Books book reviews Here Be Dragons: John Hornor Jacobs’ The Night That Finds Us All A bracing work of maritime cosmic horror. By Tobias Carroll | Published on November 10, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Is it any surprise that cosmic horror and open water fit together all too neatly? The subgenre is one that abounds with feelings of insignificance; when you see an image of a crewed vessel dwarfed by massive waves—or even the breadth of a lake, sea, or ocean—you’re already tapping into some of the same emotions countless practitioners of the genre harness for their own ends. Jean Ray’s “The Mainz Psalter,” a tale of a voyage that heads very far off course, is a prime example of a seafaring tale that heads into ever-more-unsettling waters. There’s also the matter of megafauna. I write this as someone terrified by creatures over a certain size; the blue whale at the Museum of Natural History unsettled me as a child and continues to do so as an adult. Nautical cosmic horror has these aplenty; John Langan’s The Fisherman, for my money one of the best horror novels of the last decade, neatly taps into that moment wherein awe gives way to primal terror.  That’s a roundabout way of saying that John Hornor Jacobs is heading into potent territory with his new novel The Night That Finds Us All. Thus far, Jacobs’ work has encompassed everything from trips into musical history (Southern Gods) to sprawling dark fantasy (The Incorruptibles). Jacobs is no stranger to cosmic horror, but in his latest novel he’s taken that approach in a very nautical direction. Like a well-tied knot when docking, it’s a good fit. At its core, The Night That Finds Us All is a novel about the fight against precarity and insignificance. That works on a thematic level: What is a vessel on the open ocean but something out of place and constantly under siege? But it also fits in with the more lived-in elements of this book. Narrator Sam Vines is in a financially precarious situation when the book opens, trying to keep her ship The Victress afloat and herself gainfully employed, whether running her own boat or crewing someone else’s. The arrival of a global pandemic complicates matters further, and makes a job offer from Loick Archambault, an old friend and colleague, that much more tempting. Loick is assembling a crew to bring the Blackwatch, a decades-old yacht, from the Pacific Northwest to London. That the ship will be captained by one Hank Huntington—with whom Sam has a complicated professional relationship—adds to the fraught nature of this voyage. There’s also Seabees (also known as Sarah), the ship’s first mate, to whom Sam is drawn. Sam isn’t the only character in grim financial straits; Hank, we learn, has been using a YouTube channel to elevate his profile, and has also taken on a trio of paid crew members without the ship’s new owners signing off on it.  There’s also the matter of whether or not the Blackwatch is haunted, something Loick brings up relatively early in the proceedings. That the yacht’s cabin is decorated in an eldritch manner is one clue things are about to get uncanny; another is Sam’s discovery of a manuscript detailing a harrowing trip it took with its original owners in the mid-20th century. That narrative doesn’t quite parallel the present-day segments, but it provides a few echoes—and makes it clear that the Blackwatch is being menaced by more than economic anxiety. Buy the Book The Night That Finds Us All John Hornor Jacobs Buy Book The Night That Finds Us All John Hornor Jacobs Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget This novel is narrated by Sam after several devastating events have taken place; at one point, she alludes to a terrible fate awaiting one supporting character. But Sam is also a fallible narrator; there’s one especially bleak bit of offscreen violence that readers may become aware of before she does, and there’s also a sense that she’s not telling the reader everything about certain things. This isn’t done in a “the narrator is unreliable and everything you know is wrong” way; instead, Jacobs uses that quality to advance the characterization of Sam. As the Blackwatch continues on its journey, the sense that something is off ratchets up. That takes many forms, including an odd substance in the bilge, mechanical failures, and erratic behavior from a few crew members. (Though not Sam; her struggles to stay sober while on this assignment are one more source of tension here.) Given the nature of Sam’s narration, we know that things will take a bad turn at some point; still, the violence with which it finally does is jarring. There’s also a moment in this novel’s second half that readers of Jacobs’ novella collection A Lush and Seething Hell will likely enjoy, but familiarity with the author’s previous work is not a requirement. Instead, this accomplishes the task of evoking a larger cosmology without giving the sense that this is not a self-contained work.  It’s also worth noting here that Jacobs knows his genre. There’s a fun moment partway through the book when Sam stumbles onto some writing in a mysterious language that hints that Jacobs is taking this book into Lovecraftian waters. Later, Sam learns that the uncanny language she’s been reading is, in fact…Welsh. It’s a gentle reminder in a not-so-gentle book that Jacobs is familiar with the map but willing to add in his own cartography. The Night That Finds Us All is a bracing work of maritime cosmic horror. That description is largely accurate but also flawed: For all that this is a story of flawed people trying to survive under terrifying circumstances, at its core it’s also a story about redemption. In the midst of mysterious hauntings and the legacy of a doomed voyage, what stands out most is Sam Vines, who opens the novel as a flawed antihero and fights her way towards something that looks an awful lot like redemption. Jacobs’ novel doesn’t lack for grotesque and awe-inducing images, but cloaked beneath that is a story of heroism in an unlikely place.[end-mark] The Night That Finds Us All is published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. The post Here Be Dragons: John Hornor Jacobs’ <i>The Night That Finds Us All</i> appeared first on Reactor.