Review - The Three by Sarah Lotz

Kindle: 480 pages
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 22 May 2014
ISBN: 978-1444770360

First Line - "Come on, come on, come on..."

They're here ... The boy. The boy watch the boy watch the dead people oh Lordy there's so many ... They're coming for me now. We're all going soon. All of us. Pastor Len warn them that the boy he's not to­­--

The last words of Pamela May Donald (1961 - 2012)

Black Thursday. The day that will never be forgotten. The day that four passenger planes crash, at almost exactly the same moment, at four different points around the globe.

There are only four survivors. Three are children, who emerge from the wreckage seemingly unhurt. But they are not unchanged. And the fourth is Pamela May Donald, who lives just long enough to record a voice message on her phone. A message that will change the world.

The message is a warning.

I had heard that this was a cross between Lost and The Passage so I went into it with a little trepidation as I loved Lost and hated The Passage. Now that I've finished I'd have to say that it's probably more like the former rather than the latter (but only loosely) and I'm glad because I got a great read.

The Three is an epistolary novel and is told through a series of electronic documents (blogs, email, skype transcripts and recordings), letters, newspaper clippings etc. It's a book within a book. When it's done well the epistolary format adds a feeling of realism to the story, it mimics how events would be documented if it were to actually happen. I don't always enjoy this style of writing (World War Z springs to mind) but Sarah Lotz is very talented and played the style to perfection

In some circles it's being touted as Horror but apart from being a bit chilling and having creepy kids in it it's not what I'd class as Horror. I'm struggling to know what genre it should be be in though. It's got apocalyptic undertones but that's not close enough either. It's a tough one. It's also a frustrating one. At the end I had no idea what it had all been about. Not. A. Clue. I think that's the point though, nobody has a clue what happened and nobody can agree.

I had read somewhere that it takes about 100 pages to get going so when it was struggling to hold my interest in the beginning I kept at it and ploughed on. So glad I did, it turned out to be gripping, interesting and very well executed. It was sometimes hard to keep all the characters straight in my head because the chapters are really short and whip about in time and place but that just adds to the urgency and suspense of it all.

It's very hard to write anything about the storyline without spoilers so it's not easy to put into words what I most liked about this one. It's a bit surreal, if I'm honest. That part at least is very similar to Lost. The downside would be that I didn't really get any closure on the story as it's very ambiguous and that was a cause of frustration for me, I got to the end of the last page and wondered what on Earth I'd just read. I needed answers and I didn't get all of them.

LOVED the story though. If this isn't made into a movie soon then there is something wrong with the film-makers. If ever a book was crying out to be made into a film, this is it. I can't wait.

I will definitely read more by this author. The lady can write!


*Note - I received a complimentary copy of this title from the publisher*