Blackout by Tim Curran
My rating: 3/5 cats
so, this is the third book i have read by tim curran. who is not
tim curran seems to enjoy writing about horrible supernatural situations that affect small towns, whose inhabitants will then huddle and gather together in their helplessness, safety-in-numbers style, which thinking *of course* proves to be flawed, as these numbers are not at all safe and are in fact reduced drastically by the story’s final scene. he also doesn’t shy away from View Spoiler », which i appreciate strictly in terms of realism, and not because i am a monster.
like Worm, this one involved worm-like things, but this time it was TENTACLES!
GIANT TENTACLES FROM OUTER SPACE!!!
and this quiet neighborhood will never be the same!!
unlike many books i have read in which tentacles played a major part, and unlike Worm, there’s not much in the way of sexxytimes, which surprised me, because i have been conditioned to think tentacles = sexxytimes. which is a horrifying realization, but in my defense, i did not expect quite so much vaginal-invasion from worms in that other book, and yet that’s what i was given, so i’m just an innocent pavlovian puppy in all of this.
but—right—back to Blackout.
so—following a typical suburban block party, during which much alcohol and red meat was consumed, and there was puking in the bushes and the inevitable adulterous flirtations and boob-offerings, our hero jon awakens in the middle of the night to find his neighborhood experiencing a blackout, his wife katy nowhere to be found and then OH NO TENTACLES!!! TENTACLES EVERYWHERE!
the story takes off from there, as neighbors do that aforementioned huddle-and-gather thing in jon’s house in all horrible shared nightmarish confusion: the breast implanted-and-tattooed town flirt, her drunken-alpha husband, an addled and muttering old woman, and the civic-minded governmentally-ambitious town crank. soon the tentacles are joined by a giant blue searchlight, and other unspeakable things, the town erupts in panic, and then people start to…vanish.
if you assume you would be safe as houses in your houses, you would be incorrect.
it’s reminiscent of The Mist, but the ending is all its own, and it’s a very solid novella. it’s also kinda heartbreaking for something i really only expected to be a splatter-filled diversion. i didn’t like it as much as i liked the raucous fun of Worm, but it’s definitely a more thoughtful work, with less emphasis on the campy violence and a more lasting food-for-thought impression.
and tentacles.
okay, and reading this book made me remember when i was a little girl and my dad would sit me down with those giant seventies headphones and put on jeff wayne’s musical version of war of the worlds and i just remember being CAPTIVATED (a great way to get me out of his hair for 6 hours), so i am listening to it RIGHT NOW all modern-style on spotify and holy shit, this is some cheesy-ass but SPECTACULAR laser beamy shit.
if anyone needs me, i will be in my childhood…
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