In a flash of light, the world changes. People are whisked away. The ones that aren't, try to pick up the pieces - attempt to make sense of the nonsense. It's something out of an science fiction show - like Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. The streets are littered with car accidents - presumably the drivers were taken with the light. Shopping centers are empty. Life has left the earth. Taken away. But to where? And why were some people left behind?

It's hard to tell whether the ones that were taken are the lucky ones in Peter Crowther's Darkness Falling. It's definitely not the ones who weren't. When the light returns, bringing back some of the taken, things don't resume to normal. In fact, the people - now donning wrap-around sunglasses and thick work gloves - are alien to the world around them. Nearly zombified. It's a good concept, I tell you. However, can the storyteller keep the readers' attention?

Not sure what bothers me more. The fact that this book is riddled with punctuation mistakes - which are easily missed - c'mon, mine's not perfect. Or the fact that it's splattered with inconsistencies. The beginning of the book, the time is said to be five in the morning on the plane. Meanwhile, in later chapters, the time shift to two in the morning. When the plane makes a crash landing, they head for a Barnes and Noble that transforms into a Borders that changes back into a Barnes and Noble only to transform back into a Borders later on. On the ground, Rick, Johnny and Melanie see that the bus is being driven by Karl. Meanwhile, inside the bus, Karl is being attacked by one of the creatures and it is Ronnie who drives the bus when the three people on the street see it veering towards them. Small things like this, splattered over the pages, make me wonder how on earth the editors over at Angry Robot Books missed them. Peter Crowther states - in his acknowledgments - that the book was originally three separate volumes. This might excuse the inconsistencies if they weren't so close together. It also might excuse the repetition of earlier events; however, it would seem that Crowther simple cut & paste the passages as filler - make the book longer and the reader will think it's epic.

I'm not bashing Peter Crowther's ability to captivate the reader, however. Inconsistencies aside, the story and the characters are remarkable. Repetition aside, the story flows. Grammatical errors aside, the book is genius. Not since The Tommyknockers - the movie, as I've never read the book - have I been captivated by alien beings taking over human bodies. The novel borders on zombie domination - only these creatures are far from brain dead, even though the simplest tasks befuddle them at first. However, now that Darkness Falling marks the first book in a - what? a trilogy? a series? - I'm wondering how far I'm willing to travel this road.

I like to thank Angry Robot Books for allowing me to read this novel before it hit shelves. I also encourage the readers of sci-fi, urban fantasy and horror to join the Angry Robot Army in order to garner the same opportunities. You may even download free books for your e-readers - including this title, it would seem. ( )

Hoo boy! This is a good one! Haven't read anything similar in years! I'm not talking about subject matter though, I'm talking about writing style. LOVED it. I've never read anything by Peter Crowther before and if I'm honest I've never even heard of him before this boook caught my attention but right from the very first page of the prologue I felt like I was meeting an old friend after a long absence.

Why? How? Because it's like this guy is channelling my coming of age book hero, Stephen 'The Man' King! It's uncanny!

They both have this 'way' of writing. It's like the books are written in a first person POV but with a third person narrative. I can't explain it, I'm positive there must be a term to describe that writing style but I just don't know what it is. There are a lot of inner monologues where someone will be describing how they're feeling or what they're thinking but they use words like 'he' or 'she' to describe themselves insead of 'I'.

Ack! I just can't put it into words...all I know is that I associate it with King and I like it.

So anyway, the book...

Darkness Falling is the first part of the Forever Twilight trilogy. I think it's considered to be Science Fiction but it's also probably easily slotted into the Horror genre. Maybe Apocalyptic fiction too. To keep with the King connection I'd compare it to having a bit of 'The Langoliers', 'The Stand', 'The Tommy Knockers'..actually, I could probably find a lot of bits from a lot of novels to compare this to. It's quite hard to pigeon hole. Invasion of the body snatchers with zombie aliens is kinda close.

It's very character driven and the whole story is told via multiple 'survivors' and while I love all that, it was a bit frustrating to get caught up in one person's story only to have the chapter end and have to remind myself of a new person's story-to-date and catch up with their portion again for the new chapter. I'll admit to enjoying the story of some characters more than others too, which made things all the more frustrating when a really good bit ended and I had to get through a character I wasn't enjoying as much to get back to the good stuff. It's all good, I just really wasn't that 'connected' to the radio station guys (and gal), which is a pity because they're sort of central.

There a LOT of 'name dropping scattered throughout. Pop culture, movie references, actors, etc and it's not that it bothered me exactly it just got tedious after a while. There's a section where one of the characters 'Ronnie' tells the character 'Karl' that he looks like the actor Paul Giamatti, now while that's great for me to get a visual of how Karl looks it felt like lazy writing. There's that mantra for writers that I've seen mentioned here and there, "Don't 'tell' me, 'show' me" but here 'showing' me involved a side-step to google images to find out what Karl looked like. In case anyone is as un-savvy as I am, he's the one who played the Ourangatang in Planet of the Apes.... I think.

Did I mention how scary it is yet? No? Well, it's scary. I had to stop reading it last night and lay it aside to finish today during daylight hours. I'm not a huge devourer of the horror genre and don't claim to be an authority on what constitutes a successful scare but all I know is that when reading certain bits my brain was saying "No no no no no...omgomgomgomg". I think I'm probably quite wimpy as far as 'easily spooked' goes but to coin a Disney rating, it's worse than "mild peril".

I found it hard to find any kind of in-depth synopsis for this book and I don't know if that's intentional but just in case it is I won't spoil anything by going into a deep analysis of the story line. I'll just end by saying - I. LIKED. IT! ( )

When I'm having to force myself to the end of a book, I know something's not working for me. And this should have worked for me, it has all the ingredients of a book I'll like. Instead it read like a cut-rate Stephen King (and I like King) with the flow of its internal dialogue, and random shit and fart jokes that go on a little too long.

I spent the first two thirds of the book feeling like it was all set-up, and the last third wondering what the hell was going on as the Heroes Assembled, and there as no payoff for me at the end because it turned out to all be setup for the as-yet-unpublished second book in the series. Everything took too long, and with a couple of exceptions, I never got a solid sense of character: every time I saw a new name I had to try to figure out who the hell that was again, and the reactions to this abrupt change in reality never come across as at all realistic. It was also lacking a strong sense of place; the generic 'American' setting was peppered with moments of British idiom that kept making me question if I was even remembering the setting right.

The worst part for me was that I could tell it was something that, if done a little differently, I would like a whole lot. I'm still wanting it to be that book. ( )

I just couldn't keep going. At a hundred pages in, nothing was happening. I liked the selection of characters - a woman with multiple personalities, a serial killer, a six-year-old who can see the future - I just can't deal with the complete lack of plot. ( )

I wanted to like this book and the idea of it is interesting but this book really bothered me on so many different levels.For one, I did not really care for the writing style. It just isn't something that I normally go for. Anytime a action scene pops up where a lot of different noises are happening around the characters, the writing changes to literally add the noise to the paragraph. I did not care for that.I'm also not sure what some of the story lines within the over all plot are doing there. It just doesn't seem like some of those stories relate in any way to the over all story of most of the population disappearing only to return later as a strange 'alien' race that makes flying cars and is determined to destroy what is left of the human race.Also, why must everyone in this book, well what is left of the human race, hear voices? Why do some of them just 'know' what is going to happen? It's all a very strange story line. One that really did not interest me. ( )