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Night Island, JAK
Jan. 11th, 2024 12:42 pmI finished it. This ties into a lot of other JAK books, but is specifically the second book “The Lost Night Files”; the Lost Night Files is the name of an in-universe podcast in which the various protagonists participate as part of trying to understand what happened to them on a night or nights they cannot remember. They are particularly compelled to understand those nights because what before those nights had been strong and accurate intuition after those nights has become, inexplicably, well-developed, powerful psychic talen.
I have all kinds of thoughts and feels here, mostly because this book hits so many of the JAK points — there are multiple scammers, there are the disillusioned women in their orbit, there is a vaguely culty activity, people are isolated and unable to get out of a situation or call for help into the situation readily. Luke Rand is from Adelina Beach, where he was a history professor after having assorted other professions in the past. There are abandoned government research projects into the paranormal. There are scary plants. There are people who are so obsessed with something that they’ve really disconnected from shared reality.
What really stood out, tho, was just _how_ time compressed this book is. JAK has a character towards the end of the book draw attention to that, when Talia is asked how long she has known Luke, and she’s working it out and it’s not just less than a week — it’s barely half a week. I’m not normally a huge fan of this amount of time compression, much less in conjunction with the isolation on an island where tech doesn’t work. OTOH, it was really charming to see how connected Talia felt to her chosen family from the podcast and Lucent Springs, and even to her bio-family. Talia’s got all kinds of Issues, but she is super clear on where she is and who she is and who she can rely on, and she brings that to her relationship with Luke in a way that makes this book so much less annoying than most books of this type (the isolated / time compressed / bad shit happening and we are thrown together). ALSO! I loved that when they find themselves in the middle of a horror movie (not literally), the survivors all stay together in one room and adjacent rooms. It’s lovely! They have been paying attention!
I have all kinds of thoughts and feels here, mostly because this book hits so many of the JAK points — there are multiple scammers, there are the disillusioned women in their orbit, there is a vaguely culty activity, people are isolated and unable to get out of a situation or call for help into the situation readily. Luke Rand is from Adelina Beach, where he was a history professor after having assorted other professions in the past. There are abandoned government research projects into the paranormal. There are scary plants. There are people who are so obsessed with something that they’ve really disconnected from shared reality.
What really stood out, tho, was just _how_ time compressed this book is. JAK has a character towards the end of the book draw attention to that, when Talia is asked how long she has known Luke, and she’s working it out and it’s not just less than a week — it’s barely half a week. I’m not normally a huge fan of this amount of time compression, much less in conjunction with the isolation on an island where tech doesn’t work. OTOH, it was really charming to see how connected Talia felt to her chosen family from the podcast and Lucent Springs, and even to her bio-family. Talia’s got all kinds of Issues, but she is super clear on where she is and who she is and who she can rely on, and she brings that to her relationship with Luke in a way that makes this book so much less annoying than most books of this type (the isolated / time compressed / bad shit happening and we are thrown together). ALSO! I loved that when they find themselves in the middle of a horror movie (not literally), the survivors all stay together in one room and adjacent rooms. It’s lovely! They have been paying attention!