The Night Ship Book Review

Alex Woodroe has crafted a sophomore effort that’s all gas, no breaks. I read THE NIGHT SHIP in two delirious sittings and came away with nightmares and complex questions about the nature of traumatic experiences—5 out of 5 stars, highly recommend. 

Set in the ‘80s in Romania, the novel follows Rosi, a spirited smuggler, Gigi, her fiancé and semi-truck driver, and Sorin, an indecisive academic. At the outset, the trio is plunged into a nightmare scenario: the world is consumed by complete darkness, and they must squeeze inside Gigi’s semi to stay alive. Even more distressing, the truck floats through the preternatural night like a boat or spacecraft, and if one of them were to go overboard, they’d fall to their death.

What follows is a complex tale of growth as the unlikely passengers embark on a desperate search for a way out of the darkness that leads them to confront fellow survivors, interdimensional entities, and themselves. Think of THE NIGHT SHIP as THE MIST meets THE THING, JAWS, and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD.

There is a lot of love in here, more than I can write in a short review, but my favorite aspects are: 

• Woodroe doesn’t bog the story down by overexplaining the nature of the darkness or the entity that caused it to manifest. Not only does this decision keep the pace moving, but it also leaves plenty of room for readers to discuss their theories. It also keeps the focus on the characters, not exposition. Speaking of…

• Woodroe has a knack for writing complex, determined women. Rosi shares more than a bit of DNA with the MC in Woodroe’s first novel, WHISPERWOOD.

• The author's prose is a delight to read. Woodroe has a propensity for quippy, natural dialogue, and she regularly drops unexpected phrases, metaphors, and analogies that can be either funny or terrifying depending on the scene.

• Remember how I mentioned nightmares at the start of the review? More than a few segments kept me up at night. The entire concept of floating in a void is more terrifying to me than burning in Hell. The fate of one of the side characters also left me cold and forced me to put the book down for a few minutes. You'll know it when you get there.

• There is meat on this bone. Woodroe weaves a unique character arc for each of the trio that forced me to put a ton of thought into the nature of traumatic experiences and how people behave as more and more horrors stack up. Can you stay a decent person as the situation grows more desperate? Woodroe wants you to ponder this question.

Simply put, THE NIGHT SHIP trucks.