The premise hooked me before I started reading. A decrepit, ancient freighter stuck off the coast of Houston in the Gulf of Mexico during a tropical storm. Witches. And night birds. Scientists. And Christopher Golden?! What follows may be a little spoilery.
The protagonist, Charlie Book? Hmmm. I liked his character but wonder about him. Is he that gullible and accepting of WHATEVER life throws at him? Or that in love that nothing matters. The love of his life ditched him without explanation, then returns, with her sister’s lover and a baby and needs a safe place to hide—again with very little explanation? He either needed to be the indifferent or skeptical scientist or not. I liked the secondary characters and would have liked a little more from all of them. Perhaps that is a good thing. The storm itself had me thinking Golden had never been through a tropical storm. Being from Florida, the storm scenes seemed far too tamed, especially if this one was also had supernatural enhancement. The night birds came and went much too easily as the storm raged on. While they, too, were not entirely of this world, I would imagine that they would have been splattering against the ship as they desperately tried to keep an eye on things. Then, there are the mangroves. Again, I don’t believe the author has ever really looked closely at one of those trees, let alone climbed through a tangled mangrove forest. They are beautiful but muddy, claustrophobic messes. Their organized chaos is actually a great metaphor for the story.
