Night Train

May 4, 2020
Quantick (All My Colors) sets this harrowing sci-fi tale aboard a bizarre train with unexpected horrors waiting in each car. Garland wakes up alone in the dark with no memory of who or where she is. She escapes the dark room in which she finds herself, only to discover that she’s on a train and the next car is full of dead bodies. Continuing from car to car in search of answers, she meets Banks, who is equally confused about how he came aboard but does remember who he is. Together they move forward through the train—crossing through deserted cars and lavishly decorated ones, booby-trapped cars and ones full of gory remains—until they meet the exceptionally strong Poppy, who joins them in their trek to the front of the train. Quantick throws readers into this off-kilter world just as blindly as his characters, creating a sense of disconcerting dread. As the puzzle pieces slowly come together, the characters and reader alike realize that something horrible has happened to the world. This imaginative horror novel is a page-turner.

May 1, 2020
The latest from acclaimed television writer and novelist Quantick (All My Colors, 2019) begins with a woman waking up with almost no memory in a pitch-black train car. Her first sight once she finds a lit train car is 15 dead people, each one sitting almost casually in one of the train's seats. As the woman continues her exploration of the train, she meets the other living inhabitants onboard, all of whom, whether human passenger or monstrous threat, seem to have been warped and changed by some outside force. With a world seemingly empty and desolate except for the contained train environment with its bizarre cars alternately filled with luxuries or horrors, the book exhibits the same narrative pleasures present in Snowpiercer and other "a train as the world" far futures. Quantick presents a dark mystery of slowly uncovered memories in the midst of claustrophobic horror with skill and verve, creating a story that should satisfy any curious reader, genre fan or otherwise. ecommended for those who enjoy a little mystery or horror in their sf dystopias.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)