Yzabel / August 3, 2014

Blackout by Tim Curran

My rating: [rating=3]

Summary:

In the midst of a beautiful summer, in a perfectly American suburban middle-class neighborhood, a faraway evil is lurking, waiting to strike the unsuspecting residents.

First come the flashing lights, then the heavy rains, high winds, and finally a total blackout. But that’s only the beginning…

When the whipping black tentacles fall from the sky and begin snatching people at random, the denizens of Piccamore Way must discover the terrifying truth of what these beings have planned for the human race.

Review:

(I got an ARC of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

3.5 stars, not sure yet if I’ll round it up to 4, but nonetheless a story that I enjoyed reading. I’m not familiar with this author, but I’d definitely check more from him later on.

Blackout focuses on a series of strange disappearances and occurrences in the suburgs at night. After people went about their day and evening the normal way (BBQ with the neighbours, one too many drinks), the night turns out to be a long, nightmarish one. Darkness fills the sky. Lights remain turned out. No phone, no internet. Nobody knows what’s going, except that one by one, the inhabitants vanish, as if out of thin air. Or maybe not? Maybe it has something to do with the eerie lights in the sky, or with the creepy black cables dangling from above, coiling in seemingly harmless masses, until someone touches them, that is.

The characters in this story are of the Everyday Joe type: the sexy wife who feels her beauty capital running out; the sturdy, protective husband; the political activist prone to ranting about the people in charge’s lack of response; the narrator, a normal guy in so many ways; an old lady going on dementia, but with surprising bolts of insight at time; a mother and her children. Cliché in a way, sure, yet also easy to place, a set of characters in which, somehow, a lot of people could find a bit of themselves.

The setting, the way things happened, were quite stifling, and in spite of the place itself being a town, it felt as if everyting was going on behind closed doors. The people couldn’t escape, even by car, and every attempt was sure to be met with something, whether gruesome outcome or within-an-inch escape. This kept on enhancing the fact that they were on their own, and made it seem less and less likely that help would come. Feelings of pressure and horror were in for me here, and I was glad for my nerves I mostly read it during the day, not at 2 am. Also, nobody gets a free pass here, with death looming above everybody.

I would’ve liked to see a few more happenings, I think. A few more confrontations between the characters, which in my opinion would really have cranked up the stifling factor up a notch—I sometimes felt that tension arosen leading up to more cracks in the facade, but then one of the involved characters would be removed, and the tension fell down. Probably a matter of personal preference here. Probably also due to the story’s length (it’s a novella, after all).

Overall, a fairly decent story that falls both in the horror and science fiction genres. It’s not the most original one, it didn’t blow my mind, but I liked reading it.