Book Review: “Black Tide” by KC Jones
More Funny Than Scary
At the time that I’m writing this, it is a week to go before Christmas 2022 arrives. Yes, I am sitting down to write a review of a horror novel in the Yuletide season. What kind of person sits down to read and review a horror novel at such a time, the most wonderful of the year? Me, apparently. I should have probably reviewed this book a week before Halloween or something, but even then I would have been late. The novel in question, debut author KC Jones’ Black Tide, was originally published at the tail end of May 2022. I offer nothing in the way of apology for being so late, except to say that it has been a hellish year and this was the only time that I could get around to reviewing this. However, as the saying goes, it’s better to be late than never do anything at all — so I hope that suffices for something of a mea culpa. In any event, Black Tide is an interesting book — one that starts quite excellently, especially for a work in the much-derided horror genre. However, it, unfortunately, fizzles out the deeper and deeper you get into it. But more on that in a few moments.
The story alternates between the viewpoints of two characters named Beth and Mike (a surprising third character comes into play in the latter half of the book). Beth is a thirtysomething loner who is housesitting on the Oregon coast when, one evening, she stumbles across her neighbour, Mike, sitting alone in his backyard beside a campfire, nursing a bottle of champagne. You can probably guess where the story progresses from there. Yes, after much drinking, the two share a carnal night — and, because this is a horror novel, that’s when the weird start going pro. A meteor shower happens, but it turns out these meteors are housing alien creatures — some of which are invisible. Essentially, the pair winds up being trapped in a car on a beach with Beth’s dog, Jake, surrounded by these alien creatures on one side and a rising ocean tide on the other. There is seemingly no escape from impending doom.
Black Tide is interesting as it plays out like a more claustrophobic version of the Stephen King novella “The Mist.” And the book is engaging before the horror elements kick in because both Beth and Mike are somewhat ruined as characters. The back and forth between the two is quite absorbing essentially up until the point where the pair have sex. Alas, the novel just gets silly from there. There are two inherent flaws to this book: one, because the bad guys are (mostly) invisible, it’s hard to imagine what they “look like” and the damage they could inflict, and, two, author Jones can’t help but have his characters start to make wisecracks as they go about their narration, which deflates the tension of the read. The humour feels out of place for a novel of this ilk and ultimately makes it tough to take Black Tide as a suspenseful work of horror fiction. This is a shame because the book does have a bit of an original and unusual premise, allusions to Stephen King’s work notwithstanding. Even with its weaknesses, readers will still want to flip the pages forward to find out exactly what happens to the, um, star-crossed couple of protagonists. (You can make your jokes about this, but Mike is a fairly successful Hollywood film producer. So, groan!)
Even though I wasn’t very enamoured by Black Tide in the end, I would encourage its author to keep writing books. My recommendation would be to keep the humour to a minimum in future works because the one-liners felt at odds with what is ultimately a life-or-death situation. I’d hate to quote Ron Jeremy here, and I don’t mean to go on and on about this particular criticism, but he once remarked in an Onion A.V. Club piece that once the sex starts in a porno, the jokes have to stop. The same could be said about, well, blood and gore. Death or the threat of death is a serious matter, and it didn’t seem right to watch a couple of characters try to diffuse a stressful situation by joking about it. Face it: if you were trapped in a car with seemingly no way out of your predicament, would you turn into a Jim Carrey-esque person? Probably not. I’m guessing you would be scared out of your mind. Thus, that’s ultimately what makes Black Tide unsuccessful: its tone. It simply doesn’t jive with the actions on the page. Still, if you’ve read all of Stephen King’s novels and are looking for a quick fix, Black Tide may be the thing that could, um, tide you over. If anything, it shows that Jones is a writer who may have some real potential if he (the “K” in the author’s first name is Kevin, so I’m making a pronoun assumption here) dials down some of his indulgences. If he can manage that, then I’m positive that he will become a very successful writer. All in all, Black Tide shows promise. Even though this might not be, by now, a timely read that is concurrent with its release date, there’s stuff here that may be of interest to horror fans looking for new shocks, if they don’t mind that they’ll never see them coming because most of the antagonists here aren’t visible. Flaws such as that aside, this might be still worth a look for the curious.
KC Jones’ Black Tide was published by Tor Nightfire on May 31, 2022.
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