The Night Ship

One of the wonderful things about genre fiction is that an author does not have to explain what is going on if they do not want to. Science Fiction often goes into great detail trying to explain the science, but sometimes it just happens to be set on a remote alien planet – deal with it. In Alex Woodroe’s The Night Ship a strange darkness is spooling out across the globe. What is it? Why are radio stations safe? Will we ever get an answer?

Rosi lives in Communist run Romania and although her parents think they have her life planned out, Rosi has other ideas. They think she will marry Gigi, but she is only travelling in Gigi’s truck so that she can move enough contraband to make money to leave the country. All these worries become moot when Rosi, Gigi and a hitchhiker they have picked up become surrounded by a dark, inky blackness. The only voices they hear are those on the radio. Some voices are asking for help, other are warning of dangers, some simply scream.

Night Ship is a stripped down and creepy horror story that delivers an otherworldly story, set on Earth. The initial setting of Cold War Romania sets the tone. A police state in which you cannot trust anyone, not even your potential fiancée. If you are constantly on the look out for informers, are you going to believe a random radio message that carries a warning? Is it a test to see if you trust the state, or a trap?

The reader and Rosi are always kept guessing on who they can trust, and as the book progresses, what you can trust. The setting changes to a macabre, dark world in which their lorry acts as a floating ship. Survival becomes a priority, but there are also the things that move in the ink. You have some classic horror elements of creature that go bump in the night that work alongside the psychological horror of not trusting those around you.

The book moves to bring the old and new worlds together in the second part as Rosi and her crew start to discover the fate of other survivors. The paranoia of living in a police state does not evaporate overnight and it is hard to trust potential allies. Elements of The Thing are mixed in that show that just because you are paranoid, does not mean they are not listening.

There is limited explanation as to what is behind the darkness and depending on what type of reader you are, it will be a refreshing freedom to go with the flow, or an annoying absence. I have to admit to being confused in parts of this book, it felt too fantastical at times, I was not sure that anyone would have even an inch of survival, never mind getting through to the other end. Night Ship felt like a mood piece, a novel that evokes a feeling, it did not deal in solid narratives or explanations. I found this unsettling, something that Woodroe aimed for, but this also made it slightly unsatisfactory as a story. If you enjoy books that feel like an enigma, then it would work.