So I stumbled upon this ARC and thought is sounded kinda interesting in a fairly generic sci-fi novel way. Boy was I wrong! Its been a very long time since I have been so into a solid sci-fi story and Keith Thomas’s Dahlia Black a truly unique, pure sci-fi story.

The year is 2028. Five years earlier the Pulse was discovered by Dr. Dahlia Mitchell, an astronomer at the University of California Santa Cruz, leading to the greatest transformation of human society in history. Unlike many authors before him, journalist Keith Thomas sets out to understand the Pulse from a more personal perspective of those affected - both directly and indirectly - by the alien code and what came after.

This book is truly unique in its approach to storytelling. Author Keith Thomas sets up his novel not in traditional style, but as if writing a non-fiction historical account of first contact with an alien species. Instead of ‘experiencing the event’ as it happens, Thomas starts us off after the fact and peels back the layers of truth and speculation surrounding the events with personal interviews, diary entries and recorded interview transcripts to paint a picture of not only the event itself, but life afterward. It is a masterful and powerful storytelling technique that works wonderfully well and draws you into the story deeper and deeper, keeping the reader engaged and excited right through the end.

I cannot praise this book enough. It is very much a top favorite of mine and one I wholeheartedly recommend for all readers, not just those sci-fi aficionados.

I really wish I could say I liked this book a whole bunch more than I did because there are some really compelling ideas here that just never develop into anything very interesting. I originally picked up this book because of the title. I figured a science fiction novel featuring the Black Dahlia killer would have to be interesting, but the book actually has nothing to do with the Black Dahlia; it's just that one of the characters is named Dahlia Black. I checked the interwebs to find out if Dahlia Black is a legit name and apparently there is an ex-wrestler named Dahlia Black who makes candles and either likes kiwis or is from New Zealand.

So what's the book about? A woman discovers a transmission from space while searching for proof of dark matter. The message is actually an interplanetary trojan virus that hacks human DNA and causes people to get super smart or mutate or just die. There's also a shadowy conspiracy that has known about the transmission and has been exposing people to since the 60's. So now you're thinking to yourself, "this seems like an interesting premise for a sci-fi book, so why'd he only give it three stars?" The problem for the book is that it's all set-up and then... nothing. I don't mean it gets boring or just sort of meanders; I mean the transmission is discovered, people freak out, a conspiracy is discovered, and the end.

Told in a series of diary entries, interviews, and author's notes, Dahlia Black tells the story of the mysterious Pulse - a code sent by a highly intelligent intergalactic species that begins the process of rewriting human DNA, as well as the life of Dahlia Mitchell, the scientist who discovered the Pulse. A compelling tale of exactly what it means to be human, Dahlia Black also plays around with themes of governmental oversight, misogyny, and grief.

Although the book starts out strong, the pace patters off a bit near the second half of the novel and the government conspiracy theme becomes something of an afterthought. None the less, I highly recommend reading this book if you are a fan of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel.

A special thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

Published by Atria/Leopoldo & Co. on August 13, 2019

Dahlia Black is written as the history of a world-changing event. The event begins when an astronomer named Dahlia Mitchell discovers a signal coming from space that contains a Pulse Code, which is like a computer virus except it alters the computers we refer to as brains. About 30% of humanity experiences an Elevation and those who are capable of handling it will experience a transitional event called the Finality. Fans of the old Stargate television series might be reminded of Daniel Jackson’s ascension to a higher place of existence.

When the Finality comes, civilization goes. The world’s population declines by five billion people in five years, leaving the survivors to rebuild. Some choose to rebuild while others decide to go live in the woods. Nobody has much interest in rebuilding the dysfunctional government in Washington D.C. Alabama and Texas seize the opportunity to split from the not-so-United States, but the postapocalyptic aspects of the novel are part of the background. This isn’t another story of moronic survivalists killing each other.

The story is told through FBI interview transcripts, journal entries, transcripts of White House meetings, and the author’s notes and interviews. We learn that Dahlia is not the first astronomer to detect such a signal. An obscure government agency and a stealthy group known as the Twelve became aware of what such signals can do and tried to exploit the information while keeping a lid on it. Dahlia isn’t the kind of person who keeps a lid on the truth.

Of course, governments that decide to tell their citizens an uncomfortable truth often put a spin on it. Keith Thomas images the American administration hiring marketing managers to sell the Elevation to the public, ostensibly without causing mass panic. True to her roots, the marketing guru recommends lying. The government describes the Elevation as something like the Rapture, although none of the Left Behind really understand the nature of the Finality. Whether it is right or wrong to instill false hope is left to the reader to decide.

And since it has become the American way to hate anything that people don’t understand, the story imagines that some Elevated are committed to institutions or placed in concentration camps. In the worst case, a small town mob sets a camp of Elevated people on fire. The message is that people fear change, particularly when they aren’t intellectually equipped to accept its inevitability.

While Dahlia Black tells an interesting story, its epistolary style creates a detachment that robs the story of its power. The ultimate lesson — find your own meaning in life, don’t expect a miracle to come along that gives it meaning — has merit, but the message is presented as if it were something from a self–help book. The last chapter reveals the purpose of the Pulse and the Finality, and while it is meant to be poignant, it left me unmoved.

In the end, the novel is more of a thought experiment than the emotional gut punch it could have been. I’m not sure whether that is good or bad — at least I did not feel emotionally manipulated by the story, but when I end a story with a shrug, feeling no attachment to any character and lacking an emotional connection to the plot, I’m generally disappointed. In the case of Dahlia Black, my disappointment was slight, given my interest in the story as it unfolded, but I cannot give the book an enthusiastic recommendation.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

This book is in the form of interviews and diary entries that have been compiled by a reporter/author piecing together the story of what happened to humanity when aliens found us. The premise is plausible and intriguing, but the execution left something to be desired. Perhaps because I recently read and enjoyed Neuvel’s Themis Files trilogy, which uses the same conceit of interviews and diaries, this felt derivative and forced. Enjoyable, but not a favorite.

I found myself struggling to get through this! This genre is not my go to usually but I wanted to give it a try! I saw this compared to word war Z and I thought I would really enjoy it! All the data and interview style just isn’t my forte. This might be a great book for someone else, but this just wasn’t for me! The cover though is gorgeous.

*Received via NetGalley for review*

I'm a sucker for any books inane untraditional format, and Dahlia Black fits that bill, being told through interviews, transcripts, and author's notes.

This is the oral, "close-up" history of the Elevation: humanity's new stage after being exposed to an alien signal. Only a few people are Elevated, and not everyone makes it to the final stage (either because their bodies failed or because others targeted them).

There are definitely some interesting threads that are followed here. and it's nice to see how optimistically things ended, even after facing the worst of humanity.

I am ambivalent about this novel. I didn’t dislike it, but it was rather dull.

The basic premise is that this is a faux-documentary-style account of an apocalyptic event. It’s a combination of interviews, transcriptions, and diary entries organized in chronological order to give an overview of the phenomenon called The Pulse. The titular Dahlia is the scientist who discovered that aliens were beaming a signal to earth, which has momentous consequences. Momentous to the people in the story. For me, it wasn’t that exciting.

It’s easy to compare this novel to World War Z. The only difference is that WWZ takes a more interesting approach to the format. Dahlia Black is didactic and constrained by its structure. The novel fails at being a “found text” for two reasons. The first is Dahlia’s diaries – they are not written like a diary. They are written like a blog post or report, in that she explains things that are clearly for our benefit (i.e., what dark matter is. Why would she explain this to herself?). It didn’t feel real. The other reason was that everything is there for the reader – we are given the reason, the reactions, the result of the Pulse. We aren’t left with any questions. WWZ and others of the found text genre (i.e. House of Leaves) let the readers fill in some blanks and make connections, or deliberately make us question what is true. We only needed one or two of Dahlia’s entries, because the rest were repetitive.

I can’t say a lot about the characters (as they aren’t really characters, in that they are mainly interviewees,), though I appreciated the gender and racial diversity. The lack of characterization is also why I’m so nonchalant about the novel. We’re given the perspective of people who didn’t experience anything tangible. Part of what made WWZ so great was the short story aspect – we’re given different perspectives on the same thing to flesh out the story and make it real. The characters in those stories had personality. This novel was … boring. The only good chapter was the little boy at the hospital because it was told by someone who was there. Everything else is in second-hand or a bird’s eye view. The massacres, the discovery of powers; all this would have been super engaging and emotionally resonant as first-person accounts (either by the person or a loved one watching it happen).

Also, what was with the conspiracy angle? It contributed nothing to the story.

All in all, this novel had a clever idea but failed to execute it in a way that was compelling. I'm sorry if most of the review seems negative, I just can't recall anything I loved about the book.

Note:
I must also add that the endnotes annoyed me. I would much rather have preferred footnotes because by the time the chapter ended I didn’t remember what the footnote was referring to. Given I was reading an ARC, this might be only true to my kindle version.

This is an interesting one. In the fine tradition of unconventionally formatted scifi rooted in the "real world" (think Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel) Dahlia Black sets out to tell a unique and fascinating story. Something in outer space is sending a transmission that can rewrite human DNA. And the rewritten people either died from the strain of the change or vanished.

This book is set 5 years later, in the form of a "non-fiction" book about the events, focusing on Dr. Dahlia Mitchell, who discovered the transmission and soon became the face of the end of the world as we know it. The book takes the form of interviews, transcripts of conversations, diary entries, letters, and phone calls, with small bits of narrator-driven text in between. The style created a very interesting narrative distance that I found really enhanced the story. It gave the author the freedom to deviate from a small group of characters, instead bringing in anecdotes from victims and survivors around the country. By breaking up the information and giving us many different viewpoints, the narrator was able to really develop this world.

Unfortunately, the pace dropped off quite a bit in the second half. The individual component stories lacked the tension that earlier anecdotes possessed. And the conspiracy theory seemed thrown in as an afterthought; it popped up a few times throughout but didn't seem to have overarching ramifications in the "present" world (ie the world in which this story is a newly published nonfiction). I started wondering why it mattered, which is when the formatting was really losing its weight.

I did like the characters and the attention to detail. The footnotes were fun and made the style seem more real. I'm definitely going to look into reading this author's previous book and will keep an eye out for any future stories. If you want an unconventional scifi tale set in what is essentially our world as we know it, this is a great book to pick up

Interesting doc-style story, which is well-told. I also liked the characters and a creative and imaginative plot. Recommended for scifi fans.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Like WORLD WAR Z, but with aliens!

** Trigger warning for violence and mental health issues, including suicide. **

In 1977, the whole world turned towards the stars. We wanted to believe there was intelligent life somewhere out there. And we hoped that if we could reach them, maybe they’d reach back. Voyager 1, this satellite dish with bristling antenna, was a message in a bottle. Our way of letting the galaxy know we existed. That we were out here if anyone wanted to find us.

Over the next forty years, the probe flew past Jupiter and Saturn before it drifted into the void, swallowed up by a silent universe. Or so we thought . . .

Truth is, our message didn’t go unheard.

The universe reached back and changed everything. Not with war or an invasion but with a whisper. Almost overnight, all that we knew transformed.

And I saw it happen.

###

I am not an incubator, but my head has become an executable.

###

On October 17, 2023, a rouge astronomer named Dahlia Mitchell unwittingly picks up a signal originating from farthest reaches of space. Rather than the sound of a dying star or an errant transmission from the breakroom microwave, Dahlia and her colleagues quickly realize that this signal is intentional, complex, and was most likely purposefully directed at earth by the members of an intelligent species. The signal is dubbed the “Pulse Code,” owing to its similarity to a computer code as opposed to, say, an attempt at communication or contact.

Before the president and her cabinet can formulate an action plan, the Pulse begins working its nerdy magic. Once received, the Pulse got right down to business, altering the brains of roughly 30% of the earth’s population. Initially, those affected experienced visual and auditory hallucinations. They saw, heard, felt, and tasted things others couldn’t, from electromagnetic radiation and ultraviolet colors, to the ultrasonic songs of mice and insects, and gravitational waves. One woman was able to taste things with her fingers, like a fly. Many claimed to be able to see ghosts.

Before long the Elevated, as they would be known, manifested enhanced cognitive abilities; they could “calculate new forms of mathematics, develop innovative computer algorithms, uncover unseen biological processes, and create unimaginable works of art.”
In the end, they simply vanished – pulled, perhaps, into that other dimension they saw, overlaid on top of our own. Yet many – as much as 15% of the infected, by some accounts – succumbed to the changes prior to the Finality, their bodies too weak to withstand the demands placed on them.

In a scant five years, the global population dropped from 7.7 billion to 2.5 billion. In addition to the 3 billion people killed or disappeared by the Ascendant – aka our alien overlords – billions more were murdered in the resulting violence and chaos.

Now it’s five years on, and a reporter named Keith Thomas is trying to make sense of the Pulse Code. “Disclosure: How One Woman’s Discovery Led to the Greatest Event in Human History” is the result. Thomas weaves together original interviews with historical documents, police transcripts, diary entries, and illicit files in order to deconstruct the Pulse and its aftermath.

So this is a really fun read, and comparisons to WORLD WAR Z are spot on. I enjoy the change of pace that faux nonfiction books constructed of various files offer, and Dahlia Black is no exception. It’s kind of like WORLD WAR Z in this way, but with aliens! Or like Sylvain Neuvel’s THEMIS FILES trilogy, but with a whimper instead of a bang. (The latter has giant weaponized alien robots, so there’s that.)

I had a lot of, um, fun following Thomas on this ride, as he imagines what a world suddenly devoid of more than half its population might look like. (“Fun” in scare quotes because many of the events outlined here are downright horrifying, particularly because they have happened in the past and will no doubt replicate themselves in the future.) Just take the reference to deepfakes – which I just learned about on an episode of FULL FRONTAL WITH SAMANTHA BEE a few short months ago – used four years from now to foment mob violence against the Elevated.

There’s also a great conspiracy theory subplot that adds another layer of intrigue and general gruesomeness to the story. (Yes, I’m talking about the girl with two spinal columns.)

DAHLIA BLACK is a great summer read that would also make a great summer blockbuster. Just don’t do it like Brad Pitt’s WORLD WAR Z, okay. That thing was disappointing.

P.S. I also await the comic book adaptation.

The oratory style of this book was what really makes it shine. From the get go I could feel the similarities to World War Z, but Dahlia Black navigated it's own, unique path through complex ideas and chilling possibilities.

In 2028, a pulse from outer space is detected by physicist Dahlia Black. An advanced government antenna is aimed up at the stars and receives a radio signal. At first, the small cadre of scientists who are in-the-know don't know what to make of it; all they know is that the message is way beyond anything a human mind could formulate. Slowly, there are other factors that come into play. People who come in contact with the pulse are starting to change: The Elevation. An altering of the human DNA. Most people survive this process, but some do not... At the end, 1/3 of the human population disappears. Transformed by the alien beings into something greater, a drastic, shocking, and rapid evolution, and then taken away.

This oral history marks the 5th anniversary of The Pulse. Told through the newly found diary of Black, formal and informal interviews with scientists and other leaders, and research into the events by "journalist," Keith Thomas, this book can obviously be compared to other stories told in this style like World War Z. And because of the success of that book and like anytime I read a book in a unique style, I kept thinking if it worked here. The answer is sort of. Two things drove the tension for me: The development of Dahlia's character (I'll get to more of this later), and the politics surrounding the official response to the crisis. But I'm not sure if the storytelling technique had anything to do what that. 

Dahlia is a memorable character. She's driven, intelligent, and accomplished. Yet, he boss doesn't agree that her dark matter research will pan out and cancels her experiments. A past injury finds her addicted to opioids and the office rumors suspect that she may have been high when she discovered the pulse. Dahlia isn't trusted and loses control of the information that she knows will affect the world. At the same time, her ability to interact with the world around her is changing..

When Dahlia trusts the cache of information in the hands of others, it is the egos and the suspected paranoia that drives many of the decision-makers. When and how will the president hear about The Pulse? What will the affect be on the people?

I enjoyed this book to an extent. It seemed a little top-down in its telling. Essentially, the story is wanting of some different points of view at times. As much as Dahlia's character is fantastic, the others, especially the scientists, melt into each other. My problem with this review is that I don't want to give up to much of the plot to explain my issues... I just didn't feel like the end payoff holds up too well, especially after knowing the "ending" of the the plot. 

Read this one for a good dystopian, alien-attack aftermath oral history. It may be a bit uneven, but the protagonist is savvy and realistic.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

What attracted me to this book is its comparison with World War Z (the book, not the awful movie). I loved WWZ and its (then) new take on the zombie apocalypse. I loved that the author chose to tell the story of what happened AFTER the end of the world as we know it. That it was as much a tale of fighting the zombies as one of rebuilding a life in a new reality where they existed. So another story about civilization coping with a world-changing event and rebuilding after it – I was all in.

Unfortunately, the only way this book IS like WWZ is that it’s a collection of fictional interviews and diary entries. It is also very, unimaginatively boring… I kept hoping that there would be some emotional reward or grand revelation if only I kept reading, but I turned the last page and the only thought in my head was, “why waste 288 pages on THAT?”

The whole story can be summed up in four steps. 1. There is a mysterious Pulse from space that alters human DNA. 2. About 30% of people are susceptible to the Pulse and change, becoming the Elevated. From those, about 1/3 die during the “transformation. 3. The surviving Elevated disappear from our reality into a parallel dimension during the Finality. 4. The other 70% of the world’s population learn to keep on living. That’s it! Why drag this into 288 pages of boring accounts? Why rehash the discovery of the Pulse for 100 some pages?

I guess the biggest problem with this book is that the author chose the wrong people to be his “voices” telling this story. His fictional book writer interviews scientists, members of the White House, the President, and other fellow journalists. None of them were the boots on the ground when all these events happened. They observed and reacted from afar. What made WWZ so great was that we read the accounts from people who survived those zombie attacks. So it felt like we were right there with them when the horror was unfolding. Here, we have several degrees of separation between the events and the people who tell about those events. So guess what? I don’t feel engaged. It’s a snooze fest instead.

Plus, all the major events the Pulse and the Elevation triggered are just summarized by the author. Give me the eyewitness accounts of the massacre of the Elevated Camp, don’t TELL me in a half-page summary that it happened. I don’t want to read 10 different interviews with Dahlia Black about her accidental discovery of the Pulse. I got the gist of it the first time around, thank you very much! You want to keep me engaged? Give me more eye witness accounts of the transformations. Give me survivor reactions. Don’t tell me that the world collapsed and is slowly rebuilding itself. SHOW me. Unfortunately, the author failed to do just that.

I also didn’t quite understand the need to insert this whole side story about the Twelve. It brought nothing to the main storyline and felt absolutely useless.

To summarize, WWZ this is NOT. And definitely don’t compare it to the brilliant weirdness of the Southern Reach trilogy. This is just plain boring.

PS. I received an advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

4 out of 5 Stars.

Very intriguing premise and I loved the "World War Z" similarities of a reporter interviewing people years after a world-ending event. But unlike WWZ, there were some holes in the plot and writing that prevented me from giving it an enthusiastic 5 stars.

Mainly the fact that Dahlia Mitchell was talked about in interviews as this very famous person, but we rarely if ever saw that. We had no chapters on her handling fame, going on TV and giving interviews - it was all "she was famous" without showing it. Very confusing.

But I would recommend to fans of WWZ and sci-fi in general.

Dahlia Black: A Novel by [Thomas, Keith]

Ah, I loved this. I thought it was incredibly well done and very entertaining.



Review copy provided by publisher.

I really enjoyed this book! I am a fan of fictional oral histories of the apocalypse (like World War Z and Sleep Over) and this was an interesting story that took some unexpected turns. I would definitely recommend.