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So you wake up and you're on a boat. A curious mist shrouds the landscape and in it there are screaming noises. There's also the small matter that you, and the six other folk on the boat, have no memory of who you are. And you're all armed. It takes some talent to ruin this intriguing premise, but ruin it A.J. Ryan does - the literary equivalent of missing the net from six yards out or fumbling the ball just before the endzone. How does he do it? 1) Flat and purely functional writing 2) Lack of depth to the interchangeable characters, most of whom exist to impart specialist knowledge relevant to a situation - i.e., infodumps 3) Clichéd and pointless characters - the villain of the piece and especially Golding 4) Elements of the plot - let's execute this dumb plan that doesn't make any sense 5) There's an old Scottish TV ad for stock cubes that ends with the line "Pea and ham? From a chicken?", which makes more sense than than Ryan's extremely ropey science. Also, that's not how antibodies work.

In addition, some elements remind me very much of M.R. (Hey! What's with all the initials?) Carey's 'The Girl With All the Gifts' but without the sympathetic characters or quality of writing. Might make an ok film, but the kind of book that deters you from reading more by the author.

Disillusioned PhD student Brian take a gig assisting former alien abductee and current monster hunter Mark Sandoval in his investigation of a unicorn sighting on an island off the coast of Iceland. While the unicorn proves elusive, maybe there's Something Else lurking in the surrounding woods and why exactly is there a US military base on the island? More importantly, will both men face up to the real monsters they're running from from? There's a lot to unpack in this wonderful novel which defies classification. Maybe a horror/magical realism/family drama mashup; it covers so many bases and it covers them so bloody well. I really loved the "first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is" nature of the preternatural elements of the book. There's a big reveal, in passing, because that's not really what the novel's about. The worst monsters are in ourselves: literally and metaphorically and we must face up to them sometime. Wouldn't the world be a more interesting and larger place if people were abducted by aliens and forests are littered with roaming unicorns?
Funny, poignant, with a terrific ending. Good luck, Brian!