Book Review
The Chilling
by Riley James
Kit, fleeing from the crumbling ruins of her marriage, joins a team of Australian researchers travelling to Antarctica to study the behaviour of seals. But on their way, they receive a distress signal from another team of researchers nearby. They discover a vessel on fire and its entire crew missing except for one man, Nick. Left on board with no memory of what happened or who he is, Nick is strange, yet curiously hypnotic. Taking him into their care, Kit and the crew suspect that something is not quite right with Nick, and the inconsistencies in his stories lead them to believe something sinister has happened to the crew. Where are they? What is Nick hiding? And how long before their crew will start to turn on each other, each person desperate for the truth?
Bearing some resemblance to the 1982 film The Thing, Riley James’s debut is a chilling insight into how fragile our sense of trust in other people is when it’s put to the test in an isolated scenario. Many people fear the unknown horrors potentially contained within infinite outer space or the depths of the ocean, but perhaps too few fear the cold emptiness of the icy tundra; the quietness, the endless expanse of white, and the distance from all civilisation. When there’s no place to run and no one to turn to, how long before you can no longer stop your fears from consuming you?
The Chilling is a nerve-racking, fingernail-biting thriller that tests not only person vs nature, but also person vs person in a place where human interaction and mutual trust are the only things that can save any of the characters, or any person, but also possibly the things that will kill them. With a languid pace that builds into a roaring crescendo, James feeds our fears of the unknown, and of who we might become in order to survive it.
