Jonathan Janz jumps into the alien invasion horror genre in a big way with his new novel (and first of a series?) – Veil. Janz takes tropes that readers of this genre may be familiar with from books like Josh Malerman’s Bird Box or The Quiet Place film series – properties which pit plucky individuals against seemingly impossible alien odds.
Veil opens with high school teacher John Calhoun and his disaffected son Sam. The two are out for a walk and failing to communicate when Sam turns a corner disappears. This is just one of many reported disappearances and John soon starts to here that thousands of people are vanishing. Feeling like there might be safety in numbers, John’s estranged wife Iris and teenage daughter Emma come to stay with him. But they then try to leave in a chaotic rush that sees Iris also taken by the same mysterious, invisible force that took Sam. John and Emma hole up as disappearances continue and society starts to break down but from there things only get worse.
Covid lockdowns clearly taught speculative fiction writers alot about human behaviour under pressure. Veil is not the first book to use people’s reaction to Covid, and the restrictions that it brought, as a model for what might happen in similar, if more extreme, circumstances. In Veil that not only includes what happens in grocery stores but the ‘freedom of movement’ people who do not want to stay in their homes just because they are told it is safer from them (suffice to say they learn their lesson). As with plenty of other post-apocalyptic tales there is also, of course, a local tin pot dictator who uses the chaos to take over the neighbourhood.
Janz’s aliens take a fair amount of time to appear (literally, as they are invisible to human eyes). John and some others have to undertake some dangerous surgery in order to gain the ability to see the invaders and work out how to follow them back to their home world. When the aliens do make an appearance they are huge, ugly, slavering and intent on destruction. This makes the action scenes between the aliens and John’s little gang incredibly tense as humans do not seem particularly well matched.
If Veil has a message it is to hold on to what you have and never give up hope. Despite all of the action, the core of Veil is John’s mission to reclaim his family, not only physically but also to repair the emotional damage that his separation from Iris has caused. But it is also an action roller coaster, particularly in the second half, after a carefully constructed set up.
Veil deals with an existential global crisis from the perspective of one tiny community. Readers may like to assume that similar pockets of resistance are springing up around the world but Janz does not pull his focus back any further than John and the middle American suburbs that he lives in. But Janz also leaves the end of this book wide open for either a direct sequel or other stories told in his post-apocalyptic world.
Veil by Jonathan Janz
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