A tale of big dreams and personalities in a small world, this captures the unique way in which professional wrestlers are both partners and rivals across multiple levels of reality.

After some quick cuts of perspective at the start (illustrating the multiple layers of illusion and interpretation in pro wrestling), the book settles into the parallel stories of two wrestling trainees at a local school run by a former star. It’s set in and around Brighton and uses a plausible setup of schools and promotions without too obviously aping any specific real-world groups.

Many of the wrestling novels I’ve referred to here have either concentrated on the US territorial era or leaned heavily into genre, be that crime, romance or sci-fi. This is more grounded and is more about wrestling (and specifically wrestling) as a backdrop for people finding confidence, purpose and their place in the world, albeit a self-contained world where the matches themselves may be the least fake aspect of the industry. It’s telling that the story is presented in chapters that on the surface relate to the character’s progression through the different levels of class in their dojo but relate more closely to their knowledge and place in the training community. While there may be scope for sequels about their careers, this is very much a story of wrestling training rather than a wrestling career.

Wrestling fans will notice two unusual elements that may be initially jarring but do not spoil the effect. The first is that Dillon avoids the common problem of trying to create plausible wrestling promotion names and abbreviations, which often leads to an alphabet soup of trying to avoid any existing initials. Instead, in this universe, every promotion simply has a name such as Olympus or The Foundry – something that requires a little adjustment for the reason to instantly recognise this refers to a wrestling company.

The second is the accelerated timeline: the lead characters are already crafting lengthy matches, rewriting planned sequences on the fly and considering their options for national exposure after just a handful of public performances. This occasionally feels a little strained, though the book carefully leaves things vague about how much of this is perception on the part of the performers. It’s certainly possible that in reality they are fooling themselves about their status and experience, or that their matches are less technically impressive than they believe, or that people are telling them.

Indeed, the real story here is less the physical journey and more the mental one, dealing with an industry where pushing your status and perceived character and standing, regardless of the true position, is played out as much behind the scenes as on the shows themselves.

It’s an engaging read with plausible characters which does not fall into predictable patterns or cliches and is certainly worth your time.

(Disclaimer: The author provided a review copy of a pre-publication edition which may have been further revised. The book will be published on 21 August.)

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