UNTIL THE END is the closing novel of Ike Hamill's UNTIL Trilogy, comprising, UNTIL DAWN and UNTIL THE END. It is the longest of the three, and brings the whole affair to a neat and tidy end. One of my favorite things about the trilogy (I have reviewed UNTIL THE SUN GOES DOWN previously) is that the second and third novels bring together characters from previous novels. From MIGRATORS, Alan and Liz (and by reference, neighbor Robert and son Joe) return, a few years after the the events chronicled in that excellent short novel. From even further back in ACCIDENTAL EVIL, Ricky Dunn, young magician-in-training (now a local cop), his younger brother George and his parents are main characters in the ensemble of UNTIL THE END. Finally, as the arguable lead, introduced briefly in UNIL THE SUN GOES DOWN, there us Amber in her early 20's, originally from North Carolinabut now living in Main with an old, blind cousin. Almost all the action in the trilogy takes place in the same areas in rural Maine that are analogous to Stephen King's Castle Rock, in both cases a place where a variety of strange things just seem to happen.
After UNTIL THE END introduces original, non-Bram Stoker vampires and Amber, UNTIL DAWN puts the ensemble together at an out of the way Maine hotel for a wedding of a pair of mutual friends. In this palpably scary very short novel, everything goes to hell insidiously as the power and phones go out during a winter storm, and the blood suckers descend. Hamill uses UNTIL DAWN to give us a deeper dive into the characters of Amber, Ricky, Alan and Liz as they struggle to survive the night while like in the famous Agatha Christie novel, guests start to disappear one by one. Only Amber has any idea what is really happening and lets the others know how to defend themselves against the vampires.
UNTIL THE END opens a few weeks or months after the events of UNTIL DAWN, when Amber, Ricky, Alan and Liz are eventually are forced into confronting the vampires, dragging George and his parents along. We get more backstory of happened to Alan and Liz in MIGRATORS and how their lives were changed by the event, the nature of the thing unleashed by Ricky in ACCIDENTAL EVIL, and a description of Amber's childhood that uncovers something in common between all of them that explains how and why the vampires seem to be seeking them out.
The character development is particularly strong for all the protagonists in all three novels. The writing and pacing are tight and fast as is usual for Hamill, and things accelerate towards the end in a way that ties all of the novels mentioned above into a tight package. One doesn't have to have read MIGRATORS or ACCIDENTAL EVIL before UNTIL THE END (but it wouldn't hurt and will give the reader the feeling of revisiting old friends) but it is strongly suggested to read both UNTIL THE SUN GOES DOWN and UNTIL DAWN before UNTIL THE END for maximum enjoyment. I've read (and reviewed) a fair number of Ike Hamill's novels and I'll go out on a limb and say that UNTIL THE END, along with the first two novels in the trilogy, is the best of a large body of excellent work by Ike Hamill.
Highly Recommended
JM Tepper