Gabino Iglesias Reviews Black Tide by KC Jones
Black Tide, KC Jones (Tor Nightfire 978-1-25079-269-3, $10.99, 256pp, hc) May 2022.
KC Jones’s Black Tide is a blend of horror, science fiction, and romance that somehow works. Weird, tense, and at times unexpectedly funny, this novel, which is Jones’s debut, has a cinematic atmosphere and a last third that contains enough alien monsters and action to hook fans of science fiction, adventure, and horror equally.
Mike and Beth were didn’t know each other before the night of the meteor shower. They are both broke. Both are sad, but when they end up being neighbors, alcohol and good conversation soon lights a spark between them. However, the meteor shower that happened during their night together changed the world. Something came with that meteor shower, and now there’s a lot of destruction and some very strange creatures out there. After they lose their car keys and are left stranded on an empty beach on the Oregon coast, Beth and Mike will have to fight to stay alive.
Horror can be serious and deal with heavy topics, but it can also be a lot of fun and incredibly entertaining, and Jones clearly went for the latter. The narrative touches on loss, heartbreak, and even suicide, but it’s mostly about mayhem, bizarre alien creatures trying to devour the two characters, and the kind of explosive mayhem that can make survival stories so entertaining even when the ending is much happier and lighter than expected.
Black Tide’s DNA is full of space horror and massive creatures – think stories like Lovecraft’s ‘‘The Colour Out of Space’’ and movies like Extinction. However, what makes it work and feel fresh is Jones’s voice. There might be weird, deadly creatures on the sand and invisible monsters with giant mouths full of teeth trying to kill Beth and Mike while they’re trapped in their car with a dog, but what holds everything together is their banter and the way they found each other right before everything went wrong. I mentioned in the opening paragraph that this novel has romance elements, and that’s true, but they’re not what people usually think about when we talk about romance; here, it’s all about finding someone who just makes you want to be alive one more day.
Apocalyptic novels must find a rare balance between bleakness and gallows humor, things that make characters realize just how messed up things are but also reasons for them to keep fighting. Jones has accomplished that here, and he did so with a lot of cinematic flair and a great sense of humor. If this is any indication of the kind of horror Jones will bring to the table, I hope he gives us some more mayhem very soon.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the July 2023 issue of Locus.
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