Book Review of LIVE WIRE by Kyle Toucher

LIVE WIRE by Kyle Toucher (Crystal Lake Publishing, April 14, 2023) Kindle edition, 311 pages. 

Synopsis on the Goodreads website . . . . .

In 1993 New Mexico, Black Magic and High Tech find common ground in Medusa Engineering's Project Dragonfire―and for one endless October night, a fissure opens between here and Elsewhere...

Live Wire, a horror thriller for science fiction fans, begins with four people sequestered in a desert filling station during a freak thunderstorm. Outside, one-hundred-foot electrical towers―miles and miles of them―uproot and stalk the desert. In tandem arrives The Signal, a dissonant machine language that subverts the human mind...harvesting old guilt, shame, and trauma.

Fifty miles down the road at the Very Large Array, the Medusa Engineering Corporation unleashes Project Dragonfire, a bold technological effort that has summoned a ravenous entity from the very fabric of creation—perhaps unwittingly, perhaps not.

Our ensemble includes Pale Brody and his son Caleb, en route to Austin to start a new life; Ken Lightfeather, an Apache trucker with a .44 on his hip; Kwik Gas proprietor Otis Thompson, who assumes the freak electrical storm has spawned the wandering giants; and fast-thinking Nikki Barlowe, who suspects a parallel, sinister operation―led by shadowy Medusa Engineering executive Armand Jenks―is in play.

High stakes and high octane fuel the incendiary action―mass murder and suicide, AC-130 Spectre gunships engaging the VLA in a brutal firefight, electrical towers pulverizing anything in their path, a massive gridwork of steel and feral energy blocking the only route of escape. Old ghosts and unresolved conflicts plague our characters as the signal interferes with their only task: surviving the onslaught.

The night wears on everyone as the electrical towers converge on the Kwik Gas, and only the end of the circuit reveals the nexus of their power. At dawn on Route 60, a final showdown pits human resolve against brute force and inner horror. Will an ancient, shadowless terror find dominion on Earth?

Live Wire is a tight, electrifying novel filled with action at a massive scale, terrors at the intimate level, and revelations of the Universal. If you like your fire hot, your blood red, and your metal mean, then this horror/science fiction hybrid is for you.

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     LIVE WIRE is a very well-written and exciting debut novel from Kyle Toucher, an author I plan to keep an eye on. While reading this I was reminded of several classic science-fiction movies of the 1950s/1960s (THEM, ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN, etc) that dealt with monstrous threats arising out of the atomic age. In places, this also felt like a homage to the classic truck stop movie MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE, based on a Stephen King story. 

     Toucher manages to blend into his character-driven truck stop horror tale elements of science-fiction and Lovecraftian occultism. A quasi-governmental science-based organization (Medusa Engineering) opens a gateway to another realm of ancient beings who manifest themselves inside the massive electrical grid system of New Mexico and all hell breaks loose in highly imaginative and creative fashion. The pseudo-science is touched upon just enough for readers to suspend disbelief and let the juices flow until a highly-charged finale. 

     I liked the development of every single character (except one) in this novel and worried about every one of them, something that doesn't occur that frequently. The ending is somewhat prophetic and satisfying and the final chapters leave things open for a sequel, although the thought of that is a bit shocking. The final destination of one of the major characters is left undetermined but suspicious.