Random Things Tours: The Night Ship by Alex Woodroe

End of dictatorships sets the perfect setting for dark apocalyptic novels. As terror is incessantly played against the rebel citizens, the world gets dark sunking in the sea of uncertainty. It is, the end of a world, while the birth of the new one remains largely unknown.

I personally deeply and organically hate dictatorships. The ways in which they kill dreams and destroy destinies and trust. But it may also learn people how to resist together, and this feeling may go beyond the politics, as it prepares individuals to be awake even in the face of a doom.

Rosi is a smuggler active somewhere near the Romanian Western borders. While on her way to a ´secret economic survival´ mission together with her partner Gigi, the radio transmission station starts sending bizarre messages. It seems it is not the feared Romania secret police, but who is behind those transmissions? Warned by the changes taking place outside, Rosi and her group are slowly taking control of their lives trying to figure out the origin of the chaos.

The author of The Night Ship, Alex Woodroe is a Romanian-based author hence her familiarity with names, locations, various local dynamics and historical details from the recent communist past. But even without those specific elements, the ways in which the story is built and the character features of the protagonists may project the narrative in a timeless horizon. 

The descriptions do have a strong visual feature and interesting psychological details, particularly about human reaction in face of catastrophies. 

I have serious reserves about apocalyptic dark novels - and movies too - but a well written book is beyond any genre-based classifications. And The Night Ship just encouraged me take a chance out of my mental comfort zone and give a boost to my imagination. 

Was worth it and the intersection between so many separate topics was a blessing for my brain constantly hungry for new ideas.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own