I received an e-book ARC copy of Night Train from NetGalley and Titan Books in return for my honest review, which follows below. I thank both for this opportunity.
The opening scene gives us promises of a tense and secretive read. A person wakes up confused of who they are and where they are, not a great way to to start the day. Fighting her way to a door, she becomes aware that she is stuck on a moving train, not much of an improvement in my opinion. She begins moving in the direction she hopes will lead to the front of the train, passing through train cars carefully and fearfully. She meets another person, a man who claims to have been surviving on the train for more than a month, if his calculations could be in any way correct.
Each train car that they enter is different, some are buffet cars that offer limited types of food, while others range from common train cars to outright bizarre configurations. The windows will sometimes show explosions, ash raining down like snow, or lakes of fire below the tracks. None of this helps them remember. And the story continues from there but I dont want to give away spoilers.
So the obvious comparisons for me are the graphic novel, turned movie, soon to be television series Snowpiercer and the horror movie series Cube. There are traps and wrong choices to be made while traveling the train length, which is reminiscent of the Cube franchise. In those people would wake up in a room, usually with some memory loss, and have to find their way out of connecting rooms. Some are safe to enter, some are booby trapped, there was some math involved in solving it, or trick to making it through safely. They were fun, slightly campy movies, with unique ways to mess people up. Snowpiercer was an apocalyptic world setting, with a train that runs a continuous track, stuffed chock full with the surviving humanity. But class snobbery still exists, because why not?!, so there are poor people living in filth eating cricket bricks and rich people eating sushi and drinking booze.
This book felt like it took the middle road in plot from these two, a blend that was unique yet familiar. What fell a little flat for me was the character dialogue, at times it seemed like it tried to be jocular but didnt read sincere. It also could be awkward when more than two people would be talking, it could become difficult to tell who was speaking. There was also a stretch in the last part of the book where a few sentences seemed to be out of place, making the story feel fractured. Unless it was on purpose. I think it may be a printing error, it may be fixed by the release date. An example without using actual text; a question would be answered in paragraph one, without a speaking source given, but the question would not be asked until paragraph two. It made it difficult to read for several pages.
I thought it was an interesting story, I give it 3 stars because I enjoyed most of my time reading it. I would suggest it to people to read, m
