C.A. Fletcher is another completely new name for me. It wasn't until the rather brief author bio at the end of the book that I even knew he was a he. There are no previous publications listed so I assume this is a debut novel.
On a remote Scottish island, trouble breaks out when an ancient curse is released. The water becomes a source of terror, and the islanders are pulled into a struggle between life and death,
Stated that way this sounds like standard fare, but Fletcher is a damned good writer, and this feels like a totally fresh, original and frankly, bloody terrifying, read.
This is packed with set pieces and action sequences that left me reeling. Some of the imagery is dredged from the scariest of nightmares.
The plot takes a while to build and become clear, but it's never slow paced. He switches viewpoints between each of the characters in alternating short chapters. The tension builds from the first pages. Events may start slowly, but there's a clear set of dominoes that he topples one by one, each time raising the stakes and thinning out the cast still further.
It's all told in a perfectly rendered present tense, which gives everything a sense of immediacy and ratchets the sense of unease even more. He uses the opening chapters to put flesh on the bones of his characters, giving them all good backstories and motivations. The location is perfectly painted and is almost a character in itself. The sense of isolation from the rest of the world is palpable.
I loved the way that he credits the reader with enough intelligence to put the pieces together, particularly in the first half of the book.
The power of the writing raises what could have been a very generic story into something new and brilliant. There's even space for some of the blackest humour I've seen in a good while.
It's a fantastic book. If you like deeply chilling tales of remote communities getting being destroyed by unstoppable supernatural forces, this is the book for you.
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