The Night Ship

Woodroe (Whisperwood) expertly maintains suspense throughout this unsettling and immersive sci-fi thriller about an apocalyptic event in 1987 Romania. Heroine Rosi has “made it a point of survival to think as little as possible about... goings-on beyond what was strictly in front of her.” She’s taken advantage of the logging truck used by her fiancé, Gigi, to facilitate her smuggling business. On a routine excursion in that vehicle, the pair pick up a hitchhiker, Sorin, who claims to be a philosophy student, though Rosi soon comes to suspect that he is a government informant, if not actually a member of the country’s notorious secret police. Before she can test this theory, darkness falls like a physical force from the sky and “swallows the world.” In this new pitch blackness, segments of once solid ground are replaced by an inky substance that drags down all objects that land in it. With the truck’s cabin one of the only safe refuges, this unlikely trio set out to make sense of what’s happened and rescue survivors. Woodroe parcels out reveals about the nature of the dark void gradually but effectively. Readers will be on the edges of their seats. (Jan.)