Cover of the US release.
DARLAH (released in English as 172 Hours on the Moon) is a 2008 sci-fi/horror novel by Norwegian author Johan Harstad. In 2019, NASA needs to jumpstart a renewed interest in space travel in order to bolster funding, so they hold a worldwide contest for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18. The prize: three lucky winners will get to spend one week on a lunar base alongside the team of astronauts picked for the mission. The novel follows the winners, Mia, Midori, and Antoine, as they slowly begin to realize that something isn't quite right with this trip, and that there might be something waiting for them on the Moon that nobody was ever supposed to know about.Contains examples of:
- Arc Number: The sequence 6EQUJ5, also known as the famous "Wow!" signal
, appears repeatedly throughout the book. It's a hint that there's something waiting for the protagonists up on the Moon. - Apocalyptic Log: Mia's last note in the epilogue, written as she slowly suffocated to death after her doppelganger escaped in the pod, in which she apologizes and says goodbye to her loved ones.
- Black Eyes of Evil: All of the doppelgangers possess these. Mia's little brother noticing that the Mia who returned to Earth has messed-up eyes is one of the clues that it's not the real Mia at all.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Lots of people are left to suffocate or die of exposure on the Moon's surface, and those are just the ones we get to read about in detail.
- Cruel Twist Ending: Mia makes it back to Earth safely and is reunited with her family. Only it's not the real Mia but her doppelganger, and she's about to go on an Axe-Crazy rampage in one of the most populated cities in the world.
- Developing Doomed Characters: Most of the named characters who appear get at least a few scenes developing their personality and background, and most of them don't make it to the end of the book.
- Distant Finale: The epilogue takes place in 2081, in the form of a report by a manned space mission on its way to Europa, concerning the evidence of the book's events that they found on the Moon.
- Evil Twin: Everyone who travels to the moon will encounter a doppelganger hell-bent on killing the original and using them to create more doppelgangers.
- Death of a Child: A few major characters who die are teenagers or younger including Mia's little brother at the end.
- Downer Ending: It's not Mia, but her doppelganger who made it back to Earth. The fake Mia kills Murray, the friendly homeless man that Mia encountered before leaving for the Moon, along with Mia's family, and the Distant Finale implies that a horde of the Mia doppelgangers went on a rampage on Earth afterwards. The best we get is that, since the epilogue takes place in 2081 with a manned space mission, the doppelgangers that made it to Earth were eventually stopped. We don't know how high the death toll was.
- Driven to Suicide: Moonbase Commander Coleman near the end. Considering how a lot of the other characters met their ends by that point, it was probably smart to not wait around.
- Dwindling Party: Not long after arriving at the lunar base, characters start getting picked off one by one.
- Glasgow Grin: Midori shares the Urban Legend of Kuchisake-onna with Mia. Later, Midori's doppelganger splits her own mouth while mocking the deceased Midori for believing in such stories.
- Humanoid Abomination: The doppelgangers on the Moon appear human save for their strangely-colored eyes, it doesn't seem like they can be truly harmed or killed by any physical means available to the characters, and they can turn the people they kill into more copies of themselves.
- Idiot Ball: Plot-demanded stupidity is handily avoided by most of the characters, until it makes an astonishing appearance when the lunar module pilot decides to allow entry to someone claiming to be her comrade even after Mia and Midori can clearly see that said person isn't wearing a spacesuit on the exposed surface of the moon. The pilot gets nabbed and killed pretty much instantly, and her actions are arguably what allowed the doppelgangers to kill the girls.
- Jerkass: Mia can be particularly abrasive at times, especially in the beginning when she yells at one of her teachers to the point of bringing the woman to tears.
- Kill and Replace: What the doppelgangers pull on their victims, with a side of You Will Be Assimilated.
- Mind Screw: What was the cause of the hallucinations Mia, Midori, and Antoine had concerning the 6EQUJ5 signal? What do the doppelgangers want and why are they on the Moon in the first place? What, exactly, happened between the last chapter and the epilogue? Your guess is as good as ours.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never find out exactly what the things on the Moon are, just that they aren't human, and we never find out why they're so hostile to people. The closest we get is speculation by one character that the Moon is something akin to a physical hell, which... requires some explanation in and of itself that is never given.
- Real Event, Fictional Cause: The original lunar missions were discontinued not because of lack of funding and public interest, but because of something spooky on the Moon.
- Title Drop: DARLAH 2 is the name of the lunar base where the protagonists will spend their time on the Moon. DARLAH 1 was abandoned, but contains the only escape pods back to Earth.
- Token Romance: Mia and Antoine's romantic subplot, which doesn't get much development beyond their attraction to each other and Antoine being on the rebound from his ex-girlfriend. And then Antoine dies well before anything is resolved between them anyway.
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The book was published in 2008 and most of its events take place during 2019.
- Urban Legend: Midori is a believer in these, and namedrops the bathroom-dwelling ghost Hanako and Kuchisake-onna.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Almost everyone who went on the lunar mission is dead, but at least Mia made it back safe. Only no, she didn't.
- You Will Be Assimilated: The doppelgangers can turn people that they have killed into more copies of themselves.
