THE NIGHT OF THE DAYFISH BY D.T. NEAL

I once saw Green Day perform Walking Contradiction live, where Billie Joe changed the lyrics to “I'm a walking contradiction / and I'm bored”, which pretty much sums up both the characterisation in, and my experience with, The Night of the Dayfish. Within the first three pages our narrator, a nameless aspiring chef, manages to sound both bored and excited by his culinary training, ruminates on how adventure is a bad idea for artists before saying how much he likes danger, and so on. It's a frustrating opening to what bills itself as a memorable, horrifying adventure, as the chef in training seeks out the source of the titular fish and gets more than he bargained for.

The adventure is, sadly, more underwhelming than unforgettable. Eventually dumping you in Rhode Island after starting the story in Phuket felt like a weird choice; why set up an interesting location in favour of a more everyday one? Any chance of intrigue is also watered down by a meandering narrative, which lingers on dull conversation and repeats itself way too often for a novella-sized piece.

One thing that really put me off was the wannabe chef's descriptions of his food. He confusingly describes the elusive nightfish as a taste similar to six other species. It's hard to imagine stuffing your gob with so many different fish at once (I'm no Matt Stonie), and most of the other dishes he chows down on never made me lick my lips. You're meant to be as curious as the chef eventually is, but his passion doesn't come through well enough, which means the mystery also lacks flavour.

By the time any horror threatens to rear its subaquatic head, well past the halfway mark, it's mired by the same problems, losing any potential bite thanks to ponderous descriptions and some tepid pacing. The encounters with the nightfish aim for thrills but fall well short. Overall, the story feels too beholden to that old-fashioned style of Lovecraftian writing, with a narrator who is allowed to blather on to their heart's content about what could have been, failing to let you anywhere near some potentially gripping action and frights.

If you're looking for some properly scary and disturbing fish tales, you'd do a lot better with the Dead Bait series from Severed Press, or Edward Lee & John Pelan's Family Tradition.

Review by Ben Walker

​A young chef-in-training and self-styled culinary adventurer is transported by tasting the savory food fad, nightfish, at a top-notch hotel in Thailand with his rich girlfriend. Nobody can tell him what nightfish actually is, and his quest for the elusive and enigmatic nightfish takes him across half the world to the unassuming town of Gunwale, Rhode Island, sole producer of nightfish. Here, he works his way to get aboard one of the Blackfin Fishing Company boats, the Amanda Luce, for an unforgettable and horrifying seagoing adventure, where he gets far more than he bargained for.

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