**Spoiler Alert**
When I was about 9 years old, our family set out on one of those typically American road trip summer vacations. The plan was to drive from El Paso, TX, to the Grand Canyon in AZ – no small ambition on the part of my parents given multiple days trapped in a car with 3 children between the ages of 9 and 5. The only thing that made it manageable were the stops along the way – Gila National Forest, White Sand National Park and – most amazing to me – Carlsbad Caverns. As stunning as the Grand Canyon was – and it’s something everyone should see – I think Carlsbad Caverns actually left me with the most lasting impression.
In particular, there’s a feature within the cave complex called The Bottomless Pit which – at the time – kind of freaked me out. Of course, there’s nothing bottomless about it – I think it only goes down about 150 feet – but that’s not information you can find anywhere on the touristy guide plaques and it left my young, overly imaginative self wondering just how deep into the Earth it went and what one might find at the bottom of The Bottomless Pit. It’s silly – I know – but I’ve always hauled that sensitivity to deep, dark places around with me and – depending on your perspective – that makes them either the best or the worst setting for a horror story.
As I said in my review of “Ararat”, Horror really is not my genre and it rarely winds up on my nightstand. In this case, I saw a review for the book from FanFiAddict and I was intrigued enough to put it onto my June Releases list. Where Ararat turned out to be a disappointment – little to no creep factor – you can probably guess, given my feelings about subterranean settings, that this one truly worked for me.
Take about 100 people – mostly terrified, ordinary folk – and trap them in a subway station sitting deep under the Hudson River with thousands of flesh eating monsters who are every bit as formidable as the monster in “Alien” and you’re going to give me chills. It punched all my “creep” buttons and was, in that respect – the one thing a horror novel HAS to do – thoroughly satisfying.
I had a few small quibbles: 1) the two main protagonists – the Mayor of New York and The President of the United States – were a bit caricatured, 2) love interest #1 wasn’t particularly well handled – of course the Mayor and his wife went into the story with a broken relationship that was healed through a brave and hair-raising rescue, 3) love interest #2 was also a bit silly – of course the one noble, selfless paladin in the story sacrificed himself saving all those slightly less worthy, 4) why in the world was a Nazi backstory introduced into the plot – because, as one of the characters comments, it always involves “those guys” and because you need a hook for the second book in the series and, finally, 5) why should I believe the suggestion in the final pages of the book that a disgraced, middle-aged, former Mayor of New York City, a heroic female NYPD SWAT Officer and a former NY Transit System Engineer are capable of traveling to Europe and taking on a shadowy, multi-national organization capable of subverting national governments and disappearing Heads of State.
Even with all that – the creep factor, the action and the quality of the writing were more than enough – I really enjoyed the story and I burned through it. I don’t know that I’d pick a subsequent entry – I suspect that my quibbles would probably kill it for me. This one worked, though – well enough so that it’ll be in the back of my head the next time I hop onto a subway.
Thanks to FanFiAddict for a good recommendation and a fun read.