Day Four - Sarah Lotz

When this arrived in the post this morning I'm afraid I got a little excited, I loved The Three, and was keen to know how this book could follow on from there. I have to admit that Day Four jumped the reading queue rather badly.... as I had started it within a couple of hours of it arriving. It did not disappoint, as can be demonstrated by my staying up to complete the book in pretty much one sitting. As with The Three, this is a story that unfolds through various POV characters, one point of difference was that here the action was entirely contained on a single cruise ship that mysteriously loses power and seems to become lost on it's final day of the cruise. The majority of the action concerns the total collapse of any semblance of civilised behaviour as the passengers and many of the crew descend into a 'Lord of the Flies' mentality. As the situation worsens the true nature of each individual is revealed with the majority not coming off looking all that great. Weaving through all of this is the medium Celine del Ray, who starts to act out of character and seems keen on genuinely helping the stricken passengers and crew. A series of hauntings only make the situation worse, although the nature of these hauntings seems to vary greatly depending on the nature of the individual involved. The ending of the book tries to tie the whole thing together and to explain just why the ship is eventually found essentially devoid of life.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I did The Three, I found the ending here to be less random, and certainly didn't feel that it had been shoehorned in to the story in the same was as with the earlier book. The moments of spookiness worked better in this second book for me too. I also liked that this book was more explicit about what could be causing all of the events described. I'll happily admit that this book is highly derivative; it owes a HUGE debt to films like Devil and Ghost Ship, not to mention Lost etc etc.... However this does still manage to put a fresh spin on events and situations, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.