October Skies by Alex Scarrow

Amazon Summary:
2008: Deep in the mountain forests of Wyoming, Julian Cooke stumbles across the rotting remains of a wooden wagon. He's discovered what''s left of the Preston Group, a convoy of settlers that vanished in the winter of 1856. It's clear that something horrific happened here all those years ago, but Cooke can only find a few tantalizing clues.
1856: as early snows descend, the eclectic group of settlers that form the Preston wagon train are forced to dig in. Miles from any kind of civilization, they see the group of Native Americans also trapped nearby as their greatest threat. But they soon realize what true danger is. When a woman is found murdered, one of the Indian party struggles wounded back to camp, whispering of unspeakable evil as he dies. United by fear, the settlers and the Indians must protect themselves against whatever is lurking in the woods. But as suspicion and panic grow, perhaps their own terror will be just as dangerous. Or maybe, whatever's out there is worse than anything they can imagine.
Back in the present day, as Cooke unravels the mystery, he must question if the horror he is uncovering was in fact only the start of something much worse...

Review:
Just to put this to rest before somebody asks, this has nothing to do with a movie about rockets starring Jake Gyllenhaal.
For the premise of the this book, think the disturbing-ness of Gone, meets the pseudo-mysticism of Indiana Jones, meets an isolated cult group like Jonestown (from real history), meets the setting of Little House on the Prairie (well, Little House in the Big Woods actually, but people are more familiar with the former), with an antagonist that is a combination of Drake from Gone and Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Interested yet? You should be, cause this is a pretty good/intense book.
This book is formatted almost identically to A Thousand Suns (but that's where the similarities between the two end) in that they both have historical and modern plotlines. When I saw this I was a little worried because A Thousand Suns was a little too heavy on the historical plotline and didn't develop the modern one enough. While October Skies has the same problem to some extent, it's not as bad. While it does favour the historical plotline, and while the modern one could use some further development, it balances them a whole lot better than A Thousand Suns did.
October Skies also has less offensive language than A Thousand Suns did - another improvement.
The one major bone I have to pick October Skies is to do with it's main theme. The only adherents to "Judeo-Christian religion" (if I dare even call it that) portrayed are members of a cult that has broken off from mainstream Mormonism. Since normal Christians (Protestants, Catholics (there is one Catholic character, but it's just mentioned in passing), etc.) are hardly present , the book can make it seem like all Christians, if not all adherents to organized religion (there is a Muslim present who is portrayed in a very tolerant light, though), are murderous, racist, fanatics, when this simply is not the truth. In this, October Skies is very similar to Kenneth Oppel's The Devil's Cure (a book that suffers from the same problem). I find this slightly off-putting/offensive because I myself am a Christian. If one reads the author's note at the end of October Skies one will find that Scarrow indeed does have a problem with organized religion, which I find unfortunate to say the least, but whatever, I've ranted about this for long enough...
All in all, this is a well written, intense, historical thriller. If not for the religion stuff it would probably get 4.5. Recommended for those who like thrillers or historical fiction and are not offended by the above.
4/5 stars