There’s been an uptick in stories/novels that blend science fiction and horror in recent times; space-based horror or alien invasion horror are proving quite popular. Jonathan Janz enters the fray with Veil, a novel about people disappearing seemingly out of thin air. The protagonist: John Calhoun, a high school teacher, father of two and estranged from his wife Iris. His son Sam is abducted on the first night and it only goes downhill from there.
It begins at night. People vanish from parks and city streets. Then in broad daylight, they’re dragged screaming into the woods, into the water, into the sky. People take refuge in their homes, but still the invisible creatures come, ripping people away from their horrorstruck loved ones. Spouses. Parents. Children. Nowhere is safe and no defense can stop them. Because nothing can save you from what you can’t see.
High school teacher John Calhoun loses his son the first night. A day later, they take his wife. For two months, he and his thirteen-year-old daughter manage to survive, but in the end, she is abducted too. In John’s darkest moment, he meets a motley group of survivors who have a secret: a near-fatal car accident has given one of them the ability to detect what normal human eyesight cannot.
The survivors believe they can replicate the brain injury that will enable them to see the creatures. To discover how they’re invading our world. To fight them. Desperate to save his family, John volunteers. And after the veil of invisibility is lifted, he and his new friends will risk everything to achieve the impossible: enter an alien world and bring their loved ones back.
One night, John and his son Sam are trying to spend some together, tension is high because it often is between teenaged sons and their fathers. But there has also been was talk of people disappearing in and around where John lives. Sam walks off after a heated conversation with John and is abducted. John returns home only to learn Sam wasn’t the only one who disappeared.
John Calhoun is the first-person narrator of the novel, which gives the story a sense of immediacy, desperation, and intimacy. Make no mistake, Veil is an apocalyptic novel of an alien invasion and there is an epic nature to the story, but utilizing a singular voice can make the story feel real. Jonathan Janz has a great voice as a writer, which helped to keep me immersed in the story.
When his son Sam is abducted, Calhoun’s emotions are raw and real, he feels even more like a failed father. Because he and his wife are at a crossroads of their marriage, his feelings of failure are only amplified.
His wife Iris and daughter Emma leave to go shopping (or so he thinks), but in reality, they are trying to leave the area to go to Iris’s parents, who aren’t exactly fans of John and are thought to be outside the area where the majority of the “disappearances” initially happen. When John learns of Emma and Iris’s true destination and the increasing amount of “disappearances,” John hightails it to try and get them before they too disappear. When John returns from meeting up with his daughter and wife at a harrowing traffic jam, he is only able to return home with his daughter. (This might seem to be a bit of a spoiler because it doesn’t happen too early in the novel, but the cover/marketing copy of the book states this).
When Emma and John return home, there’s some serious father-daughter bonding going on in the story. Here’s one of the ways Janz’s story truly sparkled, if we didn’t get quite enough time between Sam and John, that is more than made up for with the amount of time Emma and John spend together. A heartwarming, loving relationship between father and daughter flourishes in an otherwise bleak state of the world. John seems to grow as a man and a father during this time, is impressed by his daughter’s ability to figure out some of what is going on at her rather young age.
Emma and John find themselves drawn to internet videos showing abductions, news reports speculating about the aliens who are abducting people, and what (if anything) can be done about it. In these kinds of stories where monsters are a major threat, the humans show themselves to be on par with the aliens/monsters as a threat to the characters we are following. Case in point: a “mafia” of sorts forms in John’s town and they try to strong-arm John into “sharing” his food and supplies. John isn’t about to give into these bullies, he pushes back knowing it will cause problems for him and Emma in the future. Janz’s ability to create tension in these scenes is just as gripping as the alien threat to humanity.
The horrors of humanity abound: there are also many scenes – some of the news reports, or when John and Emma venture out into the world where aliens can randomly abduct people with no warning – that echoed much of what transpired during the COVID-19 pandemic. The fear, the distrust, the unknowable nature of the world, the chaos of people’s conflicting ideologies under such a stressful microscope…we all lived it and Janz is able to give the story those same feelings, only amped up.
When this “mafia” returns, John is saved by a group of people who think they have a way to save humanity, one member of their group is able to see how people are being abducted and the things that are abducting people. In order to provide more people the ability to see the aliens, people must undergo a risky surgical procedure in their heads that mimics what this one member experienced. Yeah, sounds fun. The way this “rag-tag” group of people came together with a way to see the aliens resonated for me with the classic John Carpenter film They Live. Granted, I don’t think I’d cast Roddy Piper as the protagonist (more like Janz himself, more on that in a bit), but there’s something to the small group fighting back against largely unseen alien oppressors that hit a similar chord for me.
Janz is no stranger to stories where people are abducted by strange creatures (Children of the Dark) or apocalyptic fiction (The Raven, Blood Country), these are also common themes of horror. Here in Veil; however, Janz has seemed to level up in his storytelling on multiple fronts and he is an even more assured writer at this point. He’s always been able to turn a fanciful literary phrase or theme into his fiction, his prose is even stronger here in Veil. I also appreciated how these aliens were portrayed…or the nature of what they are and where they originate. There aren’t giant spaceships, but something quite different and perhaps even more frightening and intimately terrifying for the characters. Ultimately Janz may have crafted an even more effective alien invasion apocalypse than readers (and film viewers) are accustomed to experiencing.
His character work has always been top tier for me (I particularly felt a solid connection with Will Burgess in the Children of the Dark novels), but the empathy he infuses in Veil is even more potent. Writers often put a great deal of themselves into the characters (it is impossible for them not to do so, I think): John Calhoun is a high school teacher and married father of a son and daughter, Janz is a high school teacher, married and has three kids. Janz is a fan of Stephen King as is our protagonist. I’m not saying this personal infusion is a bad thing at all, in fact, I think the parallels only enhance the story, lend even more emotional weight to the story.
Maybe the only thing I can even remotely, mildly mark against Veil is that it moved a little too fast at times. There were a few elements I would like to see explored in more detail, like the world beyond John’s general geographic radius or a little more about the aliens. On the other hand, I don’t think that was the point of this novel – it was an intimate look at a man trying to keep his family together once he realized he made some mistakes while dealing with a terrifying alien invasion. There’s definitely room for a sequel or more exploration of this world (or even a great movie!). As an admitted Janz fan, I’d love (need!) to see more about John Calhoun, his family, and how the world deals with this alien incursion.
Veil is a frenetic, breakneck horror/science fiction novel that does not relent from its opening chapter. It is a novel from a writer who is at the height of his storytelling powers and a novel that should find a large audience.
I suspect when I tally up my favorite releases of 2025, Veil will have a spot on the list.
Highly recommended.
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Trade Paperback | Blackstone Publishing
September 2025 | 384 Pages
https://jonathanjanz.com/veil/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Blackstone Publishing
