Psychlone

An old man enlists the help of his son and his son's friend to monitor strange phenomena around his secluded cabin. Both young men are skeptical, but are willing to humor the old man and spend a few days with him. Two days later one would rush from the cabin with the utmost urgency, shaken and in denial about the incomprehensible events that had taken place the night before.

Meanwhile a whirlwind of genocidal psychic energy wipes out nearly an entire town of people in New Mexico, leaving only 2 women and a small boy. It was meant to be a big mystery as to why this was happening, but the big reveal was completely spoiled in big bold letters in the summary on the back of my edition. If it happens on page 230 out of 280, it probably shouldn't be mentioned in the summary. Seriously...

There is a lot of great tension early on but the ending fell apart for me. A wave of characters is introduced in the second half of the book, which was hard to keep track of considering that is the time when you are using blitzing through the pages in this kind of book. Some events seemed to be skipped over too, and occasionally I wondered if I had accidentally skipped a page when flipping. The overall concept is interesting, but as I said, it was spoiled by the publisher.

The author had a cool idea, but the book feels like it needed a bit more work before publishing. As it is, it's just okay, I didn't hate it or anything, but it's just a little too sloppy for me. ( )

I read it probably 15 years ago, and imagery and the horror of the novel have stuck with me to this day. Either that says something (complimentary) about this book, or I don't read enough horror. ( )

Fans of Greg Bear or fast-paced horror novels with an SF tinge, who aren't fussy about plausibility, will find this a fast read. Probably the most SF-ish thing about this book is when one of the main characters, during a dramatic psychic phenomena freezing spell, stops to calculate how much energy is being drained from the local region. Shades of 1940's SF and those engineers with their slipsticks! ( )