It’s the end of the world, but not quite as we know it. Meteors crash land, monsters appear, and worlds collide; the world is transformed overnight. That’s the general premise of K.C. Jones’s debut novel, the cosmic-horror-apocalyptic Black Tide.
It was just another day at the beach. Then the world ended.
Mike and Beth were strangers before the night of the meteor shower. Chance made them neighbors, a bottle of champagne brought them together, and a shared need for human connection sparked something more.
Following their drunken and desperate one-night stand, the two discover the astronomical event has left widespread destruction in its wake. But the cosmic lightshow was only part of something much bigger, and far more terrifying.
When a lost car key leaves them stranded on an empty stretch of Oregon coast and inhuman screams echo from the dunes, when the rising tide reaches for their car and unspeakable horrors close in around them, these two self-destructive souls must fight to survive a nightmare of apocalyptic scale.
Beth is house sitting and dog-sitting in a spacious, lovely house on the Oregon coast when she observes a good-looking man next door. That neighbor is downtrodden movie producer Mike lounging on his deck sipping Champagne. Beth Invites herself over to his place, they share some of Champagne and the two hit it off, after some snarky, playful dialogue they spend the night together.
The next morning, everything has changed, peculiar objects litter the beach, the sky looks…alien. There seem to be significantly fewer humans in the world, the few people in the neighborhood gather at the beach and ogle at the strange objects and changed world. When the police arrive, they don’t really instill a sense of comfort and seem just as out of sorts as Beth, Mike, and the few other people on the beach. While the number of humans has been reduced, there is life. Life with big teeth, life that floats in the sky, life that seems confused, and life that could easily have been transported from a Lovecraftian/Cthulhu mythos novel. Both Mike and Beth need to overcome their insecurities, their questions about each other, and the nightmarish creatures and transformation that has invaded their world if they wish to survive.
Mike and Beth find themselves stranded on the beach with the monsters because of a few mistakes they made. We learn more about them as they learn more about each other. Something Jones does extremely well is despite what one might think of as a very open and spacious locale as a beach, he manages to instill a feeling of confinement, of being trapped. Of course, the fact that the characters find themselves stuck in a car at one point heightens that anxious sense of containment. Still, picture a beach and the expansive ocean at the end of the sand and you may not think of the term “trapped.”
This is Jones’s first published novel and his influences are pretty clear and welcome. References to 1980s horror and the Alien franchise are evident and unsurprising given Jones’s film education background. His characters have snark, both in their internal thoughts and dialogue with each other. The story is told from both Beth and Mike’s point of view in alternating chapters. While the monsters and exploration of the transformed landscape are quite fun, the strength of the story is the characters who are extremely flawed and self-aware. They aren’t the most likeable, at times, but I couldn’t help rooting for them throughout the novel. They are two people who just happened to find themselves at the start of an apocalypse and they seem no more prepared to deal with this horrific change than you or I would be.
I also like how Jones injects humorous passages into the otherwise dark and horrific tale. The best horror novels, and movies, have a laugh here or there to balance out the tension and the same can be said for Black Tide. That humor and balanced approach…i.e. not every chapter/passage being a conflict with an alien monster…helps to keep the pages and story moving at a great pace.
The full story of the novel takes place in one locale over the course of maybe 12 hours, less than a full day at the least. That lends a sense of intimacy to the novel, but also has me curious for what happened beyond the beach of Oregon where Mike and Beth had their “adventure.” On the count of “leave them wanting more,” K.C. Jones succeeded admirably. On the whole, for a terrifying, intimate, creepy, horror novel, Jones also succeed. This would be a perfect beach read, but you may not want to linger on the beach much beyond when the sun sets.
Highly recommended
© 2022 Rob H. Bedford
Published by Tor Nightfire | Trade Paperback | May 2022
Excerpt: https://freshfiction.com/page.php?id=11969
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Review copy courtesy of the publisher
