The Night Ship Review

Special thanks to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the ARC copy they provided.

Alex Woodroe captured me with Whisperwood, so the moment I found out she was writing The Night Ship, I knew I needed to get my hands on it. Blessedly, NetGalley and Flame Tree Press provide. I couldn’t be happier to have had the chance to read this book.

The Night Ship is one hundred percent nothing like Whisperwood. If I hadn’t known Alex wrote them both, I wouldn’t have expected they were from the same author. And that is a sign of talent. “Wait a minute, the same author wrote these two completely different books?” is a feeling all of we writers can aspire to. I was pleasantly and enthusiastically surprised.

Now, onto my usual rambles.

Umm, excuse me, this book broke my heart?? I was not expecting that, and ouch??? Because seriously, we are launched off into this book with the end of what we expect is the world, and then sail through a literal sea of night where even the terrifying monsters are only… lost. Tired. Exhausted, really. And ultimately not evil, just ruined by a heartless system that viewed them as tools rather than people.

Perhaps those are the most horrible and heartwrenching of monsters because we can relate to them. We can see them and see ourselves and wonder if we would, or could, have done better in their position.

And… because there is always an and, in the midst of all this we grow to know and, maybe not love, but experience the growth and humanity of a group of characters. We see them at their worst and we see them push past themselves, and the blackened world around them, to become something more. We view their potential and what they could be in the still living world of sun and light that they realize still exists and that they can get back to. Only to lose them.

Or some of them.

The Night Ship is sad, lonely, and dark, but at its heart it’s human. And that is what will reel you in, make you feel, and spit you back out the other side, the way those who survive the dark are spit back out into the light. Alex Woodroe may have a talent for writing books that feel not even the slightest a alike, but her best talent is writing characters that are utterly human and living.

I cannot express enough how The Night Ship has lingered with me, and how hungry I am for more. Because all the best books make you wish they could go on forever.

I am here for whatever Alex writes next.