THE LONG FALL OF NIGHT by A.J. Rose

THE LONG FALL OF NIGHT by A.J. Rose

Pages:          473

Date:           June 21, 2015 

Details:        No. 1 The Long Fall of Night

Own / Kindle

The blurb:

In a flash, everything changes.

When NYU student Asher Caine’s uncle calls to warn him something big is coming, he has no idea it will be so devastating. Not even years of training can prepare him for what he's about to face. The only plan he has is to get his sister and nephew across country to safety, whatever it takes.

The darkness is full of potential. For good or evil, only time will tell.

Elliot Davenport isn’t about to let his Chemistry lab partner leave him behind, though he’s never done a spontaneous thing in his life. Ash is mysterious, aloof, and so damned sexy, Elliot can’t get the guy out of his head. But his crush takes a backseat as the gravity of the situation becomes clear: the eastern two-thirds of the United States has gone dark.

What happens when all the rules change in a split second?

200 million people are without access to sustainable food and water, let alone coffee and the Internet. Facing the worst humanitarian crisis the western world has ever seen, the government calls the military to step in. The entire military.

The soldiers of Team Shockwave are tasked with evacuating civilians to the safety of refugee camps, and then patrolling the new border between the East and West. Shockwave are on the front lines and the fate of an entire nation rests on them.

Welcome to the long fall of night…

My thoughts:

Colour me blown away. I had high expectations, very high actually. A.J. Rose has managed to impress me with her story-telling abilities and the magical way in which she uses words to construct the most beautiful and descriptive sentences, since I first read Power Exchange. So anything less than a gripping, breathtaking, and addictive reading experience would have left me disappointed. I’m very happy to say that not only did she not disappoint me; she blew me away and left me awe-struck.

This book touched me more than other dystopian stories have so far because events as described in The Long Fall of Night are all too plausible. It’s is all too easy imagining something like this black out happening, and once that idea has entered your mind it is impossible to not start asking yourself questions; what if I found myself in this situation, what would I do, how would I survive, what do I actually know about living without all the modern conveniences? I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea.

The Long Fall of Night is an epic tale. Not just because it is indeed epic, as in fabulous, but also because it’s grand in scale and characters. As such, The Long Fall of Night can only be described as total immersion - as complete a reading experience as you’re likely to find between two (virtual) covers. This story pushed most if not all of my buttons. There’s the mystery of what exactly is going on and who’s responsible as well as the adventure laden cross-country trip undertaken by Ash, Elliot and their mismatched group, and the military angle all combined with several developing love stories.

While you might expect a dystopian tale to be action driven – and trust me, this book is not short on tension, action and danger – this is first and foremost a character driven story. For me the way the characters dealt – or didn’t deal – with the situation they found themselves in was far more intriguing than the actual danger they faced. Every single character described in this story felt real and recognisable. I love that they all had their flaws and their strengths; that they grew and learned things about themselves and each other they had never known or suspected.

I can’t wait to see where this story will be going next. The possibilities are almost endless and I can see myself playing guessing games between now and the autumn release of The Dark Before Dawn.