Christopher Golden is one of the most prolific and respected horror writers of the past couple of decades. He’s appreciated in the horror community and is something of a writer’s writer. He bangs out quality novels and stories in a timely fashion and his latest (May 2025) is The Night Birds. The novel is a Locked room/bottle story about reunited lovers, witchcraft, and a baby.
Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak, they never expected to see each other again, but when terror enters Ruby’s life, Charlie Book is the only safe harbor she can believe in.
In his work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Book has been living aboard and studying the Christabel, a 19th century freighter that lies half-sunken in Gulf waters, just off the shore of Galveston. Over many years, a massive forest of mangrove trees has grown up through the deck of the ship, creating a startlingly beautiful enigma Book calls the Floating Forest, full of birds, crabs, and snakes. Though a powerful storm churns through the Gulf, Book intends to sleep on board as usual.
But when he arrives at the dock, preparing to motor out to the Christabel, he’s stunned to find Ruby there waiting for him. And Ruby’s not alone. With her are a mysterious, terrified woman named Johanna and an infant child. They need Book to hide them safely aboard the Christabel while they’re on the run, only it isn’t the police who are after them. It’s the coven of witches Johanna has fled, stealing away the helpless infant for whom they had hideous plans…or so Johanna claims.
It’s lunacy. Book wants nothing to do with it. But after the way he and Ruby ended things, and the unspoken pain between them, he can’t refuse. Yet even as he brings them out to the ruined ship and its floating forest, back in Galveston there are shadowed figures out in the storm, sniffing the air like bloodhounds. And despite the worsening wind and rain, the night birds are flying, scouring the coastline as if searching for their prey.
Charlie Book (most people call him Book) is a scientist living aboard the Cristabel, a 19th Century freighter that has been run aground at the shoreline of Galveston, Texas for over a hundred years. That’s long enough to develop an ecosystem, which Charlie studies. He leads a team of scientists who live near the ship, while Book actually lives on the ship. He’s fairly content with his secluded life, but just when a hurricane-level storm hits, his old girlfriend Ruby arrives. Ruby is not alone, with her is a woman (Mae) who was the girlfriend of Ruby’s sister Bella and Bella’s baby Aiden. Ruby, Mae, and Aiden have been on the run for a couple of days and are seeking shelter. They are being chased by witches…a coven of witches that dates back to pre-biblical times and these witches…led by an Ur-Witch (as in the first witch before all other witches) who has sinister designs on Aiden.
The other scientists outside the Cristabel Book works with who aren’t immune to the powers of the storm and the witches in their attempts to get to Aiden. These secondary characters have enough development to have weight and generate emotion as the witches find them in their cross-hairs.
A year or so prior to the opening of the novel, a tragic event sent Ruby and Charlie their separate ways thinking they’d never see each other again so Charlie is shocked to see her and with a strange woman and baby in tow. There a lot of emotions they are both attempting to sort through their in an extremely stressful situation. That’s the familiar “trope” of the story – stressful relationship under the microscope in a harrowing situation. What makes this situation unique is the setting, a rusted, enclosed ship and the nature of the witches. The mythology that fuels the backstory of Golden’s witches is from Iceland, not something often encountered in stories about witches and the Night Birds which lend their name to the title of the novel. This mythology keeps things interesting.
Add those events into the mix, along with the briskly paced narrative and plotting and you’ve got one hell of a thrill ride. The chaos flows, forcing the pages to turn while allowing a mounting dread to build up at a measured pace. It is a strange dichotomy of simmering dread and brisk action, but Golden’s skill is in how well he manages to pull off that contradiction.
I liked the characters, I found myself empathizing with them to a point. That point is this: some of what Ruby was projecting onto Book didn’t feel 100% genuine. It didn’t quite feel like what Ruby was saying he was doing or how he was reacting was exactly how he reacted. Granted it was that past experience they shared was an emotionally painful situation and grief works in strange ways, but I felt it was slightly hollow. That said, everything else Golden did with the characters worked very well for me and rooting for them against the Ur-Witch and her coven had me very much on their side.
Golden has spun another harrowing, dark, horrific tale that takes a couple of unexpected turns along the way. While I haven’t taken a very deep dive into Golden’s oeuvre, each book I read from him encourages me to take that dive and acquaint myself his earlier novels.
Recommended
© 2025 Rob H. Bedford
Publisher: St. Martin’s Pres | May 2025
Hardcover 304 pages
Excerpt: Click Here
https://www.christophergolden.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, St. Martin’s Press
