Just a warning up front: There are spoilers in this review. I normally avoid spoilers, but in this case, I think they’re kind of important to convey my annoyance with this book. Also, maybe it’s because I am not necessarily recommending that you read it, so I don’t feel bad about including them.

So, we start with Joanna Chase. She grew up on the Rustling Willows Ranch in Montana – Big Sky Country. Her childhood was idyllic, right up until it wasn’t. Her mother drowned in the lake on the property, her father was mauled by a bear, and JoJo was shipped off to live with her aunt. Now she’s 34, a successful author, and she’s getting messages from her phone, her SUV, her television: I am in a dark place, JoJo. Please come and help me.

There is Asher Optime, your local lunatic. He believes that the human race should be completely wiped off the planet (and you will not believe the lengths he’s gone to, including self-mutilation). He is tucked away in a ghost town in Montana (just a few miles from Rustling Willows – this book is all about coincidence and synchronicity), writing his manifesto and murdering people.

There is Ganesh Patel, the triple genius who is the head of a top secret organization working to save mankind from a threat that they seem to have only identified in the most general of terms. However, the coincidences are adding up and things are coming to a tipping point.

There are other people, lots of them, and the narrative constantly switches back and forth. Honestly, every single time you get to a big reveal or something exciting, it switches to some other character. It gets really annoying.

Eventually, they all end up at Rustling Willows under the big dark sky, battling a ridiculous nemesis. Why ridiculous? Well, when you give your nemesis every possible superpower, things just get silly. So this nemesis, The Other (lousy super villain name) can control household items – talk to you through your phone or tv, make your microwave go crazy and explode, take over your car’s nav system. Okay. It also has almost unlimited access to the internet, hacking and breaking into any system it wants. And then it can control satellites and target missile systems. AND – it can also control the animals in the forest, like crows and deer and bears. Of course it can. AND AND AND – it can also read your mind and control your body. WTF? I mean, at some point I just lost interest.

The Big Dark Sky reminded me of The Stand, and not in a good way. I got annoyed with the religious themes in The Stand, but even that was less annoying than this all-powerful super villain. The synchronicity themes were interesting, but that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged. This one is going back to the library and I won’t be recommending it to other readers.