Friday, December 30, 2016

2016/81: The Three -- Sarah Lotz

He also expressed concern that Jess could be an alien being, but I assured him that aliens don’t exist and he was more than likely dealing with a bad energy influx.[loc. 4863]

On a single December day, four planes crash in different parts of the world, resulting in the deaths of over a thousand people. There are just three survivors -- all children aged around six -- and The Three takes the form of a collection of interviews, news cuttings and transcripts of the coverage of those children (Bobby Small, Hiro Yanagida and Jessica Craddock) after the crash.

Evangelists claim they are three of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse, heralding the end of the world. Paul Craddock, Jessica's uncle, believes they are something ... strange. One man believes that Bobby has cured a neighbour's Alzheimer's. And the children themselves? We don't get a great deal of insight into their experience, their perception, their memories.

I can't say I enjoyed this. The writing occasionally felt lazy, and it was sometimes hard to distinguish the characters. While The Three was an interesting take on the gradual alienation of the adults closest to each child, it didn't really deliver on its initial premise, and the hints of the supernatural (3am, the Japanese 'ghost hour'; ghosts with no feet; the suicide forest) remained mere hints.

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