Dividing your apocalyptic doorstop into “books” is nothing new. One only has to open up The Stand or Swan Song to be greeted by a full page advertising your entrance to Book I. Typically, the number of “books” the end of the world is divided into all get collected into one place. Daniel Barnett is going about this a bit differently. It’s tempting to draw comparisons between Barnett’s Nightmareland series and John F.D. Taff’s The Fearing, but the difference is Taff wrote his series in full before releasing it serially, and despite the fact that Barnett has a fair portion completed, he’s going to be working on it for some time to come. As a reader just finishing up Volume One, this excites me to no end.
At around 140 pages, Nightfall mainly serves as the introduction to the series. We get a look at the apocalyptic event that gets things moving, but are left with plenty of wonder. I wouldn’t consider it much of a spoiler to tell you that the sun ceases to shine. I think the title pretty much takes care of that. Barnett makes no secret in his author’s note that if you want an explanation for everything going on, you’ll get it, but it’s going to be a while. I’ll also tell you that there’s a lot more going on here than just widespread darkness.
Nightfall makes great use of its runtime to give us a taste of the violence and mayhem we might expect to see going forward. Barnett writes in a way that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy. At some times the prose is vivid and poetic, at others considerably more straightforward. The tone varies in service of the story and it’s undoubtedly something I will be paying attention to going forward. I would go so far as to say the writing lends the story the feel of a western.
At times the pacing feels a bit odd, although this could be written off to my own personal experience. The reader has to remember that although the book in their hand is slim, it’s only a small portion of a story that would run many inches thicker.
While we meet various characters who we will undoubtedly follow to the story’s end, or at least theirs, our focus is on Jim Hawthorne. In Jim, we have a protagonist that brings the word stoic to mind. He’s a hard, quiet man with no qualms about violence, and the reader is immediately aware that there’s a lot of backstory to dig into going forward.
By the time the last page has been turned there is enough story revealed to whet the reader’s appetite. Rather than leaving us on a traditional cliffhanger, Barnett gives us something to think about while we wait for Volume Two. There are teases about where the story could be going, but Nightfall gracefully avoids the pitfall of feeling like it left off mid-chapter. It truly feels like a complete volume as opposed to a reasonable place to end part one because of word or page count.
For the first five or so volumes, Barnett is planning to release them every couple months. At least we won’t have to wait long for Volume Two.


I was given a copy by the author for review consideration.