 All right, so I absolutely love space horror. I just do. Like, the thing is my favorite horror movie of all time, and it's just one of my favorite movies, period. Uh, stuff like Alien is also great. I mean, even Event Horizon, while it is schlocky, is still a fun movie, and there's parts of it I like. Uh, and then there's like space horror video games, like Dead Space, which is great. System Shock are really good. Uh, the System Shock games are really good. I am beyond excited for the Callisto protocol, like that's honestly one of the big reasons why I finally bought a PS5. Uh, but there's not a lot of space horror in the form of books that I've been able to find. You know, the, the Expanse has elements of this, uh, especially at the beginning, and at the end it does have horror, but that's more of a cosmic horror thing, where that's more about the existential fear of realizing just how small you are and how unknowable these other entities are. Uh, which is what pretty much all cosmic horror is like, especially like the works of HP Lovecraft, for instance, so that's kind of different than space horror. I found one or two short stories which work with this, like, uh, They're Made of Meat, that's a very good one, uh, but again, that's more existentially terrifying than just, oh hey, there's aliens out there and they're scary and that sort of thing, and even creepypastas and other internet, uh, fiction things that I've been able to find, haven't really been, well, good for starters and for another, there's just not very many of them. Like, space horror is a niche that many people don't seem to be interested in tapping into. Enter 172 hours on the moon. Now, I got this for free on, uh, Thriftbooks a while ago, uh, hashtag not sponsored, uh, cause I just, you know, I had enough points to get a free book, so I was looking through there, looking, seeing, okay, is there anything here that interests me, and this popped up, I'd never heard of it, but it sounded neat, you know, some teenagers win a contest to visit the moon and then while they're up there, some weird supernatural stuff starts happening, that sounds right up my alley, and I know this is a long-winded intro, but honestly, 172 hours is just, it's not good. This is the introduction song, it's not very good, but it's not too long. I want to be clear from the start that 172 hours on the moon, there's not a lot of good in it, uh, but I see a lot of potential shining through, like there's a lot of parts where I see, oh man, they could have done something really great here, but they just, every step along the way is a misstep, I suppose is a good way of putting it, like, I thought for a little while about how best to describe this, and the best metaphor I could come up with was, if it was a movie, then the scriptwriter would have been decently good at his job, but everyone else sucked at it, like the directors, the actors, producers, cinematographers, like, they all failed at what they tried to do, and so the end product wound up not being very good, even if it could have been great. The first problem with this book is a little bit of a spoiler, so I apologize for bringing it up, but, uh, they don't reach the moon until halfway through the book. Like, the first half is like, introducing the characters, uh, hinting that there's something horrible up on the moon that is gonna be dangerous for them, and then them training for a little while, and then they just, they're up there, and I was like, finally, I wonder how long that took, and I looked at the page count and I realized we're about halfway through, so that's problem number one, like, it's not that you shouldn't have, uh, introductory bits to have us get to know the characters, or to, uh, sort of introduce that there is something going on, even if we don't know exactly what it is, like, there's something dangerous out there, uh, in a way where the audience knows what's going on, but the characters don't. You know what, I mean, I mentioned the thing before, like, that's a pretty good example of that. You know, we start off, we see the characters just hanging out at their camp, and then those Norwegian dudes come in trying to shoot that dog, and we, the audience, know, like, okay, there's something wrong with that dog, and something big is going on, and actually, if you speak Norwegian, one of the people there just says something along the lines of, that's not a dog, that's an alien, let me kill it, I forget exactly what it is, but he says something like that, and so that's a great way of, uh, ratcheting up the tension before anything substantial even happens, but the opening of this is really just introducing us to the main characters, and, honestly, I wish I could say more about them, but there, there really is nothing to these characters, like, there's nothing to praise, there's nothing to complain about, they are just, they exist, man. That's about all I can say. I, I get the feeling that the author originally just wrote one character winning the contest to go up to the moon, and then, for whatever reason, at some point he decided that he needed to add more, so he just split that character into three, and like, all the stuff that they do, and their personality traits and everything got split into three as well, because it feels like all of them have about one-third of a personality. You know, like, there's Antoine, who is from France, and what is there to him? Like, his girlfriend left him a while before the book begins, and he's kind of sad about that, and so he just decides, fine, I'm going to the moon, like, okay. Uh, there's Midori from Japan, and she has like a bit of a reason for wanting to go, and she just decides, hey, I don't want to spend my whole life in this neighborhood, in this city where she lives, and so going to the moon and getting that fame and having that on her resume, I suppose, you would say, uh, gives her the opportunity to leave, and that's about it. We don't actually know why she wants to leave so badly, we just know she wants to leave. And then there's Mia, who's from Norway, and she has the most personality out of all of them, but that's not saying much. Like, she is in a band, she didn't really want to go enter this contest to go to the moon in the first place, but her parents kind of pushed it on her, and then once it happens, she realizes, okay, I can use this as a promotion for my band, at least, and yeah, that's really all there is to it. Like, I don't know why the author felt the need to show us why they wanted to go to the moon, or in Mia's case, why she didn't particularly want to go to the moon, because I feel like most people would want to go if the opportunity came up, you know, or at least a really substantial portion of people, like, they'd say, hey, do you want to go to the moon? Like, a lot of us would say yes, because that just sounds cool. I don't know, maybe I'm alone in that, but just going to the moon sounds cool to me. This goes for all the side characters as well. There's really nothing to them. I straight up don't even remember the names of any of them, and they just exist. Like, there's a couple other astronauts on the trip, they're just there for a little while, and they're there for either exposition dumps, or just saying, hey, something is wrong now, like, the power's cut, or something like that, and then they have to figure out how to fix it. Like, that's about all they're there for, so I just don't have anything to say about them, you know? And the thing is, ideally in stories, especially in, like, horror stories and stuff, you want to have characters that your audience likes and connects with, so that we care about what happens to them, but you can get away with characters not being particularly likeable in horror or suspense stories, because you can still imagine yourself being in that situation. Like, I keep going back to the thing, because, you know, that's this sort of thing done perfect, almost. And a lot of the characters in that movie aren't particularly likeable. You know, Kurt Russell's character is kind of a jerk to everyone, and he's, I guess, immature, might be a word for it, because at the beginning of the movie, he destroys an electronic chess set because he lost to it. Like, you know, he's not the nicest guy, I don't know if I want to be friends with him, but throughout this whole thing, I still feared for him because I was thinking, okay, if I was in this situation, I probably would feel similarly to him. So it can work in that situation. And that brings me to what is probably the biggest single problem with this book, and that is that none of the characters really react in such a way where it feels dangerous. You know, in the later part of the book, when things start going wrong, they'll say things like, oh, hey, we only have a couple hours of oxygen left, and normally that's a scene where you would take time to let it sink in and to have the characters really start to feel panic and to feel dread and to be afraid and to have them start desperately working to fix the problem. But in this, one, it just happens really quick, and two, the characters don't even seem that bothered by it. Like, they seem annoyed, but just in a very detached, clinical way. You know, they say, oh, well, if we don't fix the oxygen, then we're gonna die in a couple of hours. We should get on that. Like, I'm really not exaggerating. That's how they seem to be reacting to it. That's what I mean when I used the movie metaphor and I said, like, okay, the actors are just really bad at their job. Like, that's kind of what I'm saying here. There are two scenes in this entire book which have like genuine tension and are genuinely pretty scary, and they both come in near the end. Like, one of them is actually in the climax, and one of them is not long before the climax. But they are both pretty good. I'll talk about them a little bit more in the spoiler corner, but they are both genuinely good. And from that, I see like, okay, so there's potential shining through. This could have been a really good fun horror book. It could have been a really great hidden gem, you know. It could have been something that people like me who like space horror could really get into, but it just isn't. And for that matter, both of those scenes just needed to be a little bit longer, so again, they had time to sink in. And as for the actual writing itself beyond that as not a lot to say, you know, it's just... I know it was translated from Norwegian, so how much of that was lost in translation and how much of it was just the original writer isn't that great, I can't say. But either way, the English version is just... It's fine, you know, it gets the point across, but you really can't rely on just getting the point across when you're writing horror. You know, you need to be able to build that tension and you need to make the audience feel dread and desperation. There are also a bunch of pictures and diagrams spread throughout this, which is sometimes fine, but other times it's kind of stupid. They have maps of the moon base and stuff. You can see there, there's maps. That's fine, but then there's other pages where it's just like, yep, here's a picture of the Earth taken from the moon and like, okay, that's fine, I guess, but it doesn't really add anything. And I will also say that once you get to near the end and figure out what exactly is going on, what is this supernatural occurrence? Is it aliens? Is it ghosts? Is it whatever? It's pretty stupid. Like, I'll give it a few points for originality, but I mean, just being original doesn't automatically make it good. It's like, it's pretty dumb and I didn't like it. But I will also give a few points for the ending being pretty ballsy. You know, I admit I didn't see it coming, but it doesn't make up for anything that came before it. So, before I get into spoilers, 172 hours on the moon, is it good? No. Is it the worst book I've ever read? Not even close. No, like I said, I see a lot of potential shining through, but there really just isn't much in there to appeal to its audience. Like, it's not really written for anyone. You know, so if you're a fan of horror or space horror in general, or space horror in particular, see, I can talk, I know how to do that, then this doesn't have much for you. But like, if you're really, really desperate, I guess you could check it out and you might disagree with me, but overall, just 172 hours on the moon is a lot of wasted potential, but that's all, let's go to spoilers. Then there are some people, they're not stupid, they're not full of shit, they're fucking nuts! Okay, so I don't have a whole lot to say in this spoiler section, but I do need to talk about it for a minute or two. So, first things first, we don't know 100% what it is that's on the moon that's causing all these problems, you know? Like, we see doppelgangers of the astronauts and of the main characters that are like outside the moon base and they're staying there not wearing a suit or anything, and people are freaking out about that, obviously, and also like the power in the base gets shut down so their oxygen reclaimer stops working as well and the lights go off and they lose communications with Earth, which is like, you know, the sorts of things that, when that happens, you would expect it to be like, oh shit, we're getting near the end here, shit's getting real, we're desperate, we need to fix this otherwise we're going to die. And part of the problem is that it happens like immediately upon them reaching the moon, because like I said, it takes them halfway through the fucking book to get there and so I feel like the author's like, oh, hey, we can't spend too much more time just building tension, so we just got to have shit happen now, but I mean, we don't really get a feel for this moon base and we don't really get a feel for how dangerous it is and how close they are to death because, you know, they're in space, so it doesn't quite work. But anyways, once we finally figure out, putting in quotes what's going on here, we don't actually figure it out because I'm pretty sure that the presence on the moon is some sort of alien, you know, some sort of alien presence that just wants to kill humanity and kill humans for whatever reason, that's just what it does, that's what it wants to do. And it takes on the form of humans, it makes itself into doppelgangers to look like other humans and that goes off and does evil stuff. And I would be fine with that if that was it, like, okay, it's a weird alien presence that doesn't have much explanation, that can be scary. But then they also say that it might be a demon of some sort because the moon might just be hell. Like, yeah, they have a whole long conversation about how in the Bible they say that the souls of the damned are sent to hell, but they never say where hell is where the moon is hell. So that's where the souls of the damned go and that's where Lucifer hangs out and demons and stuff like that. And that might be the case, but it's kind of stupid and it doesn't really fit with the theme of space horror, so I'm gonna, in my headcanon, that's not the case, it was just aliens. And then at the very end, when the heroes have to run off and get to this module, which is like their one last chance to escape, we get the two genuinely scary scenes in this entire book. The first one is when they're on this computer and the alien presence starts talking to them and it just starts saying, you are not going to survive, you will die here. That sort of thing. And for a moment, they're not sure what's going on, but then it starts talking to Mia in Norwegian and it starts talking to Midori in Japanese and they realize, oh, okay, it knows us and it's coming after us. And then they start like panicking and realizing, okay, we gotta do something. We have to just get off the moon right now. So that is a genuinely scary scene, number one. And number two is a little while after that, in the climax, when they just say, okay, we have to run on foot a couple of miles from the moon base to the escape module. So we're just, that's what we're doing. We're just putting on our suits and we're running. And while they're out there, they see doppelgangers of themselves and their friends following after them, not wearing suits and it's talking to them and they can somehow hear it in their heads and everything and somehow it's catching up with them. That's also a genuinely good scene, but again, it's over a little too quick. And then we get to the very end. Mia is the last survivor, she makes it to the module, she rockets back to Earth, but once she gets there, it turns out, oh, it's not her, her doppelganger somehow got in there, it was actually the alien. And then it's implied that the alien just goes off and kills all of humanity. And that's the end. So, as I said, kind of a ballsy ending, I guess, like it works a bit for the horror genre, you know, like, oh, all of humanity is about to die, that sucks. Although it is kind of implied in a message at the very end that some people might have survived. It's left ambiguous and there's never going to be a sequel or anything. So, I guess that's up to anyone who reads it to decide. But, yeah, I just, like I said, I'll give it credit for those couple of things. Like, those two scenes are really, really good. And if this book had, hell, even a couple more scenes on that level spread throughout the book, I think I would have given this a mixed review rather than a negative review. But there's just not enough here to really appeal to the horror fan in me and there's nothing else to appeal to anything else. Any of the other fans that are inside me somewhere. So, overall, just, yeah, I don't have a lot else to say. 172 hours on the moon. Could have been a hidden gem. Had a lot of potential. I don't think it's really for anyone though. You know, it doesn't really have an audience. And that's all. Goodbye. Huge thank you to everyone who watched this far. I'm sure everyone who's leaving a comment telling me to kill myself definitely made sure to watch the whole video. So thanks to them as well. And all the names you see on screen right now, these are my patrons. So thanks especially to my super ultra great patrons who are and Wesley. I'm not, I'm not redoing that. I don't even care. If you want to get your name on here, be sure to join my patron page. If you can't do that, then please just write this video and comment on it. Subscribe, all the things I'm supposed to say here. Thank you. Goodbye.