Synopsis:
Dr. Harriet Marks has advised the British security services on science for too long, when even gathering forensic evidence at a remote science-terrorist safehouse arouses little professional excitement.
But as a snowstorm closes in, her team realise they’re not alone. While some dangers might have once been human, there’s also a darkness below that’s less recognisable.
A darkness as potentially dangerous as the one already within her.
Review:
*I read this novella as part the judging group The Secret Scribes for the Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship (SFINCS). The following review is strictly my personal thoughts as each novella will be reviewed by two judges to be as objective as possible.*
The Darkness Below is a claustrophobic supernatural horror novella with a poor crew stuck in a blizzard with an entity they have no way of grappling with. But at least they try!
There is something prudent in the simplistic nature of this story. The aforementioned crew is a military unit and a couple of scientists (and one hacker) stuck in a bunker during a blizzard after sweeping it clean of a terrorist cabal. Or so they thought. Essentially, this 100ish page story reminds me of the movie Aliens but replacing the xenomorph with a scientist who talks to this black void and gains some knowledge (as well as turning his sycophants into berserker-like zombies). You can assume not all of the team survives, that wouldn’t be spoiling anything here.
Like any good military crew, every character except the hacker and one scientist (only in her POV though) are named by last name only, even the POV Sinclair goes by her last name. I found that quite humorous. And while this story is short and many characters get deceased, there is a wide breadth of characterization here, so that’s definitely a plus. No character really shines brightest, but there were only a couple of red shirts here, so that’s nice. But because the pace is hectic, we get no character growth and no motivations other than survival. And there’s nothing wrong with that, just be aware going in if expecting a lot of character work.
I love a good claustrophobic story where characters get offed one by one by baddies unseen, so this part of the story I really enjoyed. I will say, the supernatural/sci-fi elements, if you will, were a tad lacking. While the big bad does some scientific pontification toward the climax, the concept of the void was left quite literally in the dark. Again, that was fine, but I would have liked just a smidge more detail there.
The pace and prose are great, no frills and no lags. Once the story’s inciting incident (the blizzard and first terrorist discovered), the story never slows. And while it is a very simple, maybe even contrived way of showing the story unfold, I actually really did enjoy the hacker character’s POV experiencing the action via body cameras instead of from one of the soldier’s POV. It really added to the claustrophobic feeling of the setting.
All in all, The Darkness Below was a solid novella using well-worn tropes but adding some twists and turns along the way. It’s not going to knock your socks off, but I quite enjoyed this story because it scratches an itch.
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