Blue Light, by Walter Mosley
Blue Light is kind of an odd duck, but I found it really entertaining, particularly the first half, which has some Lovecraftian overtones... a soupçon of "The Colour Out of Space" and a dash of "Beyond the Wall of Sleep".
The titular blue light shines down out of space onto the Bay Area in the 1960s. It touches a few people, and slowly transforms them -- they gain certain insights or little powers. They come together as a cult of sorts, and begin to make sense of their new status, led by a leader who seems to know just half a page more than the rest of them. But not everyone is transformed in a beneficial way, and all of them are dealing with greater or smaller amounts of craziness. And someone or something seems to be hunting and killing them. I really dug this half of the book, but later they go out and hide in the forests of Northern California and form a defensive little community out there. It really kind of feels like two novellas smashed together to make one novel. Also, there are about six hundred characters that are hard to keep track of. But on the whole I enjoyed it.
The titular blue light shines down out of space onto the Bay Area in the 1960s. It touches a few people, and slowly transforms them -- they gain certain insights or little powers. They come together as a cult of sorts, and begin to make sense of their new status, led by a leader who seems to know just half a page more than the rest of them. But not everyone is transformed in a beneficial way, and all of them are dealing with greater or smaller amounts of craziness. And someone or something seems to be hunting and killing them. I really dug this half of the book, but later they go out and hide in the forests of Northern California and form a defensive little community out there. It really kind of feels like two novellas smashed together to make one novel. Also, there are about six hundred characters that are hard to keep track of. But on the whole I enjoyed it.