Synopsis:
Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak years ago, they never expected to see each other again.
Now, as part of his work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Book lives aboard the Christabel, a 19th century freighter half-sunken 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. As a powerful storm churns through the Gulf, he intends to sleep on board as usual.
But when he arrives at the dock, he’s stunned to find Ruby there waiting for him. And she’s not alone. With her are a mysterious woman and her infant child, asking 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 a coven of witches the woman, Mae, has fled, stealing away the helpless infant for whom the coven had hideous plans…or so Mae claims.
It’s lunacy and 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, there are shadowed figures looming back in Galveston, waiting out the storm. And despite the worsening wind and rain, the night birds are flying, scouring the coastline for their prey.
Review:
Dread distilled in paperback form, Christopher Golden’s “The Night Birds,” is an adrenaline-packed pressure-cooker of a novel that hisses, howls and ultimately detonates. Of all of the supernatural entities and tropes in horror, one I was convinced couldn’t scare me, was the witch. All those pop-culture covens, charming hexes, and “Hocus Pocus,” rewatches had me feeling untouchable going into this one, and boy was I knocked off of that high horse pretty quickly. With the rejection of black cats and brooms, a cultish undercurrent, some rather high stakes, a setting that is about as isolated as you can get, and Golden’s break-neck, pedal to the metal, balls to the wall, blend of horror and action- turns out, yeah they’re pretty scary. Out September 16th from Titan in the UK, and already out in the US via St Martin’s Press, “The Night Birds,” is a folkish, claustrophobic, high-octane, sea-salted, sweat-slicked zinger.
Ruby Cahill is basking in her grief, her sweet tea margarita, her music and the storm that is brewing- blissful really… when a strange woman and a baby turn up on her doorstep and ask for help. Two nights later the storm is in full swing and Charlie Book, who lives aboard the semi-sunken “Christabel,” a rusting eco-system of a freighter he and his team hope to secure funding for, is standing his ground and riding it out. And it’s lucky (for some) that he does. His ex-girlfriend Ruby, with a strange woman and a baby in tow ask to be sheltered onboard, and with the weather as it is- how could Book refuse them? What he doesn’t anticipate is that the women are on the run from something older and more dangerous than he could ever comprehend- until it turns up on his doorstep.
As I mentioned before, these witches are scary. Not pointy hats and green skin scary, but mythically, skin-pricklingly terrifying. Golden draws from (I think?) slavic folklore, but filters it through his own twisted lens. In many ways they’re vampiric, although those specifics are best left unspoiled I think. The coven is known as the Näturvefjar and they worship in elemental, ancient and deeply wrong rites. This cultish element allows for the usual commentary upon radicalisation and zealotry. How acceptance and power (which we’ll discuss more shortly) can fill a void and rewire a mind. Golden throws some other horror tropes into the cauldron, that again, I don’t want to spoil- but damn. Golden’s take is one that pays homage to some existing lore, but is also wholly original. Never, in my experience, have witches been so terrifying.
So yeah, I think dread is the word I’d use to sum up this book. With a bloody mix of gnarly and emotionally devastating kills, suspense so taut it could be strummed, and a whole lot at risk, “The Night Birds,” is not a relaxing read by any definition. It’s also one that on its slick, oily surface, examines power, almost as a drug that one can become addicted to. The narcotic buzz that comes with control and how the pursuit of it stokes hate and turns hurt into anger. Whilst Golden marinates this in folklore and supernatural fury, it’s a clear and not particularly optimistic message grounded in reality.
“The Night Birds,” is fascinated with power- how it seduces and then corrupts, but is also preoccupied with raw human emotion. It examines grief and how in many ways, to grieve is to love and be loved in turn- a wonderful thing. It also finds peace in isolation, beauty in absurdity and disaster, clarity in stress. Golden examines these human emotions- grief, trauma, love, wonder, against those who have allowed greed to strip them of the same. It’s affecting, and despite outside appearances, hopeful in many ways.
An atmospheric, occult gut-punch, with an adversary for the ages, “The Night Birds,” is every bit as superb as I hoped it would be. To my own bafflement, I have not read a Christopher Golden novel since “Dead Ringers,” probably 5 years ago, and honestly, what an idiot I am. I’ll make sure I fix that posthaste. I’m probably overdue a visit to the House of Last Resort, no? Anyway, I digress… crackling with action, brimming with dread, smartly constructed and compulsively readable, this folk-soaked, storm-drenched odyssey was truly a… joy? Misery? …not sure, I liked it a lot though.
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