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billymac1962's review
5.0
Tim Curran and I may have been separated at birth given the similarities between us.
For one, we were both horror comic junkies when we were kids.
Check out his bio. The comic books here could easily have been found on my closet floor when I was 12:
Tim Curran
For another, in this novel, he describes a warm, dry gust of heat to what he experienced during a KISS concert when he was 13. KISS was my first concert, back in 1977 when I was 15, and I've told countless people about that show and how you could feel the heat coming off the fireballs that bloomed up from the corners of the stage.
Yeah, there's a kinship here. So Tim has become one of my can't miss guys when it comes to the type of crazy horror that makes you feel like a kid under the bed covers digging those scary comic books.
Blackout was an impulse add to my to-read list when I realized he wasn't there and I was really in the mood for some good terror this long weekend. And once again, Curran delivers.
The story is akin to King's The Mist, a bit, in that something out there is grabbing people out of the darkness. Curran has a gift of pulling you through a story very fast, and yet with efficient descriptive prose, gives you the exact feeling and visual of setting.
This is an unnerving read, and he pulls out all the horror stops. I loved it.
This isn't high brow literature or something so special that would warrant 5 stars from most reviewers, but listen: I've read a lot of horror. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but Curran seems to do it time and again. For anyone to do that to a former horror comic junkie like me, that's saying something. I guess he just hits the right buttons for me.
This is exactly what I needed this weekend and it only took me about a day to read. Tim, you made me feel like the kid I miss being. Thank you sir, and here are five stars again for you!
For one, we were both horror comic junkies when we were kids.
Check out his bio. The comic books here could easily have been found on my closet floor when I was 12:
Tim Curran
For another, in this novel, he describes a warm, dry gust of heat to what he experienced during a KISS concert when he was 13. KISS was my first concert, back in 1977 when I was 15, and I've told countless people about that show and how you could feel the heat coming off the fireballs that bloomed up from the corners of the stage.
Yeah, there's a kinship here. So Tim has become one of my can't miss guys when it comes to the type of crazy horror that makes you feel like a kid under the bed covers digging those scary comic books.
Blackout was an impulse add to my to-read list when I realized he wasn't there and I was really in the mood for some good terror this long weekend. And once again, Curran delivers.
The story is akin to King's The Mist, a bit, in that something out there is grabbing people out of the darkness. Curran has a gift of pulling you through a story very fast, and yet with efficient descriptive prose, gives you the exact feeling and visual of setting.
This is an unnerving read, and he pulls out all the horror stops. I loved it.
This isn't high brow literature or something so special that would warrant 5 stars from most reviewers, but listen: I've read a lot of horror. It takes a lot to unnerve me, but Curran seems to do it time and again. For anyone to do that to a former horror comic junkie like me, that's saying something. I guess he just hits the right buttons for me.
This is exactly what I needed this weekend and it only took me about a day to read. Tim, you made me feel like the kid I miss being. Thank you sir, and here are five stars again for you!
dantastic's review
5.0
Jon wakes up after having a few too many at a block party to find his wife gone and his neighborhood mostly deserted and in the grips of a blackout. Jon soon finds himself fighting for his life with a small group of survivors, trying to evade the sinister tentacles ensnaring people and snatching them away into the maw of some unseen predator in the sky...
I got this from DarkFuse via Netgalley. And it was really damn good.
Blackout's premise is simple enough. Something knocks out the power and starts knocking off the humans. As Jon and the other survivors fight for their lives, the details start trickling out and the depth of the shit Jon's town is in proves to be much deeper than originally anticipated.
Tim Curran does a fantastic job showing how quickly things go to hell in a hand basket during a crisis situation. Of course, most of us would behave the same way as Jon and the other survivors once an alien horror from beyond starts harvesting humanity like a bunch of blueberries.
I think the frantic pace coupled with the slow reveal of what was attacking the town is what made the book a home run for me. Since the story was told in the first person, I had an idea of what the ending would be but Curran surpassed my expectations.
The DarkFuse Novella series continues rolling on with the momentum of an asteroid strike. Five out of five squamous stars.
I got this from DarkFuse via Netgalley. And it was really damn good.
Blackout's premise is simple enough. Something knocks out the power and starts knocking off the humans. As Jon and the other survivors fight for their lives, the details start trickling out and the depth of the shit Jon's town is in proves to be much deeper than originally anticipated.
Tim Curran does a fantastic job showing how quickly things go to hell in a hand basket during a crisis situation. Of course, most of us would behave the same way as Jon and the other survivors once an alien horror from beyond starts harvesting humanity like a bunch of blueberries.
I think the frantic pace coupled with the slow reveal of what was attacking the town is what made the book a home run for me. Since the story was told in the first person, I had an idea of what the ending would be but Curran surpassed my expectations.
The DarkFuse Novella series continues rolling on with the momentum of an asteroid strike. Five out of five squamous stars.
mxsallybend's review
4.0
Tentacles.
Admit it, when you read that word, at least half of you saw your thoughts immediately descend into the murky gutters of tentacle porn, and the filthy dungeons of monster erotica.
Tentacles.
There was a time, not so long ago, when tentacles were a thing of terror, not titillation; when the idea of slender, slimy, grasping, alien tendrils made you shudder with utter revulsion, not with guilty pleasure.
Tentacles.
That's not say there's anything necessarily wrong with the sexual exploitation of tentacles, but it's reassuring to find an author who not only remembers what it was like to live in fear of those grasping appendages, but who is so adept at imbuing them with the terror and revulsion they so justly deserve.
Welcome to the world of Blackout by Tim Curran.
It starts with a freak summer storm, one that mixes strangely rhythmic, hypnotic patterns of lightning flashes in with the driving rain and howling winds. As strange as the lightning is, however, it's the darkness between those flashes that's truly unsettling - darker, more solid, and more opaque than any night the suburbanites of Piccamore Way can remember. When Jon is awakened by the storm that night, not being able to find his wife is only the first of many horrors to come.
Without getting into too much detail, this an all-out horrific tale of alien invasion and abduction. There's no attempt at contact or discussion, and no anthropomorphizing or humanizing of the invaders. All we have is the massive black ship hovering above the clouds, and the maze of black tentacles wiggling and waving their way through the community. They're not particularly threatening or invasive (at least, not at first), but they're sticky, they're strong, and they're incredibly quick to snatch up those who stumble blindly into their horrific embrace.
Beneath it all, this is a story about the breakdown of civilization. We watch as friendships are tested, relationships strained, and the polite bonds of suburbia severed. What begins as a struggle for understanding and a desperate attempt to resist the invaders becomes nothing more than a primal fight to survive. As creepy as the tentacles above may be, it's the darkness and the sorrow within us that really drives the horror here. It's largely a hopeless tale, one where every small victory just leads to a larger defeat, but there is a glimmer of . . . well, if not hope, at least perseverance at the end.
Curran does a masterful job here of preying on our simplest fears, and of magnifying them to the darkest extremes. It's a claustrophobic, suffocating sort of read, and one that will have your skin crawling. The final scenes are a bit more sci-fi than I expected, but I appreciated the way in which he revealed the true nature of the invaders, and the ultimate fate of our society. Forget everything you've feared might be out there in a Blackout, because there are far worse terrors ready to descend upon us.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
Admit it, when you read that word, at least half of you saw your thoughts immediately descend into the murky gutters of tentacle porn, and the filthy dungeons of monster erotica.
Tentacles.
There was a time, not so long ago, when tentacles were a thing of terror, not titillation; when the idea of slender, slimy, grasping, alien tendrils made you shudder with utter revulsion, not with guilty pleasure.
Tentacles.
That's not say there's anything necessarily wrong with the sexual exploitation of tentacles, but it's reassuring to find an author who not only remembers what it was like to live in fear of those grasping appendages, but who is so adept at imbuing them with the terror and revulsion they so justly deserve.
Welcome to the world of Blackout by Tim Curran.
It starts with a freak summer storm, one that mixes strangely rhythmic, hypnotic patterns of lightning flashes in with the driving rain and howling winds. As strange as the lightning is, however, it's the darkness between those flashes that's truly unsettling - darker, more solid, and more opaque than any night the suburbanites of Piccamore Way can remember. When Jon is awakened by the storm that night, not being able to find his wife is only the first of many horrors to come.
Without getting into too much detail, this an all-out horrific tale of alien invasion and abduction. There's no attempt at contact or discussion, and no anthropomorphizing or humanizing of the invaders. All we have is the massive black ship hovering above the clouds, and the maze of black tentacles wiggling and waving their way through the community. They're not particularly threatening or invasive (at least, not at first), but they're sticky, they're strong, and they're incredibly quick to snatch up those who stumble blindly into their horrific embrace.
Beneath it all, this is a story about the breakdown of civilization. We watch as friendships are tested, relationships strained, and the polite bonds of suburbia severed. What begins as a struggle for understanding and a desperate attempt to resist the invaders becomes nothing more than a primal fight to survive. As creepy as the tentacles above may be, it's the darkness and the sorrow within us that really drives the horror here. It's largely a hopeless tale, one where every small victory just leads to a larger defeat, but there is a glimmer of . . . well, if not hope, at least perseverance at the end.
Curran does a masterful job here of preying on our simplest fears, and of magnifying them to the darkest extremes. It's a claustrophobic, suffocating sort of read, and one that will have your skin crawling. The final scenes are a bit more sci-fi than I expected, but I appreciated the way in which he revealed the true nature of the invaders, and the ultimate fate of our society. Forget everything you've feared might be out there in a Blackout, because there are far worse terrors ready to descend upon us.
Originally reviewed at Beauty in Ruins
jessie85's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
sjj169's review
3.0
Wait? This isn't tentacle porn?
This story starts off in a suburb. Normal afternoon of grilling with the neighbors, drinking a few beers and inter-marital groping.
Then it starts lightning and all the lights go off. No cell service. It begins. Of course I read the book when it's storming outside and my power is flickering.
This book reads like a Twilight Zone episode or a whacked out X-Files. Heck yes!
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
This story starts off in a suburb. Normal afternoon of grilling with the neighbors, drinking a few beers and inter-marital groping.
Then it starts lightning and all the lights go off. No cell service. It begins. Of course I read the book when it's storming outside and my power is flickering.
This book reads like a Twilight Zone episode or a whacked out X-Files. Heck yes!
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
andimontgomery's review
3.0
I bought this book expecting a short novel - Amazon says it has 234 pages. But what I got was just 77 pages (counted on my iPad). That is more of a novella than a full-length novel. Be prepared for that fact if you decide to read this one.
The premise is similar to Maybe too similar in my honest opinion. But I do love science fiction, and this was certainly a quick read. The problem is, because it was so short, it was difficult to really get to know any of the characters.
I'm a little skittish on purchasing another book from this author, for fear the descriptions will be highly inaccurate, as they were here. But I did enjoy the story.
The premise is similar to
Spoiler
War of the Worlds.I'm a little skittish on purchasing another book from this author, for fear the descriptions will be highly inaccurate, as they were here. But I did enjoy the story.
fictionfan's review
4.0
It was a dark and stormy night...
The story begins in middle-class, middle-America, as the middle-aged residents of respectable, suburban Piccamore Way get together for a little outdoor party. It's the kind of place where nothing worse ever happens than the paperboy throwing the paper into the bushes, or old Iris Phelan turning her TV up too loud. But later that night our narrator Jon wakes with a bit of a hangover to find that a huge storm has blown up, full of strange strobing lightning. And then he discovers that his wife, Kathy, is missing. As he stumbles around in the dark and the rain looking for her, he comes across a strange snake-like thing in the garden. Calling on the neighbours to help him in his search, they begin to discover that the darkness is more than just the normal night, that more people are going missing every minute, and that the 'snakes' are actually something even more frightening and sinister. And then the screaming begins...
This is an alien invasion story of the school of The War of the Worlds, in that these aliens are not interested in getting to know us Earthlings – they're just out to destroy us...for a horrible (but quite credible really) purpose that only becomes fully clear towards the end. It's very well written with lots of scary description and plenty of suspense, Given the shortness of the book, Curran manages to develop his characters well, so that we genuinely care when they begin to meet increasingly gruesome ends. Jon himself has the survival instinct to the full, but we still get to see his grief over his wife as he becomes more aware of what has probably happened to her; and, like us, he watches in horror as one after another of his neighbours is...er...taken.
The rest of that paragraph becomes progressively gorier, as does the novella. Curran is very good at finding the line between telling all and leaving some of it up to the reader's imagination, but still this is definitely not one for the faint-hearted. However, it's very imaginative in a dark way, and the standard of writing is unusually high in a genre where style is sometimes sacrificed in the rush to get to the thrills. The horror and tension mount in tandem, so that even as you're turning away in disgust, you can't help looking back to see what's happening. Personally, perhaps a bit too gruesome for me and I could have lived without some of the language, but the quality of both story and story-telling kept me hooked right up to the end nevertheless. And hasn't helped in any way to rid me of my fears of either snakes or spiders...or, indeed, aliens...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Darkfuse.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
The story I'm going to tell you is about what happened after the lights went out. I'm going to tell you what happened to our beautiful green world and the people that called it home. Understand, it''s not a happy story and there is no moral. It's not that kind of story.
The story begins in middle-class, middle-America, as the middle-aged residents of respectable, suburban Piccamore Way get together for a little outdoor party. It's the kind of place where nothing worse ever happens than the paperboy throwing the paper into the bushes, or old Iris Phelan turning her TV up too loud. But later that night our narrator Jon wakes with a bit of a hangover to find that a huge storm has blown up, full of strange strobing lightning. And then he discovers that his wife, Kathy, is missing. As he stumbles around in the dark and the rain looking for her, he comes across a strange snake-like thing in the garden. Calling on the neighbours to help him in his search, they begin to discover that the darkness is more than just the normal night, that more people are going missing every minute, and that the 'snakes' are actually something even more frightening and sinister. And then the screaming begins...
This is an alien invasion story of the school of The War of the Worlds, in that these aliens are not interested in getting to know us Earthlings – they're just out to destroy us...for a horrible (but quite credible really) purpose that only becomes fully clear towards the end. It's very well written with lots of scary description and plenty of suspense, Given the shortness of the book, Curran manages to develop his characters well, so that we genuinely care when they begin to meet increasingly gruesome ends. Jon himself has the survival instinct to the full, but we still get to see his grief over his wife as he becomes more aware of what has probably happened to her; and, like us, he watches in horror as one after another of his neighbours is...er...taken.
A split second after he was hoisted into the air, an orifice opened in the center of the sack. It looked like the puckering mouth of an old lady without her teeth in. The orifice irised open and I saw a bloodred orb the size of a softball that looked as juicy as a fresh cherry. It was an evil thing like the eye of a witch or a demon...
The rest of that paragraph becomes progressively gorier, as does the novella. Curran is very good at finding the line between telling all and leaving some of it up to the reader's imagination, but still this is definitely not one for the faint-hearted. However, it's very imaginative in a dark way, and the standard of writing is unusually high in a genre where style is sometimes sacrificed in the rush to get to the thrills. The horror and tension mount in tandem, so that even as you're turning away in disgust, you can't help looking back to see what's happening. Personally, perhaps a bit too gruesome for me and I could have lived without some of the language, but the quality of both story and story-telling kept me hooked right up to the end nevertheless. And hasn't helped in any way to rid me of my fears of either snakes or spiders...or, indeed, aliens...
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Darkfuse.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
books_with_tess's review
4.0
It’s a short one, but it’s a good one!
I wouldn’t mind reading this as a full novel (this one is 264ish pages)
Curran is really good at the claustrophobic feel, but also at the ET levels of horror.
I wouldn’t mind reading this as a full novel (this one is 264ish pages)
Curran is really good at the claustrophobic feel, but also at the ET levels of horror.
urlphantomhive's review
3.0
READ IN ENGLISH
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
After seeing all the positive reviews for Blackout I a) really wanted to read it, and b) really wanted to like it. To avoid spoilers I didn't do a lot of research as to what the story was about.
I won't tell anything about the story either, it's better to let you find out for yourself. Let's just say that life gets quite tough, quite fast. At the beginning you can feel the tension is rising and something terrible is going to happen. I didn't like the ending as much, as it seemed a mash up of
at least the modern War of the Worlds movie remake (could be just me, that I don't know enough about Sci-Fi to distinguish ancient aliens invading and killing all humans stories from one another) and the fifth story of Cloud Atlas.
Would still recommend though.
Read all my reviews on http://urlphantomhive.booklikes.com
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, thank you!
After seeing all the positive reviews for Blackout I a) really wanted to read it, and b) really wanted to like it. To avoid spoilers I didn't do a lot of research as to what the story was about.
I won't tell anything about the story either, it's better to let you find out for yourself. Let's just say that life gets quite tough, quite fast. At the beginning you can feel the tension is rising and something terrible is going to happen. I didn't like the ending as much, as it seemed a mash up of
Spoiler
at least the modern War of the Worlds movie remake (could be just me, that I don't know enough about Sci-Fi to distinguish ancient aliens invading and killing all humans stories from one another) and the fifth story of Cloud Atlas.
Would still recommend though.