It is my personal opinion that Stranded gets lobbed into the Horror category simply because there isn’t a Twilight Zone genre. The story centers on Noah, a young widower and a bit of a screwup on the Arctic Promise, a fishing ship captained by his ex-father-in-law.
To understate the obvious, a lot of problems arise out of that point alone.
The Arctic Promise then gets ice-locked after a horrible storm in unknown territory, shortly after which a mysteriously illness starts affecting the crew, forcing a small group of them to trudge through the potentially lethal terrain and weather to get to a pseudo-nearby station in order to get assistance. In order to avoid spoilers, I will end this brief synopsis with AND THEN IT GETS REALLY, REALLY WEIRD.
The beauty of this book is that while the weirdness of the story plays a pivotal and necessary part, the real edge comes from the people, what they do, and how they change. You know how zombie books are now rarely about the zombies and more about how the people change or grow out of dealing with the zombies? Imagine that instead of zombies you have the Arctic, animosity, regret, and desperation trying to eat your face. Then add REALLY, REALLY WEIRD to it as well and you’ve got Stranded. Bracken needs to be commended for having the talent for writing a really tight story. I picked Stranded up as an audiobook. Normally, there’s some rewinding that occurs with me when listening due to something being missed or glanced over. That didn’t occur once with this one. The story stays on a clear course for the duration, and there is practically no fat to be cut off of it. You you like your tales lean and weird, you need this book.
