Dark and Troubled

Darkness on the Edge of Town by Brian Keene

Horror/Dysptopian

This is dystopian apocalyptic fiction to the extreme.  I read scads of dystopian books but never has one left me feeling so hopeless.  There is truly no way out of this mess!

The residents of a small Virgina town find they are cut off from the world.  Beyond the town limits is just a wall of darkness.  When someone goes into the darkness to investigate, they never come back.  There's only the screams.  Robbie is a total slacker/weed head who lives with his girlfriend and delivers pizza.  His girlfriend is also a total loser as is every one of his neighbors and all the characters in this book.  Egad--this is who is responsible for the last of humanity?  No wonder we're doomed. 

Robbie has a plan to escape but he has to talk the panicking townspeople to agree with his crazy scheme.  As a reader, I felt like the crazier Robbie became, the crazier I felt.  I was positively deranged by the end, trying to figure out a way to save the town and these people.  Most of the book is about residents trying to, and then despairing of, escape from the darkness to find other signs of humanity/society left on Earth. 

This book honestly scared my pants off.  I couldn't read it a night.  I was too creeped out.  This book was really scary and it's hard to do scary.  It was also very gory and violent with a lot of alcohol, drug and sexual references.  I probably won't be reading this author again.  The harshness of the language and inappropriate-ness pushed it just past the edge of being a really enjoyable read.