Genre: Thriller
Description:
“With no tomorrow, what are we capable of today?
On the eve of his best friend's wedding, Michael is warned by an old
classmate, now a NASA scientist, that a gamma ray burst from a nearby exploding
star will hit the Earth the following morning at 11:13 a.m. - an incident that
will irrevocably destroy the ozone layer, disrupt the food chain, and
ultimately prove cataclysmic for all life on the planet.
Michael and the groom-to-be, Drew, laugh off the prediction as a
demented joke. However, at precisely 11:13 a.m. the next day, a blinding light
in the sky disrupts Drew's wedding. News media outlets dismiss the cosmic event
as a harmless phenomenon, but Michael knows better. Wrestling with the burden
of his truth, uncertain of how much time he has left or just what to do with
it, Michael finds himself alienated from everything and everyone he's ever
known.
Under Drew's influence, Michael begins to transform his rather mundane
life, previously shackled by powerlessness and fear, into something more
unrestrained and ultimately dangerous. Feeling the weight of an unseen doomsday
clock ticking his final days away, he pushes the moral envelope further and
further on a quest for control over his own reality - no matter who might
suffer for it.”
Author:
“Patrick Morgan is a novelist, playwright, and poet. A graduate of the
University of Southern California with a degree in theatre, Patrick has always
enjoyed telling stories in one form or another.
After having spent a long and memorable stint in Los Angeles, Patrick
currently resides in Austin with his dog Cider.”
For more, check out his website.
Appraisal:
The premise of this story is an interesting
one. If you along with everyone else in the world have only a short time to
live, would you live your life differently? If the answer is yes, in what way?
Does it matter if no one else or at least very few people know what is
happening? Do you become a better person? Do you start knocking items off your
bucket lists as fast as you can? Do you no longer worry about what is
considered acceptable, figuring the consequences will never catch up to you? The
answer to this is one that could go many different ways. Then, at least if I’m the
reader, I wonder how credible the “we’re all going to die” claim really is. I’m
not sure the answers to these questions, at least if I was living out this
story, would be the same for me as they were for Michael, the protagonist, or
his in-the-know friends. But I’m not sure it wouldn’t be either. Ultimately, I
found Apparent Horizon to be both thought provoking and suspenseful as I
wondered where things were going to go.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
Some mild adult content.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count: 80-85,000 words
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