I tried to finish this, I only had 1 hour and 36 mins left in the audiobook but I couldn't do it anymore. I lost interest, I shouldn't have listened to as much as I did but I have DNF'ing books. This is the first time I have had to do so in ages. My mojo is done as it is, and this book is not helping it. Nothing made sense, I didn't care for the characters. Don't get me wrong, some of it was interesting....up until the halfway mark then it completely lost its way and sadly I didn't care to find out what was at the front of the train.

Gutted as it sounded so good too!

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

Intrigued by the whole "waking up on a careening train with no memory of who they are" part of the blurb that was advertised for this book, I thought "Why not?" I haven't been a terribly big horror genre reader in the past and I am trying to broaden my horizons. So, I booked a ticket on this train ride and gripped the seat preparing for a white knuckle ride. Having said that, this story was not a scream by the minute, jumping with fright every paragraph kind of deal. Which actually turned out okay for me. I actually felt more uneasy because of the slower, confusing jaunt through this plot on wheels. This train ride was made much more terrifying because of the breaks of dialogue and "rest" that the main characters experienced throughout the story. Kind of like you being lulled to sleep with your head resting on the train window as you hear the "clack-clack" of the train ambling along the tracks. Until, in your sleepy haze, you suddenly feel the train hit a sudden steep incline that jolts you awake. You're addled, foggy, and trying to assess where exactly you are at....and where you're going. That's the point of this book, I think. It's not the technical details, but the experience of the ride.

The horror part of this book didn't quite hit all the marks for me. Without giving anything away, I felt like this book slowly morphed into a hybrid that consisted of a solid infusion of another genre that normally mixes well with horror. It did that just fine for me in this book. However, in saying that, I felt that some of the reveal and backstory for the characters and world-building as a whole was too vague in some areas in my case. I'm all for the confusion of the characters and the reader carrying that feeling of uneasiness and tension, but not when it's blocking my understanding of why the plot is where it is. I don't want to go into any more detail as the blurb for this book didn't give much away and I don't want to spoil anything.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. Regardless of the genre fusion and the vague plot explanations, I don't think that was the most important thing to take out of this book. I jumped into this book to ride along with this character to discover who she is and why she's on this crazy train barreling towards who knows where. And this book does just that. Takes you on a nice, horrifying train ride of discovery with these characters and this world. Scary, unsettling, and something to inevitably chew on about the future possibilities of society as a whole. Honestly wasn't expecting that last one, but not too shabby a fit. Three out of five stars. A nice thrill of a ride on a night train that is definitely lacking in the customer service experience. No complimentary sparkling water here. Maybe a nice canned meat. Or who knows, maybe a pouch of something or other. On this Night Train you'll take what you can get.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this title.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review. I really struggled with this one and had to eventually DNF which is a shame as the premise sounded awesome! Like a mix of horror and Snowpiercer but I didn't get much of either. I found the dialogue jarring and the plot confusing to follow: I usually enjoy an ambiguous narrative but admittedly struggled with this one. A shame as I quite enjoyed All My Colours but this one just wasn't for me.

Quantick, best known for his comedic work on TV show's The Thick of It and Veep, serves up a bizarro sci-fi mystery that reads a little like a black comedy take on Snowpiercer.
Largely an interplay between two passengers on a strange train full of dead bodies and strange creatures on route to somewhere, its a strange hybrid that sells itself as a horror but never goes anywhere tense or frightening.
Odd but ultimately unsatisfying.

Imagine a situation where you wake up in complete darkness. You don’t know where you are and, worse, who you are. In Night Train, Garland finds herself in this predicament. The world outside the windows is devoid of life, as is most of the train (skeletons don’t count). Still, eventually she does find out she isn’t quite alone.

There’s a level of confinement when you set a book strictly on a train. Obviously there is only so much you could possibly put in a train car. What I enjoyed in this book is that Quantick breaks up some of the main narrative of moving from car to car to insert interludes; a sort of glimpse of the world before the train. The book’s three main characters all had pasts that landed themselves there and the interludes really add to the horror of the situation.

The forwards movement through the train creates a good build up towards the ‘truth’ and the book does not shy away from its horror elements. Often I found myself saying “That sounds absolutely crazy and awful give me more.” I loved the premise and the journey—the destination? Well, that bit not so much.

The almost cliche way the book closed out almost felt like a disservice to just how great I found the rest of it. The bit of world building, the mystery, the horrors on the train were all so good. I just wish the payoff had been too.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Titan Books for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a perfect example of an incredible premise that just didn't translate very well - people wake on a train and have no idea who they are or how they got there. Brilliant plot!!

However, the execution didn't do it justice, the characters were bizarrely unrealistic, having just awoken on a moving train with no recollection of who they are or how they got there they were completely unfazed and immediately decided to band together to search the train cracking jokes along the way.
I found the world-building to be lacking also, how long was this train? because they moving from cart to cart took the majority of the book. There were separate rooms on this train? not just one cart leading to another?

This was a fun read though, with interesting characters and plenty of thrills - just don't take it too seriously.

I really like David Quantick, as a comedian, as a critic.. as a horror author? Not so much.

My problem with Night Train is that it never becomes real enough - the outside world is just darkness with some colourful explosions in it, it feels empty. All of the book reads like you're in a dream, which isn't bad in itself, but the lack of reality makes the horrific parts of the book not come across. The horror does not connect. All of it feels like a parable, which doesn't really work.

It also doesn't help that the book's set up instantly makes me think of Snowpiercer, and not unfairly. Characters are shallow and simple (back to the parable, again). All in all it reads a bit like a bad episode of (new) Doctor Who.

In a world that seems increasingly like dystopian fiction, it’s quite a relief to read some honest-to-goodness dystopian fiction that is quite removed from our present reality. David Quantick’s Night Train certainly fits the bill.

A woman wakes up on a train with no memory and no idea how she got there, and we follow her quest to find answers to her questions where she picks up allies and enemies as she goes. It’s impossible to tell you much more about the plot without giving away spoilers, but it was a weird and darkly comic adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed.

The train was a great setting for the novel, as it provided a claustrophobic backdrop where the only way was forward – no matter what might be waiting. There is a devastating reason for the train, which you find out near the end of the book, and it really packs a punch given the fact that you have begun to root for these characters as you share their challenges.

Be under no illusion – this book is dark. In places it is incredibly dark, but it is always intelligent and has a seam of humour running through it that balances some of the more eye-popping plot points.

I know that there is a real fashion for books being part of a series these days, but I genuinely wanted to read more about this world, this train and these people but, having said that, the end of the book ties up well and there are no glaring loose ends!

This is the first David Quantick novel I’ve read, but I loved his writing style, and will definitely be reading more.

This had a very cool premise and David Quantick's writing is beautifully evocative. But while the first half of the book had me gripped, my attention did drift a little from the midpoint on, when it became clear the plot wasn't going to do anything hugely revelatory. I'd recommend this as a quick, atmospheric read if you're in the mood for slow-burn horror.

I am not a big fan of train travel. The route I take is usually into London on a packed train. I have been made to suffer by standing all the way and having no access to the toilets. I have considered putting this into prose form in a science fiction thriller but needing the loo and having sore feet for 25 minutes does not an epic make. I will leave that to David Quantick and his Night Train, a book that puts your worst public transport horrors into perspective. That is unless you have had to fight genetically altered creatures and avoid poisonous gas that makes your skin melt last time you caught the Number 16 bus.

A woman wakes up in a pitch-black room. She is thrown from side to side as if the room itself is moving. This person comes to be known as Garland. With no real memory of what has gone on before she finds herself trapped on a train that is perpetually moving. Each carriage is different, some contain lush foods, others feature fierce creatures and traps. On her journey to the front of the train, Garland will meet both allies and enemies, but will she ever find out who she is and why she is trapped?

Having read Quantick’s excellent All My Colors I felt that I had an idea of what type of author he was. He brought great literacy skill to a strange horror title. Night Train repeats this but adds dystopian science fiction into the mixer. There are tones of 1984 and Terry Gilliam’s bureaucratic horror futures such as 12 Monkeys and Brazil. Quantick appears to be one of those rare authors who can produce standalone titles that are not like their previous work and there is not much that is quite like Night Train around.

Having a main character with amnesia meeting other characters who have a similar affliction leaves the reader at a disadvantage. The book reminded me of a classic Twilight Zone episode, you arrive in a strange place and must pay close attention to your surroundings. The world is slowly revealed by the characters dialogue and some very interesting inserts that explore what they were doing before arriving on the train. You never get a full sense of exactly what has happened on this future Earth, but the book benefits greatly from the opaque nature of what exists beyond the windows of the train.

Garland is one of three central characters and they all provide a fantastic broken experience to the book. We join them in their present only to learn more about their past. There is a dark comedic twist to the way that Quantick writes. This is required with these characters as the book could have been very bleak. Instead there is an intriguing and surrealist bent to proceedings.

Along with the odd goings on, this book contains a fair few action sequences that make sure the pace never dips. The train itself plays a vital part in keeping the tension high. The very nature of being compartmental means that you never know what will be through the next door. You now have horror elements added to the dystopian science fiction fun. There is something for everyone in Night Train, especially for those looking for a thrilling dystopian science fiction horror with darkly comedic elements and surrealist bent. You are unlikely read anything quite like it for a while.

A woman wakes up, frightened and alone – with no idea where she is. She’s in a room but it’s shaking and jumping like it’s alive. Stumbling through a door, she realizes she is in a train carriage. A carriage full of the dead.

This is the Night Train. A bizarre ride on a terrifying locomotive, heading somewhere into the endless night. How did the woman get here? Who is she? And who are the dead? As she struggles to reach the front of the train, through strange and horrifying creatures with stranger stories, each step takes her closer to finding out the train’s hideous secret. Next stop: unknown.

This week’s read, Night Train by David Quantick, is a sci-fi thriller with just a dash of horror sprinkled in for good measure. Set on a mysterious train travelling through the dark night, full of danger and the unknown; adventure abounds. Sounds like a winner to me. All aboard, this review is now leaving the station. Please ensure you have your tickets ready for inspection.

Garland is an enigma even to herself. She wakes up alone with no memory of who she is and how she came to be where she is. A name badge on her clothing is the only clue, but is that a red herring? As a central character she works well, her drive to find answers keeps things moving forward. For Garland, accepting the status quo is not an option. The fact she swears constantly when annoyed, she is annoyed a lot, was an added bonus.

The first person Garland meets is a strange man who goes by the name of Banks. He has been on his own for quite some time, having set up a home in a buffet car. Banks isn’t suffering from amnesia, he knows who he is, but can’t understand why he has woken up with someone else’s face. His backstory does a great job of fleshing out the wider world that the Night Train inhabits. It felt to me like Banks acts as the conscience that Garland is missing. Garland is often very single-minded and it is only Banks that makes her stop and think. They complement one another well.

The standout character for me though, is Poppy; she’s the wildcard. Confident to the point of smugness, she has all the best lines, has the snarkiest attitude and does whatever she wants whenever she wants. I love her mildly unhinged approach to everything. Poppy always has a plan of action, and it usually involves the most direct route to any given goal. When it comes to dealing with any obstacle, most people would consider how best to get over, under or around. Poppy tends to go with a default of through, whether there is an easier option or not. She has a gleeful no-nonsense expediency which leads to some of the novel’s best moments. I could quite happily read an entire novel of Poppy just getting things done in her own inimitable style.

The search for answers is always a good motivational tool when it comes to a hero’s journey, and on the Night Train there are more than enough questions to go around. As this dysfunctional little family move through each new carriage of the train, more secrets are unearthed. What unseen power is behind their incarceration? Why is it always night? Quantick drip feeds the reader little hints, scattering the plot with the odd flashback here and there to build up a sense of tension.

There some nice moments of dark humour here and there. Garland’s annoyance, Poppy’s snark and Bank’s prissy response when anyone drops an f-bomb are amusing. The constant bickering back and forth amongst the trio is fun.

The narrative is also punctuated by some moments of suitably visceral horror that were so unexpected they caught me entirely off guard. I’m sure this was a very deliberate choice on the author’s part. A word of advice, don’t snack while reading this novel. I can tell you this much, I won’t be eating soup again any time soon.

There is a cinematic sensibility to proceedings. Not as you might expect, a big screen summer blockbuster though, but something far more intense and personal. Night Train is the book equivalent of a claustrophobic little indie film where all the characters keep giving one another the side eye. Trust is in short shrift as the plot builds to the final reveal. We find ourselves continually asking the question – Who is good and who is bad? I loved it, I’m a sucker for a good plot twist or two.

Night Train is a delightfully dark experience. After much pondering, the closest I can come to describing it is the literary love child of Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer* and the science fiction classic, Cube. My advice is sit down, relax, enjoy the journey and let the train take the strain.

Night Train is published by Titan Books and is available from 25th August. Highly recommended.

I didn’t need to look far for my musical recommendation to accompany Night Train. The author very helpfully provided some suggestions in the book’s acknowledgements. A compilation album called All Aboard! 25 Train Tracks Calling At All Musical Stations from Ace Records has more train related tunes than you can shake a big stick at. Personally, I’d also recommend the original soundtrack for Snowpiercer** by Marco Beltrami if you feel you are being short-changed from a locomotive music related standpoint.

*Just about every review of Night Train I’ve read mentions Snowpiercer. Not a huge surprise I suppose, we are on similar thematic ground. I was going to try and avoid it but Murder on the Orient Express, Ivor the Engine and The Titfield Thunderbolt didn’t feel like close enough comparisons.

**Yes, I mentioned it again. Look, it’s a good film about a mysterious journey on a mysterious train so sue me.

I'm on the edge because I don't know if I liked it or not. The story kept my attention but I couldn't feel any type of empathy or emotions toward the characters.
It's well written but it's not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

1st off, I think that there may have been some formatting problems/download problems with my copy. Some sections of the book would cut off mid-sentence and then show up again a couple pages later. However, I couldn't always tell when this happened, as most of the time I had no real idea what was going on anyway.
I didn't like how the tense kept changing. Jumping back and forth between current and past tense was very disorienting. Of course, if this is what the story was going for, then okay - it worked. It just doesn't work for me as a reader.
I also did not connect to any of the characters. I did not find any of the characters to have unique voices. None of them seemed to have any real sense of dread or urgency about anything. There wasn't even too much of a strong desire shown by any of them to figure out what was happening.
Waking up on a train, not remembering who you are, not knowing what is happening, not knowing where you are going is a very creepy premise. Finding dead people, having monsters try to kill you, not being able to see anything outside the windows... all this is pretty cool and creepy, but then it never goes anywhere. These characters never really seem to be all that upset or interested in what the train is, or where it is going.
We do eventually get resolution and answers to what is going on, but even the answers don't really satisfy. The timelines are screwy and the characters are not believable or really even that interesting.
There was no sense of time in this book. The characters kept eating and sleeping, but not in a way that kept any timeschedule. The book read like a bad dream sequence that kept going and going until it was done.
I wish I liked this book better, but I just couldn't find anything relatable to make me care.
Again, it could have been a downloading/formatting issue, but I still wouldn't recommend this.
I did finish though, so I gave it 2 stars.

I Don't know how to review this book without sounding like a lunatic! What was that!???
I couldn't stop reading! I didn't read it in one sitting because I had to sleep, but wow!
Great characters, amazing plot twist and I loved the great reveal in the end!

I can't wait to tell about this book to the world when the time comes!

This has happened to me far too often lately with books I've read. I get all involved in what is almost always a really cool concept. This book’s synopsis grabbed me from the jump: A woman wakes up on a train that is full of the dead endlessly treking along through darkness. I really can't elaborate on the plot much because this is definitly a book you need to go into blind.

Initially this was interesting. Quantick is great at atmosphere. What did I like about this book? Not much. It’s compulsively readable, I guess, and I was able to finish in two days. Mostly that came from a determination to be done with it, put it behind me. It's the characters . . . there.. bad. They’re not really developed at all. I could fit their characteristics and traits on a thumbtack. They’re stiff, dead I guess? (pun intended)

I really wanted to like this book, and I tried. I was able to finish, and Quantick's writing isn’t offensively bad—hence the two stars. But I was bored out of my mind, mostly due to this author doing a lot of telling and not showing, and the fact that these characters are pretty grating. It’s a thriller that doesn’t thrill, it’s a horror that doesn’t horrify. It’s a thud, a particularly lifeless one hitting the floor.

Me big sad.

The promise of the book is pretty interesting ! We have a woman waking up in a strange train, surrounded by dead people, and without any memory of who she is and what she's doing here. The fact that the story takes place on a train reminded me a lot of "Snowpiercer", and that's a great thing for this book !

Although the strange mood catches you straight from the first pages on, the writing style also does. I felt like everything was overdescribed. I mean, when the action is confined to a train, I guess you have to focus descriptions a lot more on the small things, but I felt like not everything was needed.

I also found myself faced to a paradox : Even though I found the overdescription a little boring sometimes, and it made me feel like nothing was happening, the book was also packed with action ! There's ALWAYS something happening. Every second is tense and the characters are constantly on the lookout for the next danger. I never caught a break while reading ! I can't believe how this book was both slow and fast.

What truly made me rate it 3 stars though is the fact that I felt the story dragged for no real reason. The characters merely explore various cars of the train for basically no reason. Of course, there's a different action in every car but it felt more like filling for the story than anything else. Except for a few events in some cars, there is no justification for the narration to tell the reader what's inside those cars, or to create a chapter around it. It's really just filler narration.

I did enjoy the creepy mood that was installed from the first pages on. It's just mysterious and you never know what's going to happen next ! That's kind of thrilling ! The mood was definitely the best aspect of the story :) Can I also say it also reminded me of some kind of Dr. Who episode ??? I could totally picture the Doctor and their companion(s) exploring the train to find experiments and find new races of aliens ! I now 100% want a Who/Night Train crossover ! It would be awesome !

That leads me to my next point : HOW DO THE CHARACTERS ALL REMAIN SO CALM IN SUCH AN ENVIRONMENT ??? I mean, they keep encountering the worst things, they're lost, don't know who or where they are and they remain sooooooooo calm like nothing is out of the ordinary. I get that since they don't have their memory anymore and don't know what's normal anymore but still. When you see and hear creepy stuff, your brain reacts with fear, but not for them. Their reactions are just illogical.

I was most disappointed with the end. When I finished, I just thought : "All this for that ?" Yep. It's all just so predictable and simple. Such a shame, there were so many different possibilites to finish the book, so many explanations that could have been found, but no.

To conclude, it was an interesting book, full of action, with a captivating mood, but I don't think it has reached its story's full potential.

I was excited of the premise of this book. The description and cover enticed me,I was ready to experience a horror /thriller outside of my normal go to authors. While the beginning was promising I feel that the it slowly went down hill from there.

For the whole book to only be separated by 7 chapters made the story drag, and more confusing was that the start of a new chapter just carried on from the previous with no break. From this I would say that the whole book had no chapters as such. There were different elements to it which helped break it up such as seeing the back stories of then 3 main characters which was refreshing although still too brief .

Overall I did like the storyline, the ending did feel a little rushed and thrown together to ensure that all loose ends were tied together nicely. However there were some areas which seemed to be unanswered but that might be my own error. I am fully aware that this is a review copy I had read and not in its final stages before publishing day but the layout of the pdf was not idea with a fair few spelling mistakes and lines separating causing further issues to the flow such as the final sentence being in the middle of the acknowledgments? I do understand that these last issues might just be isolated to just me.

Thank you to netgally and David Quantick for the chance to review this new title. 2.5 stars out of 5, rounded up to 3.

Night Train was very disappointing.

I love books where the plot features very few characters in a setting of constant danger and ambiguity. But, this didn't hold up. I was very close to DNFing this the first 25%, but I told myself that the train events were going to get increasingly crazier and crazier, so for then I was along for the ride.

But there was one massive issue I had with Night Train, which was the dialogue. In the horror category especially I should feel fear and empathy for the characters, but it completely lacked that. Of course, I didn't want a stone-cold book of survival, but when the three are confronting a monster I'd expect a little bit more of a reaction instead of just telling jokes and acting like this is all of what they've seen before. It drained all feelings I had for them and this book by the lack of fear or anything I was feeling.

I also did find the plot almost too simple. Yes, trains with a new mystery inside every carriage are supposed to be crazy, but I couldn't help feeling that I was a little letdown. It was the same old monsters and everything strange that you WOULD expect. Everything was predictable in an unpredictable way if that makes sense.

How I differentiate ratings between one star and two stars isn't necessarily how I felt about them, because they usually both make me feel the same way. But what makes this a one star is that I can't think of friends who are lovers of the horror genre whom I could recommend this to.

NIGHT TRAIN is a bizarre, thrilling and surprising novel that weaves a commentary on totalitarianism and populism into a fantastical horror set on a hellish train set in perpetual motion.

Two characters - BANKS and GARLAND - wake up on a mysterious moving train with no memory of who they are or how they got there. Every carriage is completely different and some are filled with outlandish terrors. Outside the world appears to have turned to ash and fire. As they slowly move through the train towards the driver, they encounter fantastical and horrible creatures and their memories begin to flood back - revealing their parts in the creation of the world outside the windows.

Author David Quantick is a celebrated author and screenwriter, and you can feel the blunt political satire of his work on shows like VEEP and THE THICK OF IT bleeding into Night Train. Mixing the plot of Bong Joon-ho's movie SNOWPIERCER with the dynamics of a very adult episode of DR WHO. The book is genuinely very funny in places, and there are moments of brilliant fantastical horror - none more so than the very human stories that begin to unfurl as the central characters' back stories are slowly revealed.