Every storm had me feeling anxious; at each crisis, I was panicked. The situation grows rapidly worse, and real-world problems combine with the supernatural to create a vortex that engulfs all. As I said: gripping, dark and desperate as being lost on strange seas, far from safety and losing your hold on reality…

Book Review: The Night That Finds Us All – Is This Haunted Yacht Worth the Voyage?

It begins and ends as always, with the sea. Sam Vines is struggling. Her boat is up on the hard and she doesn’t have enough money to get her back in the water. Turns out the snorkelers and the scubadivers are looking for the ultra-luxury boating experience, not the single-handed, rarely sober, snarky stylings of sailboat captain Samantha Vines.

So it’s a good thing when her former crewmate Loick asks her to help deliver a massive, hundred-year-old sailboat from Seattle to England. Sam is the only one who can handle the ship’s engine, and did Loick mention that the money is good? It’s very good. The Blackwatch is a huge boat. An ancient boat. It’s also probably (definitely) haunted. Sam’s alcohol withdrawal (sobriety is important at sea) has her doubting her senses, but when one crewmate disappears and another has a gruesome accident, she knows that this simple delivery job has spiralled into something sinister. By turns terrifying, darkly funny, thought-provoking, and heartfelt, THE NIGHT THAT FINDS US ALL is a seductive, nautical nightmare.

I went into this book knowing nothing more than the blurb you see above. By the end, I felt as if I’d been on the journey with Sam, with all its ebbs and flows, so well did the author convey this seafaring adventure.

First off, our heroine. Sam is nothing like her almost-namesake from Terry Pratchett (which immediately jumped out at me!) except in her practicality at work. She’s an old hand at sea and it’s great to see such a strong woman telling the tale, despite her many flaws. This is almost a ‘found footage’ novel, and it reminded me of classics such as ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and its ilk – a relatively normal person caught up in very unusual circumstances, just doing the best they can. 

Second, the Blackwatch. The boat is a character in itself, with a rich and dark history that slowly unfolds as the book moves forward. Ever-present, big enough to be maze-like yet entirely self-contained, literally keeping everyone afloat while at the same time holding so many secrets… the tension on board is tangible, especially as we enter the final stages of the novel. 

Starting out gently, we learn about Sam and her goals, personality and history with the new Captain of the Blackwatch (a running joke that starts out funny and gradually becomes more ironic as the commanding officer loses his grip, ‘Aliens’-style). The other members of the tiny crew are introduced and judged, as she learns to live with them in such a limited space. Despite the size of the vessel, the omnipresent claustrophobia of being at sea, with not even your own personal cabin-space, made me feel immediately uncomfortable. 

As the journey progresses, numbers dwindle and discomfort ramps up as Sam encounters increasing weirdness. A hidden compartment containing a long-lost journal, strange symbols amidst the carved artwork on the walls, and other crewmembers acting… oddly. 

Time is taken to allow us to learn what the baseline of ‘normal’ is for the little mismatched family, so that when events take a turn, we’re thrown as much off-kilter as they are. 

Because this is a haunted house book as much as a seafaring one: outside of the real world, with potential death on every side, beholden to the vagaries of nature and what has gone before. There’s a mystery unfolding and Sam is by no means sure she’s the woman to solve it.

I wasn’t sure that I was engaging with this story as I hit the first third; Sam is rough and likeable, but everything seemed very centred around nautical terminology and I often found myself as lost as when I read Patrick O’Brian’s works! Then I realized this was a ruse.

I’d been lulled on board by the characters and situation, with cunning writing engaging me in such a subtle manner (and despite the swearing, drinking and other very human shenanigans) that the gothic atmosphere had me in its grip and I simply couldn’t put the book down. I was caught as much as Sam, wanting to know exactly what was going on while simultaneously scared by what that knowledge could mean. At several stages I was practically yelling ‘Get out! Go home!’ as much as with any intense horror movie.

Every storm had me feeling anxious; at each crisis, I was panicked. The situation grows rapidly worse, and real-world problems combine with the supernatural to create a vortex that engulfs all. As I said: gripping, dark and desperate as being lost on strange seas, far from safety and losing your hold on reality…

Yes, this book is a little Lovecraftian, but that’s not what stuck out to me. It’s a classic gothic sea-tale to curl up and read on a stormy night. The contemporary aspects lull the reader into expecting one sort of adventure, wrong-footing you so that you’re as confused as any of the crew when the madness begins to show. 

This is a book grounded in reality, which then lurches into unreality fast enough that you lose your feet – by which time, it’s too late to escape.

Do you dare to join the voyage? It’s not for the faint-hearted, but is absolutely worth it.

The Night That Finds Us All by John Hornor Jacobs

It begins and ends as always, with the sea. Sam Vines is struggling. Her boat is up on the hard and she doesn’t have enough money to get her back in the water. Turns out the snorkelers and the scubadivers are looking for the ultra-luxury boating experience, not the single-handed, rarely sober, snarky stylings of sailboat captain Samantha Vines.

So it’s a good thing when her former crewmate Loick asks her to help deliver a massive, hundred-year-old sailboat from Seattle to England. Sam is the only one who can handle the ship’s engine, and did Loick mention that the money is good? It’s very good. The Blackwatch is a huge boat. An ancient boat. It’s also probably (definitely) haunted. Sam’s alcohol withdrawal (sobriety is important at sea) has her doubting her senses, but when one crewmate disappears and another has a gruesome accident, she knows that this simple delivery job has spiralled into something sinister. By turns terrifying, darkly funny, thought-provoking, and heartfelt, THE NIGHT THAT FINDS US ALL is a seductive, nautical nightmare.

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