Book 29 for my 2025 goal of 30 books for the year! As is now default for me, my link to the book is through my bookshop dot org affiliate account.

Near the “official” end of my book goal for the year, well ahead of schedule! I’m currently in the midst of reading several other books, but I thought I’d take a brief detour and read a book by the prolific and talented horror author Brian Keene, Alone (2011).

This is perhaps cheating a little bit in my book goals, as it is a short novelette — 46 pages — but I’m counting it, dammit!

When Daniel Miller wakes up one morning, he find his house empty, his husband and daughter missing. The outside world is surrounded by deep fog, and the phones and power are out. A visit to the neighbors’ houses shows that they aren’t home, either.

Is Daniel the only person left on Earth? Even worse, is there something besides a person that is lurking nearby, waiting for him to come back outside?

It is a simple premise, and a short, quick story. I would say that it is not Keene’s strongest work, and it was not intended to be: as he notes in a spoiler-filled afterword, he was inspired by Frederic Brown’s classic shortest science fiction story ever. Keene does not follow that short-short story directly, but uses it to tell his own tale of isolation. It is a novelette that experiments with an idea, which I am always in favor of.

Honestly, the premise of “waking up alone in the world” is a great idea prompt for any horror or science fiction author to try out, one that I once did myself when I was writing fiction at a young age. I enjoyed reading Keene’s take on the concept, and it reminds me that I have a few books of his on the shelf — longer ones — that I really should dive into!