The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims

TL;DR: An interesting idea, not so interesting exectuion.
Source: NetGalley, so many thanks to the publisher!

Plot: People ride the subway, and then don’t get off while others loose their memory.
Characters: The characters really suffered for the benefit of the pace here.
Setting: This wasn’t bad! For someone who has never been on a subway I could definitely picture it.
Horror: This type of horror really needs you to care about the characters… which I did not.

Summary:

It’s the hottest summer on record and London is dying. Prices are high, pay is low, and stressed commuters are packed onto London Underground trains again like the pandemic never happened. To add to the misery, the temperatures underground just keep climbing and climbing, the heat trapped in the clay with nowhere to go.

Then one fateful morning five travellers on an unlucky tube carriage find themselves bound together as witnesses to a single horrific event – an event they can’t quite seem to remember.

They make an unlikely team – a weary tube driver, a disillusioned civil servant, an ambitious city trader, an overwhelmed hotel worker, and an unhoused young man just trying to get by – but now they must come together to confront what they have seen and stop it in its tracks before it kills them all.

Thoughts:

As someone who lives in a tiny little town in Tennessee I’ve never been to London or been on a subway. Perhaps that took away from the horror of this for me? Or should it have added to it?

This one follows a small cast who find themselves to be the survivors of an attack by some creature that lurks in the underground. Soon they find that they’re being hunted, perhaps next on the menu? Part of the problem here is that they don’t figure this out till 40% of the way through the novel. It’s fast paced, I’ll give you that. And there are moments of tense apprehension, but I’m not sure if that was meant to be the fuel for the horror.

I wonder if it was meant to be a gross kind of horror as well? There were parts that spoke of the greasy remains of an attack. A smell that acted like a pheromone that put victims into a trance. Creepy or gross, this one was just unfortunately a bit dull for me. I genuinely think it was the fast pace. We didn’t get any time to enjoy these characters. They all felt very similar, just in different situations, and since I had no connection I really didn’t seem to care about their situations.

So while this wasn’t my favorite, I didn’t hate it. It was okay. I can see someone people really loving this? But for me it was a bit like eating a rice cake. I didn’t enjoy it, but I did it.