Beneath The Rising - Premee Mohamed | Review

I would be lying if I said this book went where I expected it to. I would not be lying to tell you that I've loved the unexpected places it's gone.

I picked up 'Beneath The Rising' when the author posted about it being part of a sale her publisher was putting on, blindly jumping into a book that has been difficult for me to put down since.

Beneath the Rising is a first-person story centered around the main character, Nick, and his best friend, Johnny - a child prodigy and genius scientist who had already changed the world by the time she was six. Now at 18 and 17, they find themselves facing a new world-altering change as Johnny creates a shoebox-sized limitless power source that sets in motion a chain of events no one could have predicted.

What begins as a story of unlikely best friends slowly transforms into a look at our primal human fears; a fear of the dark, of otherness and aliens, and then evolves further into a tale of magic, the occult, and primal Lovecraftian evils bent on cracking open a portal to our world and ruling over the human race.

As they race to uncover secrets that may allow them to stop the end of the world that Johnny inadvertently began, they have to face the different truths each of them live with and the secrets they uncover about each other. They must choose to resist or embrace Faustian deals as they navigate an unfamiliar hidden world of magic and the occult, and as they do so we see more of their complex relationship revealed.

This has been a wonderful book, and I'm very glad I picked it up. There are times when the banter between the characters feels a little off, but overall I don't see that as a huge detractor. The story is a lot of fun and I love the Eldrich Horror mixed with speculative sci-fi themes of the book. It's a relatively quick read at 464 pages (333 on my ebook reader).

If you like weird, eldrich horror, SS&F books: you may want to pick this one up. I certainly have enjoyed it!

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