Plants rule the world, most people don’t realise that. They keep us and sustain us, feed us and give us the air we breathe. They’re the foundation we build everything on.
Tim Lebbon's Among the Living certainly counts among the more claustrophobic and atmospheric thrill rides I've read to date, so I guess the title is on point. I mean that in the sense of the presence, I felt while I was reading this slim book.
At the same time, the author cleverly manages to insert some not-so-subtle, heartbreakingly prescient climate warnings, bringing to life a harsh and unforgivable terrain that nevertheless evokes nature's beauty within it.
They passed a low, marshy plain pocked with sinkholes and witnessed one open up less than a mile from them, the venting gases catching the dawn sun in a chaos of shattered rainbows. They navigated through a low range of hills where landslides had scarred the previously smooth landscape with sharp new ridgelines, crevasses and rugged tears in the ground. Skirting far around a boiling lake spitting steam to the sky, the dazzling phosphorescent waters were beautiful and daunting. In places the vegetation was almost defiantly lush, spilling across the ground like a slow-motion flood, smothering the landscape with joyous abandon as if released from some sort of incarceration. A variety of grasses, shrubs and trees seeded themselves anywhere there was soil.
Among The Living is set in the near future, where climate change has made available a series of cave systems previously buried under tons of ice for millennia, and a team of 'coordinate prospectors?' venture out to explore, expecting riches and rare earth elements ready for mining.
Instead, they come face to face with the horrors and beauty that Father Time and Mother Earth inevitably yield, releasing these horrors upon humanity in measured doses.
The prose in Among The Living is tense and livid. On the one hand, the characters seem like mere silhouettes, animating the drama within the scenes that unfold.
On the other, they are all too real and three-dimensional, slowly setting up a really creepy and scary tale, giving me what "Dead Silence" by S.A. Barnes failed to, I suppose.
You telling me you know what that was? Dean asked. “What happened down there?”
“It was nothing,” she said again. “Stupid panic, and we’ll bring Lanna out, but we’ve got to do it sensibly, safely. It was nothing. Got it?”
Nothing doesn’t smell or sound like that. Dean’s mind flashed back to the deep cavern with the grotesque tableau of ancient bodies. That crouched figure, that corpse, shifting and twisting and expanding. Wren shouting at them to keep their lights still because the writhing shadows were freaking him the fuck out. Lanna stepping closer, hers the only light beam that remained focused, trained on what was happening at the centre of that cave. The deformed head tilting to one side as if it was too heavy, and then lifting on a neck that sounded like it was full of broken glass.
Running, tripping, falling, shouting. And then the scream.
The writing in the book stays lean, fast-paced, and top-notch, not bothering to waste precious time painting characters but rather creating immersive scenes that make you feel like a present and solid witness.
The author handles perspective switching from his characters like a true master, seamlessly interwoven and intertwined...excellent.
The atmosphere within Among The Living is all chills and bad omens, harsh and beautiful landscapes, and claustrophobic and terrifying caves. The characters are shadowy, and the plot is tense, slowly increasing the levels of horrific mystery directly from the onset throughout.
Here is a really good work of climate thriller with elements of horror. I'll highly recommend this to fans of thrillers and horror alike, and I'm excited to try the author's books.
