The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow

by Danny Denton

Ireland is flooded, derelict. It never stops raining. The Kid in Yellow has stolen the babba from the Earlie King. Why? Something to do with the King's daughter, and a talking statue, something godawful . And from every wall the King's Eye watches. And yet the city is full of hearts-defiant-sprayed in yellow, the mark of the Kid. It cannot end well. Can it? Follow the Kid, hear the tale. Roll up! Roll up!

Genres: Fiction, Dystopia, Irish Literature, Ireland, Novels, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

342 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 25, 2018

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cosmic cracks of thunder tore holes all round the darkness, and great howls loitered, gone and returned, gone and returned. The storm was building into jaws again.

It's raining in Ireland. It's been raining for as long as anyone can remember. Half the country is underwater and Dublin, criss-crossed by canals and buzzing with drones, is the province of violent gangs, drug-runners and human traffickers. Chief among them: the Earlie Boys, commanded by the man known as the Earlie King. The kid in yellow – yellow skins, the ubiquitous waterproofs worn by everyone in the city – was once a runner for the Boys, but has been cast out in disgrace after getting the King's daughter pregnant. Now she's dead and all the kid in yellow wants is their baby, the babba, held captive by the King.

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow depicts a society suspended between dystopian future and collapsed world. People still scroll through their devices, play videogames, and watch TV (though the terminology has become a little warped – 'TeleVisio', for instance). Yet the slide backwards into earlier beliefs and practices is already evident. A wandering preacher leads a group who believe a particular statue of the Virgin Mary can heal the sick and predict the future. There's a séance scene that could've come straight out of a Victorian novel. (Saint) Vincent Depaul is future-Dublin's pyromaniac Robin Hood, a champion of the poor who may be one man or a vigilante group.

The tale of what happens between the King and the kid is told in several ways. We start off following a reporter who spies on the Earlie Boys. There's the first-person account of a former cop, told a while after the fact. There are extraordinarily vivid extracts from a play, which provide glimpses into the machinations of the King's cadre at the same time as they undermine the reliability of the whole construct. The fragmented approach encourages the sense that this story is a folk ballad, a patchwork of imagination, hearsay and myth. All the main figures are known by invented titles or have truncated or blank names that obscure their real identities, turn them into symbols. Meanwhile, in interludes, the spectre of Mister Violence – the postmodern bogeyman, the gleefully evil embodiment of all that's bad – stalks the city, peering over troublemakers' shoulders with a grin.

Danny Denton has crafted such a richly imagined world here that I could spend hours listing every little detail I loved, from the clothes to the tech to the subtly altered language. (I was halfway through the book before the thought occurred to me that 'clap hands', a phrase commonly used to indicate agreement, might be a linguistic evolution of an emoticon – a spoken emoji.) The language is cracked and beautiful; the rain-soaked city could not be more evocatively depicted. Somehow, it's a sweet love story, a gangland thriller, and a dark dystopia all in one, and it works. It dazzles.

I can hardly believe this is a debut novel, it's so accomplished and intense, so completely bewitching. Highest possible recommendation. Read it as soon as you can.

I received an advance review copy of The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow from the publisher through NetGalley.

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[Alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow is an ultra-modern, dystopian tale set in a future where it one day started raining and has never stopped. It has an edgy yet almost fairy tale-esque quality which is completely engrossing and which makes the author, in my eyes anyway, a complete genius. This is his first novel and I very much hope it will be the first of many.

The story is set in Dublin, however there has been so much rain that it is not a Dublin anyone would recognise. The plot is based around a young boy (the Kid in Yellow) working for a gang leader presiding over the crumbling city (the Earlie King), and what happens when he falls for the King's daughter.

The language spoken in this strange future is not exactly the same as ours, and the book is interspersed with lines of poetry and lyrics. This combined with the various different viewpoints the story is told from, including chapters which are set out as acts of a play, the book is like nothing I have ever read before. The prose is almost Shakespearean in nature and beautifully written.

There is also a darkness to it; the way the world is seemingly falling apart under the weight of the water; that there seems to be so much loneliness and despair; everyone is in some way troubled or lost. The story itself is extremely sad, but it seems hard to become fully committed to the characters because their existence feels alien to me. Perhaps this future is so unthinkable and the story so depressing that my mind cannot allow me to accept it as a possibility. That isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, though.

The only slight negative for me was that I felt at the beginning of the book that I wasn't going to like it at all. I struggled to get into it for the first couple of chapters and I was not on board whatsoever. I think this was just because of how unusual the writing is, and quickly passed. So if this happens to you, I encourage you to power through it as I did! I'm so glad I persevered with it.

All in all this is a very interesting and engaging novel, and a very exciting new author. I would urge everyone to pick this one up. I had to give it 5 stars - even though I didn't immediately love it, I absolutely love it now.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing when a novel can create such a strong sensory experience and all-encompassing atmosphere within its prose that you feel like you're imaginatively entrenched in this fictional world. There have been few books I've read in recent years that have done this as powerfully as Danny Denton's new novel “The Earlie King & The Kid in Yellow”. He describes a post-apocalyptic Ireland that experiences constant rain so that whole sections of the country begin sinking into the sea, the agricultural industry is destroyed and 92.46 per cent precipitation counts as the “thinnest and firmest in yonks. A bare tremble.” People can only witness the sun in videos, UV booths or sun rooms. One character keeps a slug as a pet. The seas are so polluted fish are poisonous and there are mutant green dolphins. There's an overwhelming sense of dampness and darkness and rot. Many pages of the novel are covered in sketches of rain and occasionally we're given sections from a play script which appears on the page like a water-soaked document. People in Dublin live in fear of a gang lord known as The Earlie King while the police look the other way. Believers flock to the West to worship a miracle statue of the Virgin that has foretold the end of the persistent downpour. Denton powerfully evokes this feeling of a drowning Ireland in order to dramatize a country in a state of crisis. In doing so he produces an immersive story as well as a striking commentary on institutional corruption and the information age.

Read my full review of The Earlie King & The Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton on LonesomeReader

[Lizzie (TwoFaceLizzie)]

DNF ~60%
J'avais très envie d'aimer ce livre. La première moitié était top, puis je l'ai mis de côté et je n'ai jamais réussi à replonger.

[Aoife · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from Granta Books in exchange for an honest review.

In a future Ireland, it never stops raining and the economy as we know it has fallen apart. Now Dublin is run by a terrible gang known as the Earlie Boys, and they are run by a terrible man called The Earlie King. His daughter fell in love with the Kid in Yellow, and died giving birth to their baby. Now, the Kid in Yellow needs to rescue his child from The Earlie King.

This book is weird but wonderful. I loved the often lyrical writing in it and the way the Kid in Yellow could just spout poetry he had heard elsewhere. This world is dirty, and urban, and really violent and hard but at the same time it’s beautiful, and moving.

I loved the differences in each voice from the young yet old voice of the Kid in Yellow, and the more seasoned, concerned voices of the guard and O’Casey the journalist. And in the mix was the play script and the voice of Mister Violence (who was just creepy).

I don’t have a lot of indepth, literary piecing apart of this book - all I can say is that it was different, and because of that I loved it. I loved the look at dystopian Ireland - a setting I don’t see too much - and this is a book I’d love to see performed on-stage.

I would definitely urge people to take a chance on this book, as it’s definitely worth it.

[Marc Nash · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review included in video review round up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOu6t...

[Dana Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to enjoy this novel, as there were some original aspects to the story and Denton's prose draws you in like this is his tenth book, not his first. However, for me, 'The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow' was better in concept than in execution.

In times as absurd as 2020, dystopian stories are a great escape. What struck me about this story is its originality; so many dystopian novels have become rehashes of one another, generally based in the US. Denton instead sets his story in a version of Ireland where it hasn't stopped raining for as long as anyone can remember. It's ruled by the elusive leader of a gang, with no official governance or aid from other countries in sight. With some occasionally heavy-handed insights into how Ireland fell into a state of disrepair (a comparison is made between the modern information age and Doctor Faustus trading away his soul for knowledge - while the comparison feels apt, it certainly wasn't subtly done), this novel felt like a breath of fresh air. However, the dystopian setting soon became murky. The purpose of this story didn't lie in its worldbuilding, so it's understandable that that's not what Denton focused on, but it was still frustrating to have little light shone on how this version of Dublin is different to the one readers know. Additionally, the plot which this world centred around felt quite undirected at times, and completely predictable at others.

While the prose is immersive and unique, sometimes it could become so convoluted that I lost the thread of the story. A constant use of epithets instead of just naming characters, which I'm sure was done to generate a sense of mystery, became confusing and uninspired very quickly. Denton switches between a third person perspective, a first person perspective and scenes from a play, which was well-done and perhaps my favourite part of the novel. I would like to know, though, what the actual purpose of these shifting perspectives was. Like many things in the novel, it feels like this choice was made for style, rather than with a reason behind it. That isn't necessarily a flaw, as sometimes a stylistic choice can simply be made for style's sake, but for me it was frustrating.

My main gripe with this tale is the complete lack of connection I developed towards the characters. Most of them felt two-dimensional at best: the Earlie King is evil because he's evil, the Kid in Yellow is good because he's young and innocent. I know I'm supposed to root for the Kid in Yellow, but I only know that because he's the protagonist. I felt no emotions towards him at all. The most interesting characters are the ones we barely get to see, which leads me to question if this story centres around the right characters. After reading this novel, I wonder if the Kid in Yellow's story would be better as a subplot, with a main plot centred around Vincent DePaul, an arsonist who sets things alight in the name of the poor, or another equally provocative character.

Overall, despite Denton's strong control and execution of form and his excellent prose, the story and characters weren't at all compelling for me. However, I do think that someone else with different preferences in what they're reading would definitely enjoy it.

[Eimear Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was blown away by this gorgeously written, atmospheric neo-noir set in a rainy post-apocalyptic Dublin. The world is richly imagined, down to the characters' speech patterns, and most elements have a ring of truth to them (of *course* Dublin would be run by a crime lord; of *course* Croke Park would be turned into blocks of flats).

The fragmented structure takes a while to get used to, but it gives the narrative a cool scrapbook /mixtape effect, depicting how events are warped & mythologised even as they unfold. (The extracts from the play and the Mister Violence interludes were particular highlights for me.)

The criminal underworld of the novel is brutal and harsh, but also splashy and funny (portable guillotines are involved) and the violence is counterbalanced by the sweetness of the love stories between the Kid, T and the babba. The first great book of 2018.

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in Dublin sometime in the future, the rain never stops. Criminal gangs rule, and much of the city lies in ruin. The Earlie King is the head of the criminal gang running everything. These thugs are brutal and impossible to defeat. The Kid in Yellow who is only 13-years-old has been carrying on a secret relationship with the Earlie King's young daughter. Then she dies in childbirth, and then the kid steals the baby...

This was read for my contemporary Irish fiction book club. I had to push my way through the first 100 pages, but then wanted to find out what would happen. Most of the members didn't love the book, but none of us are particularly fond of this genre.
2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

[SM · Rating 5 out of 5]

What do we want?
New myths!

When do we want ‘em?
Now!

Okay, and delivered how?
In—and we cannot stress this enough—as formally extra a manner as possible, thank you very much! Manners, preferably! Wink at us harder; we love it! Please, we all just want so badly to feel pleased with ourselves and our fragile clevernesses!

(In all seriousness, so fun and ambitious and original and tender in strange frequencies and will likely influence how I think and how I want to be able to think for a long while. I admire this book a whole lot.)

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All stories are meaningless," Sweeney said. "Only you yourself put meaning on them."

In a dystopian Ireland bursting with allegories, parallels, and misty touchpoint shadows to the whole wide range of Irish history and culture from ancient to the twenty-first century, in a hazy, mazy, dark-grim fairy tale, The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow is a strong contender for my favourite book of 2018 – no matter what else comes along this year. Denton's writing is gemstone special, weaving words and making pure poetry of prose, but retaining a dry, wry humour about the mess and trouble of life.

Ireland's light has dimmed, the sun hidden behind an overwhelming deluge of rain that never stops, which floods the whole land and seeps into homes and soaks wet-through the people, who have taken to wearing plastic 'skins' to combat the ever-damp, ever-dripping, ever-falling rain, and taken to drink and drugs to numb the pain of abject bone-deep poverty and desperation, the economy, the industry and the people having fallen apart more than two generations ago, leaving nothing but the black market to get people through their torrential days – and from this sodden circumstance has emerged a dank community, crawling with gangs calling themselves the Earlie Boys, that are beholden to the strange, death-bringing figure of the Earlie King.

These shady, shifty street gangs rule Ireland now, and people disappear with terrifying regularity for the most innocuous crimes and mistakes, their relatives informed by the reporter O'Casey, who keeps a secret coded ledger of the what he hears about the ultraviolent and frighteningly matter-of-fact deeds of the Earlie Boys.

Official law enforcement officers are helpless to stop the gangs; the technology, the surveillance, is pervasive, and cameras are everywhere, but cameras are useless in the face of the Earlie Boys and young 'runners' – who have nothing to lose, and many slippery ways of evading identification.

And among the dank and the endless wet, and the half-light and the terrifying gangster-filled and fuelled life of the country, the Kid in Yellow fell in love with the wrong girl, and she with him, and this young pair had a baby. This is their story.

The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow is a strange book – a dark and seedy legend of a despairing future, written in earthy and lyrical prose. Denton casts a spell and his dystopian vision, as charmless as this dank and violent Ireland is, is shot through with a deeply moving story and vivid, haunting characters. There have been many great strange, dark novels out of Ireland – as from any country though perhaps Ireland is entitled to the crown, having birthed O'Brien's Third Policeman, Beckett's Watt, McCabe's Dead School, and Joyce's, well, everything that Joyce ever wrote – and this is an emerald in that crown, glinting not quite wholesomely but sharply, darkly wonderful.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley

[Mohammed omran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although we don’t see what the world has become in this future point where the primary tale has transformed into myth, it can be presumed that this new nation has moved beyond this gang-run society trapped in a glut of information. One of the themes Denton is preoccupied with is a current general belief that the information age will allow our society to progress to a state of peace and tranquillity. It’s as if we’ve been lulled into believing that the bounty of knowledge we can find through internet searches will allow us to achieve enlightenment. One character named Jeri has a theory that in seeking to know everything we discover that “knowledge didn’t produce an answer as to why we couldn’t find peace. Why we were here.” People find that they are just as confused, fragmented, discontent and alone as ever. Hence the constant rain is a kind of symbol for how clouded our vision remains despite this easy-access to knowledge: “There was so much in the world that was mysterious, all of it held just beyond the rain, or piped just beneath the city’s surfaces.” It becomes apparent that “This country is slowly disappearing. The whole world is falling to pieces. Time is accelerating and cracking apart, and after almost three thousand years of praying none of the organised religions has been able to stop that. None of the sciences either.” So the Kid in Yellow - as well as a vigilante arsonist, a local alcoholic mystic, a chronicler of the gang’s violence and a spectre known as Mister Violence – take steps to trigger a large-scale transformation to move society to a new stage.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the many post-apocalyptic novels Denton’s view of the destruction of Dublin is one that seems quite believable. Incessant rain has fallen for months. Sunlight is a thing of the past. People’s lives are on hold, religious fanatics foresee a mythical ‘end’, and unsurprisingly, lawlessness has taken over.
Denton concentrates his efforts the gang terrorising the city’s streets, The Earlie Boys, and a young boy who challenges their domination. At just 12 years old, and previously a runner for the leader of the gang, the Kid in Yellow (his raingear) falls for the gang leader’s daughter. What could be a depressing story of a bleak dystopia is one of young love with occasional off-the-cuff humour.
There are echoes of Lord Of The Flies here, in the disinclination to engage in adult life, and it’s consequences.
Denton’s scenario soon wears thin though. As it continues the story leans more towards fantasy and lost a lot of my interest. A problem I have with such a novel is that if anything can happen, the plot ceases to surprise the reader, nothing that does happen seems to matter much. What starts out as intriguing soon becomes tedious.

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really enjoyed this book. I love how you're dropped head first into this sprawling world and you have to try make sense of a lot of things yourself.
The mixture of myth and "fact" and the mixture of narrative styles all blend together so well.
The only thing about the book that didn't satisfy me was the end, but I need more time to think on whether I wasn't satisfied because of where the story went or I wasn't satisfied because I didn't want the book to be over and I wanted to read on further.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone craving a brilliant and warped tale of love and violence and everything in between.

[Fei · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book I think, won't be for everyone but damn it was for me!

A real little gem of atmosphere and originality, not to mention the writing style that I really liked (at least for the French translation).
I'm not going to say much more, I think this book should be read without too much explanation but in short, despite some small flaws, It's one of my favorite books read this year for sure.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was right up my street. A dystopian vision of a future Dublin suffering under constant rain and the threat from a gang called the Earlies. Reminded me (in a good way) of Kevin Barry's City of Bohane.

[Floriane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A spectacular debut, full of originality. An impressive writer I will continue to follow in the coming years.

[Balthazaar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cracking, genre defying dystopian Irish novel. Great recommendation from the local book festival. Fairly leaps off the page. Great.

[Mitch Karunaratne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fictitious language, interludes, play script excepts and shifting narrators, make this novel a bit hard to follow at times. When the narrative broke by a change of style and authorship, I found myself asking is this getting in the way, or helping create complexity in the story? For me, on first reading, it gets in the way. The book is very atmospheric - dark, damp,drunken and drug fuelled dreams create a real dystopian sense of despair and lawlessness.

[Harry McDonald · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this. It's like a cross between an early Martin McDonagh play and Fiona Mozley's Elmet, with a generous helping of Garth Risk Hallberg's City on Fire. Mythic and rich and formally playful, portraying an Ireland that somehow feels familiar but seemingly without literary precedent.

It's raining in Ireland, and has been for quite a while. The sodden ground is a war-zone, navigated by the poem-spitting Kid in Yellow, as he attempts to evade the Earlie King. Told in short, sharp sections, often from different perspectives, and in some cases slices of playtext, the story moves between the present and the past, into the realms of Irish history and out again, into what Irish literature might become.

[R.L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κριτική στα Ελληνικά πιο κάτω...

Generally speaking, I "enjoyed" this book.

At first it takes a while to get used to the way of writing because sometimes Danny Denton uses first person, sometimes third person, sometimes he interjects theatrical "interludes" or episodes starring a more symbolic character, instead of the quotation marks symbol he uses these // (which I don't even know what they are called lol ), he creates certain words and expressions that do not exist in the English language but might exist in a future evolution of the language in the space/time of the book - and the reader must interpret from the context- and so on.
Furthermore, in the opening chapters you try to understand who is who, to adapt on the setting etc. However, I "liked" the author's dystopian world, an Ireland where it rains non-stop, climate change and ecological destruction has completely destroyed the country and its society, technology and government control have simply brought corruption everywhere and man's indifference to man etc etc. while I found the characters, if not terribly interesting, at least not indifferent.

Somewhere in the middle, the book took a turn that I didn't expect and didn't particularly like, about some religious type revelation or not or something but then it returns "back on track" more or less. Towards the last chapters the plot created a lot of suspense and I couldn't put it down, then at the very end... I don't know what to say about the very end. Did I like it? I didn't like it? I don't know.
There are a lot of characters that we follow independently in the book and you wait to see how they come together in a common story, yes, they are connected, but not as much as I would expect. There are also a lot of different threads and hints of many themes and nods on possible subplots that I felt that they are not explored by the author as much as I expected either.
To be honest, maybe I mostly missed the general context on how the world the author presents developed after the events of the book rather than so much what happened to some central characters.

But all that said, this book was a good and multi-layered read. It is the author's first and it certainly left a positive impression.


Σε γενικές γραμμές μου άρεσε αυτό το βιβλίο.

Θέλει λίγο χρόνο να μπεις στο νόημα και να συνηθίσεις τον τρόπο γραφής καθώς αλλού ο Danny Denton χρησιμοποιεί πρώτο πρόσωπο, αλλού τρίτο πρόσωπο, αλλού παρεμβάλει θεατρικά "ιντερλούδια" ή επεισόδια με πρωταγωνιστή έναν χαρακτήρα περισσότερο συμβολικό, χρησιμοποιεί αντί για το σύμβολο των εισαγωγικών τις πλαγιοκάθετες γραμμές // (που δεν ξέρω και πως λέγονται lol ), δημιουργεί ορισμένες λέξεις κι εκφράσεις που δεν υπάρχουν στην Αγγλική γλώσσα αλλά μπορεί να υπάρξουν σε μία μελλοντική εξέλιξή της στο χωροχρόνο του βιβλίου -και πρέπει να ερμηνεύσεις από τα συμφραζόμενα- κοκ.

Επίσης στα πρώτα κεφάλαια προσπαθείς να καταλάβεις ποιος είναι ποιος, σε τι περιβάλλον κινούμαστε κτλ , ωστόσο μου "άρεσε" ο δυστοπικός κόσμος του συγγραφέα σε μία Ιρλανδία όπου βρέχει ασταμάτητα, η κλιματική αλλαγή και η οικολογική καταστροφή έχει καταστρέψει εντελώς τη χώρα και την κοινωνία της, η τεχνολογία και ο κυβερνητικός έλεγχος απλά έχουν επιφέρει διαφθορά παντού και αδιαφορία του ανθρώπου για τον άνθρωπο κτλ κτλ. Βρήκα τους βασικούς χαρακτήρες του βιβλίου αν όχι τρομερά ενδιαφέροντες, πάντως όχι αδιάφορους.

Κάπου στη μέση, το βιβλίο πήρε μία τροπή που δεν περίμενα και δεν μου άρεσε ιδιαίτερα, σχετικά με κάποια αποκάλυψη θρησκευτικού τύπου ή όχι ή κάτι και ενώ προς τα τελευταία κεφάλαια δημιούργησε πάρα πολύ αγωνία και σασπένς και δεν μπορούσα να το αφήσω από τα χέρια μου, το πολύ τέλος...
Δεν ξέρω τι να πω για το πολύ τέλος. Μου άρεσε; Δεν μου άρεσε; Υπάρχουν πάρα πολλοί χαρακτήρες που παρακολουθούμε ανεξάρτητα στο βιβλίο και περιμένεις να δεις πως θα ενωθούν σε μία κοινή ιστορία τελικά, οι οποίοι στα τελευταία κεφάλαια συνδέονται μεν, αλλά όχι τόσο όσο θα περίμενα δε. Και υπάρχουν κι ένα σωρό διαφορετικά νήματα και υπαινιγμοί για πολλά θέματα και πιθανές υποπλοκές διάσπαρτα σε όλο το βιβλίο, υλικό που μου φάνηκε ότι δεν το εξερευνεί ο συγγραφέας όσο θα περίμενα.

Για να είμαι ειλικρινής, ίσως τελικά μου έλειψε το γενικότερο πλαίσιο του πως εξελίχθηκε ο κόσμος πού παρουσιάζει ο συγγραφέας μετά τα γεγονότα του βιβλίου κι όχι τόσο το τι απέγιναν κάποιοι κεντρικοί ήρωες.

Πάντως γενικά το βιβλίο ήταν καλό και πολυεπίπεδο. Είναι το πρώτο του συγγραφέα και σίγουρα άφησε θετικές εντυπώσεις...

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an odd, original and quite brilliant novel. It's genre crossing, encompassing crime, noir, dystopia and sci-fi. In many ways it might be best described as a kind of dystopian fairy tale, and it's certainly narrated in such a way, the prose being lyrical.

The story is set in Dublin, but this is a future, dystopian cityscape. A long time before the events of the book, lost in the backstory, some kind of climactic disaster took hold where it started raining and never stopped. Much of Ireland is now flooded and people have never seen the sun. The author uses the constant rainfall to great effect, people have to wear skins when they go outdoors - waterproof honchos basically - but more than such obvious facets are the subtle details, the constant sound of rainfall, the size of the raindrops, all of which imbue this novel with real atmosphere. Then there are the slugs. Due to the giant rainfall, the slugs are all massive. There are harmless, this is no schlock horror, but it's just an icky detail that works and gives the world the author's created more depth.

The story itself is based around the Kid in Yellow, a kid who wears distinctive yellow skins and who works as a runner for the Earlie King, a gang boss in charge of the brutal Earlie Boys. One day, the Kid meets the King's daughter, T. A romance blossoms and T falls pregnant. Her pregnancy lasts for twelve months, not uncommon in this polluted world and she dies in childbirth. The Earlie King banishes the Kid after giving him a beating, but the Kid in Yellow can't bear the loss of T and promised her he would care for their child. He sneaks into the Kings home, takes the child and goes on the run.

I won't divulge any more of the plot for fear of spoilers, but this is a book that is well worth a read. If I have one criticism it is that Danny Denton's writing style takes some getting used to. In particular, when writing dialogue, instead of using the traditional inverted commas he uses this symbol: /. At the beginning I found this very distracting and was worried I wouldn't through the book. As it is I persevered, soon got used to it and was rewarded for doing so. For The Earlie King and The Kid in Yellow is a beautiful tale beautifully told.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just a quick reminder: according to goodreads, a three-star rating means I liked the book. I hope this isn't too harsh.

This novel is all about atmosphere, and it works! Denton gives us a post-apocalyptic Ireland up to its eyeballs in rainwater (basically: continuous rain). The Earlie King is the local gang leader and his crew of Earlie boys kills anyone who steps out of line. We follow three characters: O'Casey (a journalist who eavesdrops on Earlie boy meetings, keeps a list of their victims, and informs the deceased's family), a police officer (a "heavy"), and the kid in yellow (once a runner for the Earlie gang, now an exile from the crew).

There's a noir atmosphere and some creative shifts in narrative style. Chapters set in a particular bar are written as a stage-play, with bar regulars who double as our very own Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Denton also takes liberties with punctuation (it's very loose and sometimes nonexistent, and the author uses forward-slashes instead of quotation marks), and that's fine. It adds to the atmosphere a bit, but I could have done with a bit less confusion in the first few chapters. Maybe that's part of the fun.

Denton also makes an interesting point about the era of instant access to information. Namely, a character points out a parallel with the story of Faust. Like Faust, people make a deal with internet providers, governments, etc. to receive endless knowledge in exchange for, not our souls, but certainly a lot of access to our private lives. And with all this knowledge at hand, few characters know much off the top of their heads, except for the kid, who can not only recite poetry but also make up his own. So... Denton doesn't do much with this theme, at least, not in an obvious way, but maybe if I read the book again, I would find more material.

Overall, it's a neat story, but near the end of the second act it starts to feel a little directionless. You can see the ambiguous ending rearing its ugly, ambiguous head and you try to pretend it's going to change into something more satisfying. It won't. But it was a fun stay in noir, post-apocalyptic Ireland anyway.

[ericas.library · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The corridor was dark; the walls were bawling water. You'd get pneumonia ringing the doorbell."

Ireland is flooded, derelict, and it never stops raining. The Earlie King rules the streets (rivers) of Dublin, from the Croke Park flats to the swampland of Kilbarrack, and he's on the hunt for the Kid in Yellow, who has stolen his grandchild from him.

"What you think about all this? Have heard in the salt lakes of Munster they have green and pink dolphins. Would you like to go see the dolphins?"

This is the debut novel from Danny Denton, a writer from Cork, and he has a way of writing that brings his world to life so vividly. I could actually smell the damp in the air throughout this entire story 😅.

It took me a while to get used to his writing, as the novel switches from third person narrative, to first person narrative, from prose to poetry, and every other chapter delivered us an entire script of a play (!!!). The author definitely has a whacky taste in writing, and I'm not sure if someone from outside of Ireland would have a clue of what the characters were saying. Irish-isms and Dublin phrases are a-plenty in this book and there's even a few words As Gaeilge for readers, as well as plenty of odd spelling choices (note the title).

I didn't read this book in one sitting, but I think if I did, it wouldn't have felt so 'all over the place'. I ACTUALLY think this book would be brilliant as a play (especially the lyrical/poetry elements). It's a really unique story and it was so refreshing to read something almost in the genre of fantasy that was set on the streets of Dublin that I know so well.

" 'All stories are meaningless' Sweeney said. 'Only you yourself put meaning on them. The whole lot of life is meaningless. You just try to put your meaning to it day by day'. "

[Jamie Monahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is incredibly ambitious, one that melds Ireland's themes of past and future.

From the past, there is the literary tradition of legends and mythmaking, plays (Such as The Playboy of The Western World) and Literature (Think Roddy Doyle and Angela's Ashes). The slang used by the characters has definitely an Irish feel.

From the future, there is the dystopian nightmare. The increasing divide between rich and poor. How Ireland (But not Dublin, for some reason) gets washed away by rising water levels due to global warming, where it never stops raining, where the ganglanders practically take over and the Guards are so corrupt and ineffective they might as well be on the dole. And yet the information age's answer to the constant surveillance of 1984 is in effect.

Of course, with certain characters being referred to their titles of myth rather than actual names, it just adds to the mystique of the characters. Overall, the book does cast a strong light on Irish (Or more accurately, Dublin. Because it's always Dublin) society.

But I am docking marks due to the lack of proper Cosmic Horror elements. With a book title that is a clear reference to The King In Yellow, I was expecting something more from the Strange, the Weird and the unknown a la Robert W Chambers or H P Lovecraft. Yes, there is the mythmaking, the more occultish elements that are practiced by certain characters, but I am not seeing anything that would really be considered Lovecraftian in the book. And I do enjoy my Lovecraftian horrors. Mr. Denton, if you would like to clear this up, I would be very grateful.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow is a literary stylistic dystopian noir set in a Dublin where it is always raining and the city is a sodden, half-derelict place with a mysterious arsonist and a crime boss called the Earlie King. A boy—the Kid in Yellow—is in trouble and it all relates to a baby and the Earlie King. Others try to fathom what is going on, but soon it is too late and the Kid has taken the babba away, an action that doesn’t look like it will end well.

The novel is a distinctive one that defies simple categorisation: dystopia, gangster noir, a drama about a baby, a stylistic experiment that jumps between lyrical prose and play script. The plot itself is quite simple, but told in a complex way that creates mythology in an atmosphere of unrelenting rain. In some ways, it is another Irish gangster story; in others, it is a new dystopian set amongst religious tradition, distrust, and a lot of water. The Kid’s desperation to care for the baby is heartwarming and their survival becomes the reason to keep turning the page.

Denton has written a fresh novel that blends genre and writing style in a bold way. There is something about the short, sharp scenes, mix of forms, and stylistic and violent future that makes the book in some ways feel similar to good graphic novels, though it is text-based. This is a novel for fans of gangsters and dystopias, a modern noir with a bit of heart.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Told in a series of perspectives, as though it were the recreation of a legend from the scraps that survived from the time: poems, plays, witness accounts, The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow is a curious and ingenious work.
Danny Denton has built a dystopian Ireland in which the only constant is the rain, a never-diminishing presence in the foreground of this story. It becomes utterly believable, as the language and the colours and the machinery and even the habitual attire of the people attest to the constancy of the rain. And you learn that 'rain' is a catch-all term, because Denton describes different types of precipitation, some with their own special names, such as Rob McKenna [from Douglas Adams' 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish'] might have recognised.
Denton's characters are drawn deftly, and with great heart. I found the relationship between the Kid and his little daughter to be very touching. His gangsters and guards and scoundrels and drunks all have a touch of the Tom Waits down-and-out - perfectly adapted to the death-throes of a drowning city.
But above all else, this novel is daring and different, original in so many ways, from its use of language to its patchwork of narration devices. I expected to enjoy it, but enjoyed it more than I expected.

[Baby Jane Coyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In which Mr Denton crafts a rather extreme ad campaign detailing the perils of teen pregnancy."

Ireland, perhaps, is not the first country one associates with a burgeoning dystopia. Yet in this novel, Denton portrays the fiendish uncertainty that it's citizens know to be only too true.

Partly modelled on the bleak 70s and 80s and partly on the death of the Celtic Tiger, he creates a post-tech world where rain is the only certainty- saturating the prose with style, as much as the landscape with wet. The plot, centering around a young father recovering his "baba" from his baby mama's drug boss dad is at times stilted by this choice, as well as the frequent use of playscripts. But not to the point where any significant development is lost. The language, in fact, redeems so many moments when the plot remains loose. Descriptions of the wet, a country perhaps waiting for it's rebirth and in the climax a "phosphorescent gleam... the spirit set free".

A favourite moment? The incredible, hilarious, surreal seance and massacre sequence in which the line "we cured eczema" is featured.

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not sure how Cillian Murphy rated this as ‘marvellous.’ I didn’t find it marvellous at all.

Some parts were well-written, with melodic tones but the whole thing was very strange and it was hard to understand what was going on. Yes, I’m sure you could read a lot into it about gang culture, the problems of technology, the potential impacts of climate change and the way the world could head in the future. It is good that books with important messages are written. I also liked the different language with phrases like ‘clap hands’ as a kind of distorted version of English, once I had adapted to it.

However, the novel itself was not an easy or particularly enjoyable book. It was told through different means, from different viewpoints and often switched between one and another. It felt like an effort to read. Despite a few good points there were not enough positives to salvage it. Perhaps it was just not my sort of story but it was not a book that I would recommend.