I’m pleased to welcome you today to my stop on the blog tour for excellent debut novel The Coming Darkness by Greg Mosse. Thank you to Sofia Saghir and Midas for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.
About the book:
A thrilling debut that has been likened to John Le Carré and Raymond Chandler . . .
A massive new talent in British fiction, Greg Mosse’s storytelling is complex and finely crafted, combining twisting plotlines, intelligent dialogue and ambiguous characters, all skilfully brought together in an epic climax. Never before has dystopian fiction been so chillingly real.
Set in an alternate near future in which global warming and pathogenic viruses have torn through the fabric of society, The Coming Darkness follows French secret operative Alexandre Lamarque on the trail of global eco-terrorists. Lamarque’s target is set on destabilising the controls placed on global governments that protect human life from climate change. One wrong move and the world could be plunged into darkness.
From Paris to North Africa, Lamarque is drawn into an ominous sequence of events: a theft from a Norwegian genetics lab; a string of violent child murders; his mother’s desperate illness; a chaotic coup in North Africa, and the extraction under fire of its charismatic leader.
Experience has taught Alex there is no one he can trust – not his secretive lover Mariam, not even his mentor, Professor Fayard – the man at the centre of a deadly web of government control. Lamarque rapidly finds himself in a heart-thumping race against time, the one man with the ability to prevent chaos and destruction taking over.
Perhaps the world’s only hope of preventing The Coming Darkness…
About the author:
A theatre director, playwright and actor Greg Mosse is the founder and director of the Criterion New Writing programme at the Criterion Theatre in London, running workshops in script development to a diverse community of writers, actors and directors. In addition, since 2015, Greg has written, produced and stage 25 plays and musicals.
Greg set up both the Southbank Centre Creative Writing School – an open access program of evening classes delivering MA level workshops – and the University of Sussex MA in Creative Writing at West Dean College which he taught for 4 years.
The husband of the bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, Kate’s hit novel Labyrinth was inspired by a house that Greg and his mother bought together in the French medieval city of Carcassonne, where the couple and their children spent many happy summers. Following the success of Labyrinth, Greg created the innovative readers-and-writers website mosselabyrinth.co.uk MosseLabyrinth. The first of its kind MosseLabrynth was the world’s first online accessible 3D world, and the inspiration for Pottermore – the popular Harry Potter website.
A multilinguist, Greg has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid and has worked as both an interpreter at a variety of international institutions and a teacher in the UK.
Greg and Kate live in Chichester, where Kate’s parents founded the Chichester Festival Theatre, they have two grown up children.
The Coming Darkness was written during lockdown and is Greg’s debut novel.
My Review:
The Coming Darkness is the thrilling debut novel from theatre director, playwright and actor Greg Mosse. Set in an alternate near future, this dystopian novel is a thought provoking, scarily relevant read that brings to life a future that seems all too plausible. It’s a fast paced, intelligent thriller that kept me riveted to the page, the tension starting high and building to a crescendo as the protagonist of the story does everything he can to save the world.
Filled with a dark intensity, The Coming Darkness begins in Paris in the summer of 2037. Alexandre Lemarque of the French external security service is hunting for eco-terrorists. Unable to trust anyone, he follows the trail of a string of brutal child murders to a chaotic coup in North Africa. In a heartpounding race against chaos and destruction, is it possible that Alex is the world’s only hope of preventing the coming darkness? Quick paced and with a highly complex, compelling storyline, this is a beautifully written, intriguing novel that held my interest throughout.
Greg Mosse has written a dark and gripping thriller with plenty of twists, turns and surprises along the way. Filled with familiar references to current events such as the pandemic and climate change, The Coming Darkness is a stylish and intelligent debut, with a strong and likeable protagonist who I couldn’t help but root for. With a large and varied cast of characters that are vividly brought to life together with an extraordinarily well plotted storyline, this is a near future dystopian novel that delivers on every level and is one that I would highly recommend.
The Coming Darkness by Greg Mosse is available to purchase now:
Cal Turner Reviews 