Books like Nightworld

Nightworld is the climax of the Adversary Cycle. It uses the characters introduced in the first five books and concludes the over-arching plot introduced in Reborn. It's an apocalyptic Lovecraftian tale of the end of the world. I believe that it does fulfill the promise of the previous books: it's action packed, hard to put down, and epic in scope. It's a good read.\ The Plot\ Rasalom, the baddie from the very first book, The Keep, has returned and he's recharged his batteries with the fear, pain, and suffering of his personal enemies. Now, he starts to flex his muscles and the darkness he serves begins to break through the ethereal barriers into the world. The sun begins to rise later and set earlier, in defiance of all physical laws. Gigantic holes that have no scientifically detectable bottom have opened up all over the world. At night, the holes spew out horrific, Lovecraftian creatures that attack, kill, and eat humans; returning to their holes at the first sign of dawn. The resulting fear and suffering of humanity feeds Rasalom even more and he begins the process of turning his physical, human form into a godlike, horrific form in which he will rule the world once the days have shortened into nothing.The only opposition to this is Glaeken, the hero who faced down Rasalom in the first book, The Keep. The problem is that the light has left the world and gone on to other battlefronts with the darkness, leaving earth in the lurch. Glaeken has been aging normally since his last confrontation with Rasalom in World War II and he's now an eighty year old man; his magic sword fragmented and scattered over the earth. To combat the coming of the darkness, Glaeken assembles a team of special people together to make a last stand against Rasalom, even though they have no hope of victory, having been deserted by the light.\ The Good\ The conclusion to the Adversary Cycle was every bit as epic as I'd hoped it would be. I couldn't put this book down after starting it, and I started it immediately after finishing the previous book, Reprisal. A lot of authors write Lovecraftian horror, but they don't always craft the elements together very well. It's done well here. Wilson kept it personal by showing what happens in this terrible new world to individuals we've come to know from the previous books in this series. He gives a true sense of the end of the world as we know it by interspersing the plot with snippets from mass media and their take on what's happening.The characters themselves are also compelling. They're all unsure of themselves and are trying their best to fight against the rising tide despite the odds being against them. They all fit into the archetypes that you see in this kind of book, but there's enough variation to keep them interesting, and to invoke some pathos towards them on the part of the reader.\ The Not-So-Good\ There are some plot holes that kind of brought me out of immersion in the plot; although I freely admit I may have missed some kind of key information that explains these holes. First of all, the light which opposes the darkness supposedly took a hike to another dimension back in World War II when Rasalom was defeated. However, in 1968, a bunch of religious nuts were compelled to go and actively oppose the rebirth of Rasalom. Who or what compelled them? Certainly not the light, correct? Secondly, if Rasalom (and his boss, the darkness) subsist on human fear and suffering, then it becomes self-defeating to kill humans. Certainly, "people scare better when they're dying" (bonus points if you can tell me what movie that quote came from), but once they're dead, they don't suffer or feel feelings anymore. Therefore, your food supply is cut off. That's perhaps no problem for the darkness, because it will move on to a higher dimension or elsewhere in the universe for sustenance. However, it's decidedly inconvenient for Rasalom, who is human at heart (or at least calls planet earth his home). What happens when the Lovecraftian horrors, which all seem to operate on some kind of instinct (or at the behest of Rasalom) and not on any kind of higher intelligence, kill off the last human? In a world of constant fear and violence, will human beings still propogate the species? I think they'd be too busy trying to survive to have kids...and any kids that were born would have a laughably low survival rate.I don't know how I would plug these holes, especially the second one, and still keep the story interesting, so I'm willing to suspend my skepticism and disbelief a little more in order to enjoy a good story. \ Conclusion\ This is certainly not "high literature" and I don't think it was intended by the author to be high literature. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "classics are books that people talk about but don't read". This book is meant to be read. I don't really care for snobs who denigrate genre fiction, or call it a "guilty" pleasure; as if it's something of which we should be ashamed. Writing a book that compels a reader to finish it in as few sittings as possible is something that takes talent and intelligence. There's certainly room for criticism, but I don't think derision or ambivalence is fair.The Adversary Cycle is a fun way to pass the time. If you're a fan of horror apocalypses and you're tired of zombies, then you really need to read these books. If you're looking for Cormac McCarthy or Leo Tolstoy, then you should look elsewhere.