The Missing

Nice, scary read. I’ve read a lot of apocalypse fiction but for some reason I can’t identify this one depressed me when the others didn’t. Langan has a real gift for creating believable characters and realistic settings, and her engaging style prompts the reader to empathize with the people in the story even when they behave badly.

As with her first novel, The Keeper, the story starts slow. There’s enough gore to satisfy blood hounds and enough character exposition to make it readable on the plane. More interesting than her first book (which I enjoyed), I look forward to more from her.

I think I see why people read these kinds of books. Reading this book was like walking on a people mover. "Whee!" I thought as the pages I held in my left hand added up and the those in my right hand diminished. "I'm reading so fast!"

But along the way my mental tally of annoying things about this novel kept me just this side of enjoying it. Here are some of the things that bugged me:

1) Poor editing. This rankles the copy editor in me every time. Not only do the repeated words and phrases distract me, but their presence suggests that even someone paid to read the novel didn't care enough about it to read it closely.

2) Internal inconsistencies. A character throws up one morning and then, twenty pages and a few storyline hours later, she show more throws up again but "it had been such a long time since she'd thrown up (New Year's Eve, 2000?) that she wasn't sure what is happening." (p 101 in the paperback I read) A character finds it painful to stand, and three paragraphs later, she stands without any other comment. (p 327) Sometimes the creatures can be killed by a shot to the head or a stab to the heart and other times they can't.

3) It's derivative. This book echoes Tommyknockers, Gerald's Game, I Am Legend, and every vampire story ever written.

4) Factual inaccuracies. The CDC headquarters is in Atlanta, not Washington, DC (there is a Washington office, but its mission is legislative strategy for public health policy). Poison ivy berries are an important food source for wild birds. These could probably go under "poor editing," but they annoyed me enough to get their own number in the list.

While I enjoyed the sense of speed I got while reading this novel, it wasn't enough to leave me feeling satisfied when I factor in all of these other things (not to mention the flat, stereotyped characters with ridiculously unsubtle names. Albert Sanguine? *Eye roll*). Oh, and it didn't scare me.

My quest for good, literary horror continues... show less

Sarah Langan sure does like Stephen King. Perhaps she doesn't realize how much he's rolling around in her head, but it seems like she went looking for her voice and found his instead. Her stories read like the kind of dream you would have if you took a King novel to bed and woke up the next morning, with a plot of your own rolling around that you struggle to make sense of.

I picked this one up because my library said it was a zombie book, and I had a zombie research project of sorts in the works. It's not really a zombie book. Well, it is in that there is a contagion in the town that appears to turn those affected into flesh-eaters - but it's very unclear how this happens, and generalized evil dreck from the site of a former show more supernatural tragedy has a large part to play in this. I would argue that Langan is working out her Stephen King issues in a big way here, and that what the people in this town really have is whatever was in the bottom of the mine in King's Desperation. Same symptoms. The changed are crazy and antisocial, but not mindless, and they have the same weird gore/respiratory symptoms as did those touched by Tak. Maybe a little of The Tommyknockers thrown in, and a definite nod to Straub's Eyes of the Dragon - the prologue narrator's husband is like a character straight out of that book.

The biggest problem with Langan is that all of her characters seemed to be crazy going in, so it's hard to tell who's been affected, and whether they would have been any better off if they managed to escape.

Another of her books, Audrey's Door, which is Langan's version of The Shining/Haunting of Hill House, demonstrated this phenomenon the best. The main character meets a doorman - over the course of a very superficial conversation decides he wants her body, no, wait, he thinks of her as his daughter. She insults his parenting and implies that the daughter he briefly mentions is crazy, then decides he's fatherly and she likes him. What???

In the beginning of Langan's The Keeper, there is a sentence that says, effectively, that the whole town, while obsessing about the crazy main character, had decided their other problems were worse and, AS A GROUP, without speaking to one another about it, decided to stop thinking about/discussing her. Does this seem likely to you?
Reading Langan is like watching the Brontes write King.

And yet, I think I'm giving the impression here that this book, and Langan's other works, are awful. Literary merit aside, they ARE compelling. It's that dream quality they have, I think. I'd give them a chance. It's like a tale told late at night, by the fireside. Sometimes everything doesn't always have to make sense. show less

I thoroughly enjoyed this book as much as I enjoyed The Keeper. Now with this book, we were in the town over from Bedford where the last one took place. She so reminds me of Stephen King. This book had everything from exotic descriptions to the horror that I have come to love so much.

Things happen so slowly, yet so fast. First of all with the class trip to Bedford, a young boy named James takes it upon himself to get lost and then the voices talk to him. They know what he wants, what he is like. Then he is attacked and killed by animals. The dirt in Bedford is squishy like it's made up of blood. It even smells like it. With Ms. Langan's descriptions, you can practically see everything and everyone in this book. Everyone in the town show more seems to know that something is coming, but they aren't sure when or where, but they know that it's coming. It's a tale of survival and not letting the madness take over your mind. Even the reader knows something is coming, but not sure when and where it's going to happen.

The infection seems to move quickly. People end up getting sick and guess what ... these people are dead and turned into zombies, more or less. Oh, and we all know how I love these kinds of books. The tone of the book is dark, which is why it had it's appeal for me. It's an edge of your seat tale of nail-biting terror. show less

I am at a loss. Interesting story. Talented writer. And yet... the characters were so relentlessly unlikable that the book itself became a struggle.

The town of Corpus Christi, Maine, is a nice middle-class suburb where life is quiet, until a class field trip disturbs something better left sleeping. Very quickly, a sickness spreads through town - but this is no ordinary virus. It preys on a person's deepest fears and failures, and turns its victims into something very different from human.

Sarah Langan has crafted a great story that starts with a set of flawed characters, then ratchets up the horror until the story becomes apocaplyptic. This is one creepy story. It's a sequel to The Keeper, her previous novel, but the stories are only loosely connected. If you want the full effect, read 'em in order, but The Missing certainly stands on its own.

This is a mix between zombie novel and a vampire novel. The infected don't die; instead the virus changes them, altering their physiology to meet its needs. They feed, eating every part of flesh from the bodies (zombie). They also have mind reading abilities and light sensitivity that forces them to sleep during the day (vampire). The mix works fairly well.

The story is told from the point of view of multiple characters, those who live in the small town that will become ground zero for the plague. I was fairly impressed at Langan's ability to give each character depth and complexity in each small chapter, though a couple of them who fell into the cookie cutter range.

It was a strange thing that as the story progressed, I slowly began to show more like the characters less and less instead of the other way around. I eventually didn't care much what happened to them.

Despite not loving the characters, this was a fast paced novel, an easy, lightweight read, and just what I needed at the moment.

I didn't realize that this was the second book in a series when I picked it up. The story just kind of ends and it feels very much like it's still in the middle of things. I enjoyed this enough that I'm curious to go read about the events that are hinted at in the first book. And I'd be interested in following, what happens next, as well. show less