In order to secure funding to further investigate the lunar mystery, a small contingent of NASA’s need-to-know elite concoct a brilliant, high-stakes plan that will rip the space program from the cobwebbed clutches of the 1970s: they will send teenagers to the moon. Until fall of 2010, when the mysterious signal is picked up once again by Earth. Due to budget cuts, international tensions, and a general lack of public interest in missions to space, however, DARLAH 2 remained uninhabited and untouched…

In the 1970s, NASA created a secret research facility in the Sea of Tranquility to investigate the source of the mysterious happenings and signal, named DARLAH 2. Even before the signal, though, dating back to man’s first intrepid steps on the moon, NASA has known that there was something other in the vacuum where nothing should be alive. On August 15, 1977, a mysterious signal is detected on Earth – a signal that, impossibly, comes from the hunk of dead rock and dust that is the moon. Teenagers on a PR mission to reinvigorate NASA and raise money, gone terribly, horribly wrong? Sci-fi horror on the moon? Oh HELL yes. Why did I read this book: 172 Hours on the Moon first caught my eye based solely on its title – and then when I read the blurb, I was instantly sold.

How did I get this book: e-ARC from the US Publisher (via NetGalley) In this chilling adventure set in the most brutal landscape known to man, highly acclaimed Norwegian novelist Johan Harstad creates a vivid and frightening world of possibilities we can only hope never come true. And in the black vacuum of space… no one is coming to save them. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, but little do the teenagers know that something sinister is waiting for them on the desolate surface of the moon. Midori believes it’s her way out of her restrained life in Japan.Īntoine, from France, just wants to get as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible.

Mia, from Norway, hopes this will be her punk band’s ticket to fame and fortune. Now three ordinary teenagers, the winners of NASA’s unprecedented, worldwide lottery, are about to become the first young people in space–and change their lives forever. It’s been decades since anyone set foot on the moon. Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (US) / Atom (UK) Genre: Science Fiction, Horror, Young Adult Title: 172 Hours on the Moon (Original title: DARLAH)

172 hours on the moon