Darkness Falls

Nature's Fury, Book 1

By: A. E. Faulkner

Narrated by: Katie Hagaman

As nature tires of human destruction, two sisters must face a changing environment that stands between them and survival.

When Quinn and Riley set out on a family vacation with their parents, the trip ends before it begins. Mother Nature interferes with their plans, setting off a sequence of events that thrusts the teens into a hostile landscape.

Stranded with limited supplies and struggling to figure out who they can trust along the way, they must determine how to survive nature’s evolving fury.

©2019 AE Faulkner (P)2020 AE Faulkner

Teenage girl navigates ecological dystopia

Darkness falls follows Quinn and her sister, Riley, as they try to survive after an ecological disaster takes the lives of their parents while on the way to their annual summer vacation. The girls manage to hold out for a while, but quickly realize they can't stay in their aunt's rental trailer forever. They meet up with a group of teenagers also stranded by the storms and earthquakes that are devastating the eastern seaboard, hoping to join forces so they can all get home.

But then Riley disappears in the night, and now Quinn's only goal is to find her. But first she has to survive. Roads are closed due to mass collisions, bridges are out, services are unavailable. When a member of their group is injured, that makes the journey all the more challenging as they face gun-toting homeowners, and nefarious strangers taking advantage of the societal disruption. The novel is a compelling, page-turner with short chapters and likable characters that keep the story moving along.

Although Darkness Falls is a well-written story with characters you can identify with and root for, I do wish there was a little more of the promised ecological fury unleashed by an angry Earth. We see the aftermath, and flashback to the inciting incident and there are a few scenes with genuine jeopardy, yet there are times I wish the peril was more present and on a larger scale. BUT, that is based on my personal bias and expectations of the genre. This is the first book in a series, and Faulkner does hint at the promise of more disasters to come in the sequels--which this book will leave you wanting to read!