Live Wire by Kyle Toucher HORROR BOOK REVIEW
Live Wire by Kyle Toucher HORROR BOOK REVIEW

Unveiling Dark Magic, Technology and Storms in Kyle Toucher’s Live Wire


Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Horror Book Review by Carmilla Voiez

This novel could never be described as a slow burn. The combination of dark magic, technology and a ferocious storm is a very clever way to ensure that neither the group of protagonists nor the reader has even momentary respite from the horror.

In the New Mexico desert strange things are happening. The air feels too hot for the blinding rainstorm and the brutal wind ensures no sane person would drive away from the dubious shelter of (Otis) Thompson’s Kwik Gas.

Meanwhile, tech geniuses analyse data at the Very Large Array while their senior colleagues make blood sacrifices in a nearby tent, but what on Earth are they looking for? 

“Thunder announced that sentence had been passed, the dungeons had been pulled open, and the shadowless nomads that starved there for generations—bound by laws of dimension and the lawlessness of superstition—were set to prepare the way. The Gate. Science and Sacrifice fused in an unpredictable union, and this night was theirs for the taking.”

As the action ramps up, the enemies become crazier, and the stakes rise ever higher. Gigantic electricity pylons march along Route 60 like the impossible soldiers of a Cosmic army. But it is the evil that worms itself into human minds, dredging up old trauma and guilt while feeding anger and rage, that may be the most potent weapon of all. 

“[T]he tower was too close for comfort. It stood a hundred and fifty feet tall, its breadth easily the length of Ken’s big rig, buzzing like a colossal yellowjacket with meat on its mind. A bolt of wind screamed through the cage, and its message was clear: things had changed, there was a new sheriff in town,”

Toucher crafts a narrative reminiscent of World War Z, inserting interview transcripts between chapters of third-person narration. It’s a truly American novel where slang and vernacular hold their own alongside Standard American English. Although the prose sections are narrated in numerous and rapidly shifting POVs, the distinct voices help the reader keep track of whose head we currently inhabit. 

“Pale’s old metal fillings injected aluminum foil misery into his skull. Otis’ artificial hip became a ball of agony. Ken suddenly thought Oklahoma twisters weren’t all that bad after all. Caleb wondered if there was a basement.”

It might be an editor’s nightmare, but it works well most of the time. If it fails, it does so in the interview transcript sections where the exchange of insults detracts from the action without the benefit of offering breathing space to process the manic prose we recently gorged upon and are still attempting to digest.  In my opinion at least, the book would have been more powerful without the interviews.

Live Wire would make an amazing movie. This action-dominated and highly visual tale could induce a box-office stampede. More questions than answers are provided at the end, allowing an opportunity for a sequel while also challenging readers to provide coherent responses to the age-old question—what the hell did I just read?

Live Wire by Kyle Toucher

Live Wire by Kyle Toucher
Unveiling Dark Magic, Technology and Storms in Kyle Toucher's Live Wire

A storm is coming…
In 1993 New Mexico, Black Magic and High Tech find common ground in Medusa Engineering’s Project Dragonfire―and for one endless October night, a fissure opens between here and Elsewhere

Live Wire, a horror thriller for science fiction fans, begins with four people sequestered in a desert filling station during a freak thunderstorm. Outside, one-hundred-foot electrical towers―miles and miles of them―uproot and stalk the desert. In tandem arrives The Signal, a dissonant machine language that subverts the human mind…harvesting old guilt, shame, and trauma.

Fifty miles down the road at the Very Large Array, the Medusa Engineering Corporation unleashes Project Dragonfire, a bold technological effort that has summoned a ravenous entity from the very fabric of creation—perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not.

Our ensemble includes Pale Brody and his son Caleb, en route to Austin to start a new life; Ken Lightfeather, an Apache trucker with a .44 on his hip; Kwik Gas proprietor Otis Thompson, who assumes the freak electrical storm has spawned the wandering giants; and fast-thinking Nikki Barlowe, who suspects a parallel, sinister operation―led by shadowy Medusa Engineering executive Armand Jenks―is in play.

High stakes and high octane fuel the incendiary action―mass murder and suicide, AC-130 Spectre gunships engaging the VLA in a brutal firefight, electrical towers pulverizing anything in their path, a massive gridwork of steel and feral energy blocking the only route of escape. Old ghosts and unresolved conflicts plague our characters as the signal interferes with their only task: surviving the onslaught.

The night wears on everyone as the electrical towers converge on the Kwik Gas, and only the end of the circuit reveals the nexus of their power. At dawn on Route 60, a final showdown pits human resolve against brute force and inner horror. Will an ancient, shadowless terror find dominion on Earth?

Live Wire is a tight, electrifying novel filled with action at a massive scale, terrors at the intimate level, and revelations of the Universal. If you like your fire hot, your blood red, and your metal mean, then this horror/science fiction hybrid is for you.

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Author

  • Carmilla Voiez

    Carmilla Voiez is a British horror and fantasy writer living in Scotland. Her influences include Graham Masterton, Thomas Ligotti, and Clive Barker. She is pansexual and passionate about intersectional feminism and human rights. Carmilla has a First-Class Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Linguistics. Her work includes stories in horror anthologies published by Crystal Lake Publishing, Clash Books and Mocha Memoirs; a co-authored Southern Gothic Horror novel; two self-published graphic novels, and the award-winning, dark fantasy/horror Starblood trilogy. Graham Masterton described the second book in her Starblood trilogy as a “compelling story in a hypnotic, distinctive voice that brings her eerie world vividly to life”. Carmilla is also a freelance editor and mentor who enjoys making language sing.

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