Darkness On The Edge of Townby Brian Keene
From The Publisher: One morning the residents of Walden, Virginia, woke up to find the rest of the world gone. Just . . . gone. Surrounding their town was a wall of inky darkness, plummeting Walden into permanent night. Nothing can get in - not light, not people, not even electricity, radio, TV, Internet, food, or water. And nothing can get out. No one who dared to penetrate the mysterious barrier has ever been seen again. Only their screams were heard. But for some, the darkness is not the worst of their fears. Driven mad by thirst, hunger, and perpetual night, the residents of Walden are ready to explode. The last few sane prisoners of this small town must prepare a final stand against their neighbors, themselves, and something even worse... something out there... in the darkness.
I like Brian Keene quite a bit and have read several of his novels, but I think this one was a bit of a letdown. The plot is pretty straightforward, simple and interesting and he's drawn some great characters... but nothing really goes on and then the book ends abruptly.
It starts out strong and got me really involved, but then the majority of the pages are just spent with people trying to figure out what's happening. There are a couple of sequences of some action or gore, but mainly there's a lot of head scratching and chatting. There's the requisite "creepy old homeless guy" in town that seems to know what's going on and it's all quite interesting, but then it just doesn't go anywhere with it. There's no twist or feeling of completion. Or answers. Reading the synopsis I cut-and-pasted above pretty much leaves you with the same amount of knowledge as you get reading the entire book.
It's an interesting, short read but far from one of Keene's best for my taste. Try Stephen King's "Under the Dome" or "Mist" for similar tales maybe.
5/10
