated to finding the missing ghosts. The friends' journeys will lead them through a world at once recognisable and strangely removed. A subterranean world of endless tunnels filled with ominous arrangements of consumer goods; a world of seances where attendees are haunted by the empty spaces where ghosts used to be. As Harlow and Kieran are drawn deeper into the circumstances behind Annie's - and the ghosts' - disappearance, a terrifying, singular pattern breaks the surface. No Ghosts is a startling debut which plumbs the undercurrents of feeling that pool beneath our use of emergent technologies, to ask what new forms haunting might take. Told with a sinister precision, it dramatizes the abstraction and unreality that increasingly define our everyday lives, and marks the arrival of a major new literary novelist.
319 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 16, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
April 9, 2026
Remarkably insightful on technology, people and the current ‘moment’ — the kaleidoscopic scramble of selfhood we’re all living through. The author perfectly captures artificial intelligence in its mundane unreality of images, its penetrating incursion into people’s memories, their grief, their mad attendant delusions.
And what perfect timing! Clearly, autonomous intelligence and occult superstition have become very well acquainted lately. As I was reading this, Charlie Kirk’s face was starting to appear in AI generated slop all over TikTok - not in its entirety, but in unmistakable smears (or what the author calls ‘fragments’) of semi-resemblance — that dorky fratboy face with its gummy, self-satisfied sneer.
hysterical attempts by the tech right to plug the torrent of self-replicated faces, to censor and finalise his death, didn’t seem to matter one bit. the singularity had swallowed him whole. He’d been consumed by the digital subconscious and he continued to reemerge — a half-digested, half-dreamt regurgitation, a torrid semi-living parody of a dead man. A sneering face in a garbled crowd. Some might say a ghost!
What really makes this such a special novel, however, is its sentimentality — I do not mean this in the traditionally dismissive, negative sense. Far, far from it. It’s a book about what it means to truly love your friends, to mourn them even as you get to know them. How exactly does it feel to pore over an old disposable from a festival? To see a friend pull out a well-worn anecdote for yet another fresh audience at the pub? To grow up and to grow apart? To see someone waywardly recede into themselves, coming to terms with how temporary and infinite it all seems to feel. All the vicissitudes of grief, unspoken understanding, even jealousy - those ebbs and flows of philial love. He absolutely nails it.
Read it read it read it read it!!!!!!!!
And what perfect timing! Clearly, autonomous intelligence and occult superstition have become very well acquainted lately. As I was reading this, Charlie Kirk’s face was starting to appear in AI generated slop all over TikTok - not in its entirety, but in unmistakable smears (or what the author calls ‘fragments’) of semi-resemblance — that dorky fratboy face with its gummy, self-satisfied sneer.
hysterical attempts by the tech right to plug the torrent of self-replicated faces, to censor and finalise his death, didn’t seem to matter one bit. the singularity had swallowed him whole. He’d been consumed by the digital subconscious and he continued to reemerge — a half-digested, half-dreamt regurgitation, a torrid semi-living parody of a dead man. A sneering face in a garbled crowd. Some might say a ghost!
What really makes this such a special novel, however, is its sentimentality — I do not mean this in the traditionally dismissive, negative sense. Far, far from it. It’s a book about what it means to truly love your friends, to mourn them even as you get to know them. How exactly does it feel to pore over an old disposable from a festival? To see a friend pull out a well-worn anecdote for yet another fresh audience at the pub? To grow up and to grow apart? To see someone waywardly recede into themselves, coming to terms with how temporary and infinite it all seems to feel. All the vicissitudes of grief, unspoken understanding, even jealousy - those ebbs and flows of philial love. He absolutely nails it.
Read it read it read it read it!!!!!!!!
May 7, 2026
lrlrlrll;lrrlrlll;lrrlrllr;lrrrllrr;llrlllll;lrrrlrrr;lrrllllr;lrrrllrr;llrllllr;lrrlrrrl;lrrllrlr;
Man cooked AI so bad it doesn’t have a token to stand on.
Awesome debut, It tackles grief, loneliness, capitalism and modern technology with a ‘ghost’ story that is unlike any you’ve ever heard.
In this book the ghosts have gone. It’s their absence that’s terrifying. There’s a sort of eldritch watcher across the whole thing that’s so goddamn creepy without ever being explicitly acknowledged.
The fact people just disappear and the characters search through endless corridors of thought to locate them. It makes you feel like you’re going a bit mad with them.
Idk how Lury even got to this narrative it’s so complex and winding but told in a way that makes its surrealities less of a confusion and more of a fact.
Man cooked AI so bad it doesn’t have a token to stand on.
Awesome debut, It tackles grief, loneliness, capitalism and modern technology with a ‘ghost’ story that is unlike any you’ve ever heard.
In this book the ghosts have gone. It’s their absence that’s terrifying. There’s a sort of eldritch watcher across the whole thing that’s so goddamn creepy without ever being explicitly acknowledged.
The fact people just disappear and the characters search through endless corridors of thought to locate them. It makes you feel like you’re going a bit mad with them.
Idk how Lury even got to this narrative it’s so complex and winding but told in a way that makes its surrealities less of a confusion and more of a fact.
May 24, 2026
probably the most accurate description of modern british life ive ever seen put to paper. also completely bonkers and unsettling
June 30, 2026
Max we haven’t spoken since sixth form but if you ever read this review, know me and Tallulah bloody loved your book. Full hit of dystopian AI intensity meets ghost story macabre 11/10
August 13, 2026
so weird, i’m obsessed
August 4, 2026
stone cold banger and quite possibly the most accurate portrayal of 2020s britain currently out there alongside the most searing condemnation of artificial intelligence that you'll read in fiction this decade. as a debut? chef's kiss.
May 2, 2026
good GRIEF! (quite literally)
September 24, 2026
This tackled grief in a way that really hit me personally. I cried at least 3 times reading this one which is rare for me with books.
“Losing track now entirely of where he was and who he was and maybe that had never mattered and would not matter” (341).
“It was a life in which Annie's involvement - whether she was alive or not, which Harlow could not know, or bring herself to know - was only as a memory, in which people would not know her: her yellowed teeth, her small cruelties, her hoarse and desperate laugh…She realised everyone here was probably trying very hard to keep hold of something. To hold onto some link in a chain that had long since slipped from their grasp” (337-338).
“Losing track now entirely of where he was and who he was and maybe that had never mattered and would not matter” (341).
“It was a life in which Annie's involvement - whether she was alive or not, which Harlow could not know, or bring herself to know - was only as a memory, in which people would not know her: her yellowed teeth, her small cruelties, her hoarse and desperate laugh…She realised everyone here was probably trying very hard to keep hold of something. To hold onto some link in a chain that had long since slipped from their grasp” (337-338).
September 23, 2026
SHADES OF BLUE
July 13, 2026
I just did not get this book on any level, nor really any of the reviews. Glad it hit the spot for some
May 26, 2026
I enjoyed this. I did enjoy it. But wow these were some big topics to try and digest. It was a bit of a challenging read, in that it wasn’t straightforward and it asked more of the reader than most books. Many times, it left you to fill in the gaps, posed questions around morality, friendship, the human experience, AI, and within this, it also illustrated a deep connection we all have to mortality. Both on an individual level and a more widespread understanding of where it fits in today’s modern world.
All that being said, if you asked me to explain what actually happened? I don’t know. Like I know the black-and-white, words-on-a-page happenings (she walked to the door, etc), but in terms of the large scale consequences - not a clue. The really juicy bits were so goddamn interesting, but they just didn’t seem to knit together. And I really wanted them to. I don’t need a definite answer on things, and I like an open ending, but there were so many titbits that just didn’t seem to go anywhere.
Enjoyable, well written and very ambitious, but I think it succeeded in its overall message. My score would’ve been higher if it didn’t also feel a bit like being stuck in a conversation with a stranger that takes a turn into a deeper topic.
All that being said, if you asked me to explain what actually happened? I don’t know. Like I know the black-and-white, words-on-a-page happenings (she walked to the door, etc), but in terms of the large scale consequences - not a clue. The really juicy bits were so goddamn interesting, but they just didn’t seem to knit together. And I really wanted them to. I don’t need a definite answer on things, and I like an open ending, but there were so many titbits that just didn’t seem to go anywhere.
Enjoyable, well written and very ambitious, but I think it succeeded in its overall message. My score would’ve been higher if it didn’t also feel a bit like being stuck in a conversation with a stranger that takes a turn into a deeper topic.
March 10, 2026
(received arc from publisher) what a great debut novel! it was moody, it was intense, it was thought provoking. full review on instagram soon!
June 18, 2026
"The man was not listening and kept talking and said, they sing and they read from old books and they hold hands and sometimes when I come late at night I can see them in my headlights, walking about, doing nothing really, just walking about, hands out, like they are lost or have forgotten something important. Harlow nodded like she understood. And it's funny, he said, because they spend their whole time just walking about and saying strange things and they knock on my window and when I roll it down they have nothing to say, they just look at me a long time like I might be someone they know."
What a bloody marvelous way to debut. You always know you've found something magical when an authors debut novel feels like the work of an author who is at least 4 or 5 books into their career. No Ghosts could easily be described as grief and isolation, the novel, it's an extremely, horrifically, brutally lonely experience. This is a horror novel, but, it's horror-lite. The horror is rooted in the mundane, but, somehow, Max Lury has written about loneliness in such a grotesque way, that he's made the mundane feel like the most frigthening thing in the world. No Ghosts is quite a unique take on a ghost story, rather than focusing on the presence of ghosts, their absence is what fuels the narrative.
As well as being a surrealist, unsettling, hallucinogenic freakshow of a novel - No Ghosts is also an insightful and introspective deep dive into AI, isoatlion, and loss. It explores what it truly means to be alive, something that Max Lury has done so wonderfully here is how accurately he's managed to capture what AI means in our current lifetime, and, it's a tricky thing to describe, but when you read it, it sort of just... Clicks. There's a real sentimental and intimate quality to this novel, too, it feels all too much like witnessing a deeply private moment, it's almost akin to that sinking feeling you get when you sift through old photographs and realize that you no longer know anyone in them. No Ghosts is, exactly what it feels like to mourn a friendship.
So, that all sounds so very brilliant, doesn't it? So, why exactly have I given No Ghosts 3 stars and not 4, or higher? Well, No Ghosts is pitched as being some sort of weird internet horror that focuses on AI images and annoymous message boards, but... Most of the novel actually isn't rooted in this at all. The parts of the novel that shine the brightest are the weird, freaky, internet horror, the rest of it feels a little dim in comparrison. I feel that, personally, rather than focusing on a character study and the quiet moments where nothing really happens, No Ghosts should have fully commited to the bit - I enjoyed No Ghosts, I really did, I was just hoping for something a little weirder.
"They were silent while these short clips played. Neither of them looked away. Road accidents in Russia and India and China. hooded figures kneeling for cartel executions. Matted hair around their wounds. A woman cut to pieces with a machete, trying to move util the very end, her hand reaching for something that was not there. The smooth steel of a ball peen hammer taken once, twice, to the soft temple of an old man."
What a bloody marvelous way to debut. You always know you've found something magical when an authors debut novel feels like the work of an author who is at least 4 or 5 books into their career. No Ghosts could easily be described as grief and isolation, the novel, it's an extremely, horrifically, brutally lonely experience. This is a horror novel, but, it's horror-lite. The horror is rooted in the mundane, but, somehow, Max Lury has written about loneliness in such a grotesque way, that he's made the mundane feel like the most frigthening thing in the world. No Ghosts is quite a unique take on a ghost story, rather than focusing on the presence of ghosts, their absence is what fuels the narrative.
As well as being a surrealist, unsettling, hallucinogenic freakshow of a novel - No Ghosts is also an insightful and introspective deep dive into AI, isoatlion, and loss. It explores what it truly means to be alive, something that Max Lury has done so wonderfully here is how accurately he's managed to capture what AI means in our current lifetime, and, it's a tricky thing to describe, but when you read it, it sort of just... Clicks. There's a real sentimental and intimate quality to this novel, too, it feels all too much like witnessing a deeply private moment, it's almost akin to that sinking feeling you get when you sift through old photographs and realize that you no longer know anyone in them. No Ghosts is, exactly what it feels like to mourn a friendship.
"The text underneath each video grew a little more unhinged with each new post. At first, it was a note saying the poster couldn't provide the source, and that the link would die after ten hours, the file would corrupt if downloaded. All rendered in perfect English. And then, as the posts went on, the tone became more apologetic. Almost pathetically so. The spelling got worse, as did the grammar. 03:49: am sorry about this one...longer than usual. 2mins 7seconds. any of you trying to find me? someone tried to open my car. someone outside my flat this morning."
So, that all sounds so very brilliant, doesn't it? So, why exactly have I given No Ghosts 3 stars and not 4, or higher? Well, No Ghosts is pitched as being some sort of weird internet horror that focuses on AI images and annoymous message boards, but... Most of the novel actually isn't rooted in this at all. The parts of the novel that shine the brightest are the weird, freaky, internet horror, the rest of it feels a little dim in comparrison. I feel that, personally, rather than focusing on a character study and the quiet moments where nothing really happens, No Ghosts should have fully commited to the bit - I enjoyed No Ghosts, I really did, I was just hoping for something a little weirder.
"They were silent while these short clips played. Neither of them looked away. Road accidents in Russia and India and China. hooded figures kneeling for cartel executions. Matted hair around their wounds. A woman cut to pieces with a machete, trying to move util the very end, her hand reaching for something that was not there. The smooth steel of a ball peen hammer taken once, twice, to the soft temple of an old man."
August 10, 2026
“The dead never dying but held, forever, in a bleak, recursive present. Contextless. Stumbling behind the screen, moving towards a singular, impossible vanishing point.” Max Lury’s weird and wildly original novel No Ghosts offers up a sideways look at the machinal nature of grief and longing, as well as the folly of looking in unreal spaces for meaning — a theme that feels especially salient in this dark age of artificial intelligence and the depreciation of reality and meaning. On the one hand, all the ghosts have disappeared; on the other, something else has emerged, seemingly connected, in the digital ether. Lury’s work is as beguiling as it is frustrating: I loved it and keep thinking about it, even if I feel like certain key parts of it didn’t quite land for me. The best way for a novel to fail, especially a debut, is occasionally faltering under its own ambition, and this is where I think Max Lury sits: I would have enjoyed this book more if it had been ever so slightly streamlined in length, and ever more clarified in logic. At times, the focalised thought processes of the two key protagonists felt overly expositional for our benefit, a necessary counter to the convoluted nature of Lury’s plot; at other times, whatever is happening can become obscure even at times where it doesn’t feel like it’s meant to be. That is about the extent of my complaints. I think Lury’s uncanny world captures the horror of our (gen)AI-age with a spectacularly tragic fury: how futile it all is, from the imitation objects stripped of their purpose to the displacement of our lives and afterlives to a nightmarish digital realm of recreation and decay: copies of copies, “down the line there be monsters”, etc. The sense of something lurking, of the thing we are watching *watching back*, is deeply felt and endlessly horrific: “whatever she was looking for might be looking for her, too”. The abyss looks into you. Haunting images and unsolvable mysteries pile up, layering into a damnable grid, a pileup of bodies before the hull of a colossal, unstoppable ship.
August 26, 2026
I really like the premise here; that something is so wrong with our current society that even the ghosts have packed up. Attention is brought to this by mediums and spiritualists who are protesting outside a London church with tents and placards, and making lots of noise.
The main part of the story concerns two friends, Kieran and Harlow, their quest to investigate the disappearance of their friend, Annie. This involves plenty of use AI and appropriately confronts the bleakness and loneliness that ultimately defines the human condition, highlighted in the days of social media. This part of the novel interested me a lot less, but Lury does a good job overall.
I guess to write a supernatural novel that involves AI being young helps, Lury is from London, and in his 20’s and this is his debut novel. Clearly, he is an exciting prospect.
The main part of the story concerns two friends, Kieran and Harlow, their quest to investigate the disappearance of their friend, Annie. This involves plenty of use AI and appropriately confronts the bleakness and loneliness that ultimately defines the human condition, highlighted in the days of social media. This part of the novel interested me a lot less, but Lury does a good job overall.
I guess to write a supernatural novel that involves AI being young helps, Lury is from London, and in his 20’s and this is his debut novel. Clearly, he is an exciting prospect.
September 14, 2026
I picked this up after seeing Jeff VanderMeer recommend it on Instagram and I’m glad I did even though it took three months to arrive.
The premise, plot, and characters are really original and well fleshed out and feel realistic. Even though AI and different technologies are involved, the exposition is always handled well, there’s never a character just ranting about how LLM’s work or something like that. The characters talk the way they would in the real world.
I wouldn’t say it’s a very quotable book, the prose isn’t really focused on playing with cool phrasing or anything like that but the writing is very clear and precise which really works with the style of the book.
I’m not really that into horror books but this read as more literary than most other horror novels I’ve read, and it would be hard to really call this horror anyway. I’m not sure if that’s what it’s officially designated as but it’s definitely more of a literary procedural sort of thing with supernatural elements and some liminal space type stuff.
Overall very good. I’d read more stuff from Max Lury in the future based on reading this and recommend it to others.
The premise, plot, and characters are really original and well fleshed out and feel realistic. Even though AI and different technologies are involved, the exposition is always handled well, there’s never a character just ranting about how LLM’s work or something like that. The characters talk the way they would in the real world.
I wouldn’t say it’s a very quotable book, the prose isn’t really focused on playing with cool phrasing or anything like that but the writing is very clear and precise which really works with the style of the book.
I’m not really that into horror books but this read as more literary than most other horror novels I’ve read, and it would be hard to really call this horror anyway. I’m not sure if that’s what it’s officially designated as but it’s definitely more of a literary procedural sort of thing with supernatural elements and some liminal space type stuff.
Overall very good. I’d read more stuff from Max Lury in the future based on reading this and recommend it to others.
September 7, 2026
Did not really enjoy this. It starts well enough, then excruciatingly boring in the middle. The final third riffs on Backrooms and AI psychosis. Actions start becoming weird and unhinged without justification. You’re just asked to accept. Depressing characters, hopeless and unlikable so nothing they experience had weight for me. Many words painting in a picture of British bleakness. Pints, drugs, fags, sheepish embarrassment. If I were a ghost I’d leave too.
September 23, 2026
Exceptionally hard read for anyone aged 25-35 that has experienced a difficult loss of a friendship.
I’m still kind of gobsmacked and at a loss for words, and I’ll need some time to chew on that ending, but I’m extremely impressed that this is an authors debut novel.
I’m still kind of gobsmacked and at a loss for words, and I’ll need some time to chew on that ending, but I’m extremely impressed that this is an authors debut novel.
July 31, 2026
Love of the game, I suppose.
August 6, 2026
Such an original take on new technologies and their place in modern society! big concepts but with a real human perspective so it was utterly tannable! I’m a technophobe through and through but that didn’t matter when reading No Ghosts as the discussions around AI were cleverly curated so my lack of understanding of the topic was no issue. What really stood out were the human relationships and each character’s own struggles through grief, all the while this really unique mystery unfolds. Loved it.
August 6, 2026
just stunning. cannot believe this is a debut book. creepy, moving, funny, unsettling. cannot believe someone wrote a horror novel about AI that is actually insightful rather than hectoring. very much worth canceling plans to finish
July 22, 2026
This novel and its characters are bubbling with unease and a want for things to be different without knowing how to make them so. I can’t get over how original and prescient it felt to read; the treatment of AI and data collection/production intersects so compellingly with the day-to-day reality of life for those who have come of age in England since the 90s/00s. Importantly, there are no ‘answers’ here, but there are trails, hopes, and glimmers that point at times to greater meaning, or at least a belief in it. The novel has the feel of a conventional mystery to begin with. It lures you in only to tug the familiarities of genre away at the point you think something will be resolved. The result is something half-formed but new.
Lury is very interested in thinking about the ways we kid ourselves to sustain coherence and morality, whether that be in personal identity, friendships, work roles, etc. The depiction of the internet’s development is SO good. Lury communicates the way we have grown up in such a convincingly haunting and unsettling manner that you’re sort of left thinking there’s no hope. I’m also obsessed that it’s partially set immediately around my home village, (Lacock, Box, and Bathford all get mentions) which made it even eerier for me.
Maybe the most interesting novel I have read so far this year!
Lury is very interested in thinking about the ways we kid ourselves to sustain coherence and morality, whether that be in personal identity, friendships, work roles, etc. The depiction of the internet’s development is SO good. Lury communicates the way we have grown up in such a convincingly haunting and unsettling manner that you’re sort of left thinking there’s no hope. I’m also obsessed that it’s partially set immediately around my home village, (Lacock, Box, and Bathford all get mentions) which made it even eerier for me.
Maybe the most interesting novel I have read so far this year!
June 1, 2026
[ 3.5 ★ ] Arrives at just the right cultural moment, accompanied by the creep of the Backrooms, the disconcerting rise of AI psychosis, the uncanny comfort of liminal spaces and the decontextualized fragments of post-ironic corecore memes all over your feed.
I like where this debut lands and how the surreal elements are slowwwly dialed up across its length. It begins in a relatively grounded place — for a while, I was lulled into thinking the entire novel might be about messy grief, drug use and cliché hazy parties for lost souls — but thankfully the narrative rights itself and delves into more fringe, creepy, and outré themes by the midpoint.
A bit bleak throughout, we follow characters who tragically seem to be siloing deeper into their own isolation, despite being on parallel quests for the same answers. The tone can feel heavy, but the novel's familir themes are tackled with such a contemporary framework that it makes the spiralling descent feel relevant and worthwhile.
I like where this debut lands and how the surreal elements are slowwwly dialed up across its length. It begins in a relatively grounded place — for a while, I was lulled into thinking the entire novel might be about messy grief, drug use and cliché hazy parties for lost souls — but thankfully the narrative rights itself and delves into more fringe, creepy, and outré themes by the midpoint.
A bit bleak throughout, we follow characters who tragically seem to be siloing deeper into their own isolation, despite being on parallel quests for the same answers. The tone can feel heavy, but the novel's familir themes are tackled with such a contemporary framework that it makes the spiralling descent feel relevant and worthwhile.
Review of advance copy received from Author
What an unbelievable first book. A total achievement!
April 26, 2026
A strange but compelling story. I feel like im going to be mulling this over for days.
May 7, 2026
just the right side of spooky!
July 25, 2026
Really captures that surreal, somber feeling of loss and isolation, all while making societal observations about those things as well as tech and ai. Really impressive stuff
July 14, 2026
I have long been fascinated and terrified by the rise of AI. There is, of course, the anxiety that it will eat up all of our jobs. But worse than that, a huge question mark hangs over how it will affect our humanity, how we relate and connect to one another and the world. Big questions. And no matter how much you think about them, there are no clear answers. Rather, conflicting schools of thought. Sometimes, it feels like the answer is right there, on the tip of your tongue or just out of reach, before it the game changes and it flits away again.
I feel like this is what this book is about. But I can’t be sure. Kieran and Harlow both grieve Annie but are also still searching for her, and they find her in different places but changed, somehow. Lury does an excellent job of creating that uncanny feeling of AI generated images. The objects that aren’t quite right. The people who look slightly off, in a way you can’t quite define. Throughout, as a reader, you feel just as disoriented, as the sections flit between Kieran and Harlow, both of them going deeper and deeper into rabbit holes, inhabiting liminal spaces, trying to square the uncanny with reality until the lines are so blurred no one knows what is real anymore.
In the book as well, I feel we also have the two camps of AI: the evangelists and the dissenters. But not in the way you might think. Horizon is your typical tech startup, chasing innovation at all costs to be the one that is ahead, monetising as much as possible, even the ‘waste’ products, lack of transparency in how their modes are trained, ethic etc. Then, in the other camp, the spiritualists. Who have witnessed a change: the ghosts have gone. Where have they gone? It occurs to me that maybe the ghosts have been eaten by the machine, which is why the offcuts of the films feature these people but really it isn’t spelled out all that clearly….which I feel is intentional.
Overall, I enjoyed the book right down to the confusion. I’m still unsure what it is about, or what the ending means. I also think I get it, too? Which is a strange feeling, but effective. A great debut and I would be interested to read more from Max Lury in the future.
I feel like this is what this book is about. But I can’t be sure. Kieran and Harlow both grieve Annie but are also still searching for her, and they find her in different places but changed, somehow. Lury does an excellent job of creating that uncanny feeling of AI generated images. The objects that aren’t quite right. The people who look slightly off, in a way you can’t quite define. Throughout, as a reader, you feel just as disoriented, as the sections flit between Kieran and Harlow, both of them going deeper and deeper into rabbit holes, inhabiting liminal spaces, trying to square the uncanny with reality until the lines are so blurred no one knows what is real anymore.
In the book as well, I feel we also have the two camps of AI: the evangelists and the dissenters. But not in the way you might think. Horizon is your typical tech startup, chasing innovation at all costs to be the one that is ahead, monetising as much as possible, even the ‘waste’ products, lack of transparency in how their modes are trained, ethic etc. Then, in the other camp, the spiritualists. Who have witnessed a change: the ghosts have gone. Where have they gone? It occurs to me that maybe the ghosts have been eaten by the machine, which is why the offcuts of the films feature these people but really it isn’t spelled out all that clearly….which I feel is intentional.
Overall, I enjoyed the book right down to the confusion. I’m still unsure what it is about, or what the ending means. I also think I get it, too? Which is a strange feeling, but effective. A great debut and I would be interested to read more from Max Lury in the future.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This is a hard book to put into words. Upon finishing, you feel as lost and meandering as the main characters. Navigating a life steeped in AI until we fade into the abyss. (Nice positive read this one 🤣)
We follow Harlow and Kieran as they reunite at a memorial for their friend Annie, who went missing a year previous. Then they both veer off on their own tangents in hopes of finding what has happened to their friend, but also asking why are the ghosts gone?!
No Ghosts is something completely different, but mirrors some of my favourite media, Severance and Kubrick, Authority by Jeff Vandermeer, in how to portrays the uncanny in the mundanity. I felt so so unsettled throughout this whole thing, it is not for the faint hearted but it is pretty brilliant.
I think a lot of you weirdos are going to enjoy this as much as me, maybe even more so and then the rest of you are going to be like wtf is this. To me thats the sign of a great novel.
(AD-PR Product) Thank you to Peninsula Press for the gifted copy, keep your eyes out for this one on your local shelves mid April 💃
We follow Harlow and Kieran as they reunite at a memorial for their friend Annie, who went missing a year previous. Then they both veer off on their own tangents in hopes of finding what has happened to their friend, but also asking why are the ghosts gone?!
No Ghosts is something completely different, but mirrors some of my favourite media, Severance and Kubrick, Authority by Jeff Vandermeer, in how to portrays the uncanny in the mundanity. I felt so so unsettled throughout this whole thing, it is not for the faint hearted but it is pretty brilliant.
I think a lot of you weirdos are going to enjoy this as much as me, maybe even more so and then the rest of you are going to be like wtf is this. To me thats the sign of a great novel.
(AD-PR Product) Thank you to Peninsula Press for the gifted copy, keep your eyes out for this one on your local shelves mid April 💃
May 19, 2026
I found out about this book through Lisa Tuttle's short review in the Guardian and was sold immediately. How could I not with this premise, title and the cover?! I was gripped from the start and quickly got into the writing style where there was no clear indication of the dialogue, no inverted commas, etc., but, Lury's writing was so good, it didn't really matter or affected my reading experience. Kieran and Harlow were such well written characters, the London setting was so vivid and familiar, plus the mystery and Annie's disappearance were really intriguing. I thoroughly enjoyed 2/3 of the book, but unfortunately after that it went downhill for me, the story became frantic and convoluted and the author completely lost me. I also could only deal so much with the nasty death scenes and executions that appeared in 'the Fragments' that Harlow worked on. I felt as though the stakes were high at the very beginning, but I ended up with no resolution, no explanation, just confusion.
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