Ehhh. Started out really strong and then just sort of veered off into "wuh?" territory. I felt the ending was a bit of a cheat. ( )

This is an interesting story about a group of American settlers who get stranded in the mountains. The story is told in two parts from the perspective of one of the settlers and also in the present day using the voice of a TV producer who unexpectedly stumbles across the remains of the settlers encampment and is endeavouring to find out what happened to them.
The author focusses on a number of intertwining themes including religion and religious faith, psychosis and madness and ghosts and spirits. It's a good read. Scarrow's other two novels are about completely different subjects and are just as captivating. ( )

October Skies by Alex Scarrow is a thriller that certainly kept me guessing and reading to the end. The story jumps back and forth in time, in the present day, a documentary film maker and his partner stumble upon the remains of a long lost wagon trail that disappeared in the wilderness 150 years ago. They find a well preserved journal in a trunk. We are then drawn back to the past to the last days of this wagon train as terror and horror are unleashed among them. The evil doesn’t seem to be confined to the past either, as suddenly people in the present are dying in brutal ways. Exactly what was out in the woods that continues to work it’s evil today.

Fast paced and riveting, the author grabs you right from the start and pulls you into his story. Mixing wilderness survival, Indians, and religion with a hint of the supernatural to give the reader a story to enjoy being scared by. At times a little over-the-top, but this was exactly the kind of story I was looking for to curl up with on a chilly autumn evening. ( )

Best for last is October Skies, a vivid account of the fictional Preston Group – a party en route to the west coast of the USA in the 1850s – which disappeared without trace.

Told in two parts, from the detailed diary of trekker Dr Ben Lambert and by the present day British TV crew who stumble across the remains of the group 152 years later, this is an interesting and thrilling tale.

Anachronisms – Ben wants to study ‘psychiatry’ in 1856 – irritate but do not detract from this engrossing story of a serial killer who stalks the snowbound group: is he possessed by an evil spirit or a mental malaise? This question is not resolved until the final page and even then – is it? ( )