It opens in a futuristic and dystopian land where remnants of familiar cities haunt the skyline. A group of individuals, both adults and children, are navigating the landscape together as a family on a quest to find the ‘Sarkpont’, a mysterious and somewhat illusive item. But they aren’t the only ones on the quest for this item. As the grey nights draw in the unsettling sense of danger grows as they try and secure their dwellings from the malevolent forces that roam the desert during the dark hours.
We then jump to Fairfax County, Virginia where McKenzie Strathie is a science geek student who doesn’t quite fit in with the crowd at her school, but also doesn’t seem to quite fit into her family at home either. She has a unnatural ability to read the weather and has an obsession with weather patterns and deserts. She comes across as your standard awkward teenager until a sand-lizard suddenly appears in her bed one night. The way that her parents handle this incident - and the subsequent times it seems to roams her room - start to make her question what is really happening to her and set her off onto her own journey.
Although these stories are at first are alternating, it was never confusing to follow. The way that each story builds just drives you to keep reading on to find out what is connecting them. The characters are a vivid bunch of diverse personalities, each with something to contribute. Their different relationships, lived experiences and sometimes tensions really brought then to life. The book felt very visual and I could easily see this being converted to the big screen.
I haven’t read any sci-fi for quite some time, or books that are part of a series - probably not since Hugh Howey’s ‘Wool’ trilogy - so this really has whet my appetite to explore more. And I can’t wait for the next books in the trilogy to be released. It’s really exciting to find such a huge story that you can really immerse yourself in. It leaves you thinking about this quest on so many different levels and wanting to know so much more about this world that the incredible crime writer Mo Hayder has left us with.
