My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Spice Rating:
Title: The Night Ship
Author: Alex Woodroe
Format: eBook (NetGalley)
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 1/20/26
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Categories: Dystopia, Horror, Thriller, Apocalyptic
Disclaimer: **I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**
Thank you to Flame Tree Press for giving me a chance to read this eARC in exchange for an honest review!
An apocalyptic world turned into a pitch-black sea of nothingness, but smuggler Rosi and her crew of survivors aren’t alone. Something hungry lurks below…
Driving a logging truck through the Romanian mountains, smuggler Rosi and her crew come across a radio signal that hints at impending doom. As the world goes completely dark, their truck becomes a vessel sailing across a sea of nothingness.
But they’re not transmissions trickle in through the radio from similar isolated islands across the country, from amateur radio hobbyists and police cars and customs facilities.
Attempting to rescue survivors and find a way out, the group save more lives, but soon discover that something hungry lurks below, and it’s sending up agents – and transmissions – of its own.
Content Warning: death
I was asked to read and review this book and I took a chance on it even though it’s out of my comfort zone. I do read dystopia but not so much ones like this one.
It’s the end of the world, Rosi is with a few people and they are in a truck getting transmission radio signals and hearing people all over talk about being alone, that this is the end and they just want people to know they are out there.
How is the world ending? I’m not sure – something with vines? I was confused most of the time. They were running from something, but even they didn’t know what I suppose. I felt like this world-building was very vague. But I did feel the tension from beginning to the end of the story.
It’s also a short story, way under 300 pages, but I just felt like there wasn’t much there for me to feel invested in the characters or what was happening since I was confused. I did get that this took place in Eastern Europe, and I got a hit of some politics in the story, but again, not enough that I knew anything concrete.
Final Thoughts:
I think this was a well-written story but not something the kinds of stories I usually read, so I felt it was an okay read for me. But if you like apocalyptic stories, where you don’t get the answers right away – you might like this one.
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I do love dystopian stories but I think that I would want more background. I like to know why things have happened so this one might frustrate me a bit. Thanks for the review