Book Review | The Oathbreaker's Shadow by Amy McCulloch

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Fifteen-year-old Raim lives in a world where you tie a knot for every promise that you make. Break that promise and you are scarred for life, and cast out into the desert.

Raim has worn a simple knot around his wrist for as long as he can remember. No one knows where it came from, and which promise of his it symbolises, but he barely thinks about it at all—not since becoming the most promising young fighter ever to train for the elite Yun guard. But on the most important day of his life, when he binds his life to his best friend (and future king) Khareh, the string bursts into flames and sears a dark mark into his skin.

Scarred now as an oath-breaker, Raim has two options: run, or be killed.

***

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: promises are made to be broken. In truth, trust exists to be tested.

We're often called upon to give our word, for what it's worth, but keeping it is never so simple. Of course it can be done, and indeed, we should endeavour to honour as many of the bonds we form as possible. But sometimes, circumstances arise; unavoidable, inescapable circumstances that require us to behave badly in service of the greater good. To do something we have sworn not to, or say what someone else would rather we wouldn't.

I'm sure I sound like someone with a guilty conscience, and perhaps I am. I'd argue that we all are, to a  greater or lesser extent. Thankfully, the consequences of betraying a vow in our world are in nothing compared to what we'd face if we came from Kharein, the capital city of Darhan.

"Kharein itself was shaped like a pentagon and surrounded by a long, low wall. The wall served more as a way to section off the inner city from the masses of yurts that surrounded it than as any means of defence, as Kharein needed little defending. The flat, isolated land that surrounded the city meant that any attacking army could be seen from miles away, and would be met well before it reached the city. On every point of the pentagon stood a tall watchtower, guards keeping a vigilant eye for suspicious plumes of dust. During Festival season, the yurts were scattered around the outside of the city walls, clustered together by clan like white petals around a flower. This was the only time Kharein truly looked alive. Without the visiting population it was simply a dried up bud—the centre of royal activity, perhaps, but not the home of people's hearts. The people of Darhan could not be settled. They moved constantly, shifting with the days of the year, the seasons, the animals. By the end of the month-long Festival even the merriest Darhan grew restless. They dispersed, seeds on the wind, and yet remained unified. It was the life of the Darhan, and had been for centuries." (pp.53-54)

Here, in the authentic desert dynasty Amy McCulloch has dreamed up for her debut, oaths are expressed in physical form. So-called "promise knots" are tied in thread or rope or gold, then worn by both parties. These don't mean a great deal until people reach their Honour Age—when they should be old enough to know better, basically—but beyond that point, forsaking one's faith represents the road to ruin:

"A true promise has serious consequences. Breaking a knotted promise meant excommunication to the desert to live in Lazar, with the community of exiled oathbreakers known as the Chauk. 

"There was no escaping this fate. If it was just a scar you could hide it [...] but it was the shadow that you could not escape. It was the shadow that others saw, judged and sentenced the oathbreaker to exile. It was the shadow that followed you all the way to Lazar and made sure you stayed there. Just the thought of it made Raim shudder." (pp.8-9)

At the outset of The Oathbreaker's Shadow, Raim is an adolescent on the cusp of adulthood, with characteristically grand plans for the future and friends in high places. Friends like Khareh, who is in line to lead Darhan one day as Khan—and on that day, Raim sees himself as Khareh's right hand man, safeguarding the future ruler from any potential threat. In their innocence, the boys simply agree that this will be, thus they tie a promise knot to stress their fidelity.

Fate, however, has other plans for the pair. Raim must become Yun before he can be sworn in as his best friend's Protector, and it will not be easy, even for such a natural talent as he. To make matters worse, Khareh has taken an unhealthy interest in an old man who says he can teach the would-be Khan magic:

"The old stories, passed down by the elders, told of a time when the strongest Khans were the ones with a sage at their right hand, performing magic that gave them the edge on the battlefield. But that was long before even the oldest elder had been born, and for as long as any memory could reach, ever trace of sage magic had disappeared, lost for ever—or so it had seemed." (p.32)

It takes a fair while for the titular oath to be broken, and again for the subsequent shadow to show itself, but I wouldn't describe this debut as slow going. On the contrary, McCulloch makes good use of her first novel's opening act, establishing character and developing setting like an old hand, all while aligning the pieces on the board just so. To wit, when the central premise of the text finally takes centre stage, it presence is very much felt.

The Oathbreaker's Shadow doesn't stop there. McCulloch whisks us around the desert lands of Darhan—to Lazar and back again—like a bona fide tour guide, at such a breakneck pace that if anything I'd have been grateful for a break. But there are sights to be seen, wonders of this world as well, and I'm pleased to have experienced them... though only a few have time to truly take flight.

Similarly, later reversals largely lack the impact of the breakdown of the relationship between Raim and Khareh. Draikh is pretty great, but Wadi—a forgiving Alashan our protagonist takes up with after his inevitable exile—is too transparent a character for her fortunes to mean much.

The Oathbreaker's Shadow is a bunch of fun otherwise. From the germ of an absolutely fascinating idea—our right to wrong; to do ill by others as well as well—Amy McCulloch shapes an undeniably entertaining debut that put me in mind of The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett. And there's every chance The Oathbreaker's Shadow will be just such a success. Sometimes the oldest stories are the ones which take hold of one's imagination most, and the plight of Raim set against the rich tapestry of Darhan is entirely alive in my mind's eye.

In short, bring on book two of this endearing duology. And the sooner the better, especially in light of the absence of an actual ending. The Oathbreaker's Shadow simply pauses at a point—an emerging trend (or am I just noticing it now?) that never fails to frustrate. By design, I dare say, because of course authors want us to want more.

And it's true: I do.

***

The Oathbreaker's Shadow
by Amy McCulloch

UK Publication: June 2013, Doubleday

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We Interrupt This Broadcast | Back to Belgium

I would say it's been ages since I had a holiday, but strangely, that's not the case. The thing of it is, when I went to Skye last, I took my work with me. I spent four of the five days I was there pecking away at a few reviews I was due. A bad move, however necessary it felt; it left me wondering whether I'd had any time off at all.

So what I thought I'd do was go somewhere that would preclude the possibility of me doing much in the way of work — excepting a little light reading.

And the answer? Belgium again. Because of the beer. And the resulting drunkenness. :)

The other half and I plan to stay in Antwerp this time, as opposed to Brussels, which was a bit too much of a tourist trap for my liking. Then again, the beer — I mean the biere — made everything better, and I expect it will again.

Long story short, I'll be back before you know it — sadly a week was all we had to work with — and things will be normal enough on the blog in my absence. I already have two reviews in the queue, and there's something special in the works as well. If it doesn't go live while I'm in Antwerp, expect to see said soon.

Anyway, here are a few of the books I've packed in my bag:

The Adjacent is for review, it's true, but Americanah and The Player of Games are for pleasure; if I write about either of them, it'll be because I choose to — an ever more important distinction in my eyes.

Anyway, cheers, m'dears!

Book Review | Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

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For generations, the solar system — Mars, the Moon, the Asteroid Belt — was humanity's great frontier. Until now. The alien artifact working through its program under the clouds of Venus has now appeared in Uranus's orbit, where it has built a massive gate that leads to a starless space beyond. 

Jim Holden and the crew of the Rocinante are part of a vast flotilla of scientific and military ships charged with studying the artifact. But behind the scenes, a complex plot is unfolding, with Holden's destruction at its core. As the emissaries of the human race try to decide whether the gate is an opportunity or a threat, the greatest danger is the one they brought with them.

***

Having plumbed the depths of the known solar system, explored the various ramifications of the existence of aliens, and exploded a whole bunch of stuff in the interim, James S. A. Corey — a collective pseudonym for co-authors Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham — shows no sign of slowing down in Abaddon's Gate, the third volume of the fantastic Expanse saga.

If anything, this is the best book in the series so far, and it's been a superb series: an accessible, spectacle-heavy space opera with an expanding cast of characters and a massively ambitious narrative. And this time, the depths are even deeper. The ramifications are far grander. And the explosions? There are oh so many more of those.

Abaddon's Gate picks up a couple of months after the events of Caliban's War, with the human race in disarray after the recent crisis on Ganymede:

Between Protogen and Mao-Kwikowski, the order and stability of the solar system had pretty much been dropped in a blender. Eros Station was gone, taken over by an alien technology and crashed into Venus. Ganymede was producing less than a quarter of its previous food output, leaving every population center in the outer planets relying on backup agricultural sources. The Earth-Mars alliance was a kind of quaint memory someone's grandpa might talk about after too much beer. The good old days, before it all went to hell. (pp.22-23)

Times have thus been tough for some. Not, however, for James Holden and the close-knit crew of the salvaged shingle Rocinante. Since cutting ties with the Outer Planets Alliance, he and Naomi — alongside Amos and Alex — have been operating as space-faring freelancers, the upshot of which is they're now ridiculously rich. Their ship has been refitted from bow to stern, upgraded according to a wish list of sweet new weapons and tech; they've gone on an all expenses paid galactic gambling break; and even then, "they still had more money in their general account than they knew what to do with." (p.13)

But money isn't everything, is it? You've got to have a place to lay down a heavy head at the end of the day, a home to harbour your heart, and when Mars initiates legal proceedings in order to take back the Rocinante, the possibility that they could lose everything they've gained of late becomes very real indeed. The only available way through the rising red tape is to take a documentary team out to the Ring, the self-assembled alien artefact around which Abaddon's Gate revolves, and which Holden and his crew had resolved to stay as far away from as possible.

The structure itself was eerie. The surface was a series of twisting ridges that spiraled around its body. At first they appeared uneven, almost messy. The mathematicians, architects, and physicists assured them all that there was a deep regularity there: the height of the ridges in a complex harmony with the width and the spacing between the peaks and valleys. The reports were breathless, finding one layer of complexity after another, the intimations of intention and design all laid bare without any hint of what it all might mean. (pp.136-137)

Before you know it, the Rocinante is leading a shaky coalition of ships from Earth, Mars and the Outer Planets right into the Ring... into one side, and out the other, by way of a strange region of space where the rules of physics and relativity are evidently no more important than notes passed back and forth in class in the past.

Stuck in the so-called Slow Zone with Holden and his, a number of new narrators, including Pastor Anna, an ambassador interested in how the Ring might affect the religion she represents, and Bull, an Earther aligned with the OPA, acting as security chief on the Behemoth, "a marvel of human optimism and engineering [...] with mass accelerators strapped to her side that would do more damage to herself than to an enemy." (pp.52-53)

Most notably, though, we meet Melba, a terrorist:

She had been Clarissa Melpomene Mao. Her family had controlled the fates of cities, colonies, and planets. And now Father sat in an anonymous prison, living out his days in disgrace. Her mother lived in a private compound on Luna slowly medicating herself to death. The siblings — the one that were still alive — had scattered to whatever shelter they could find from the hatred of two worlds. Once, her family's name had been written in starlight and blood, and now they'd been made to seem like villains. They'd been destroyed. 

She could make it right, though. It hadn't been easy, and it wouldn't be now. Some night, the sacrifices felt almost unbearable, but she would do it. She could make them all see the injustice in what James Holden had done to her family. She would expose him. Humiliate him. 

And then she would destroy him. (pp.39-40)

With that, the many pieces of Abaddon's Gate are in place, but as limitlessly ambitious as this book is, the well-oiled machine known as James S. A. Corey makes it all seem simple, somehow. I'd still advise newcomers to start at the start of the saga, but if you have either or both of the previous books in the series behind you, you're as good as guaranteed to have a hell of a time with The Expanse's first-class third act. In fact, looking back, Leviathan's Wake and Caliban's War feel — for all that I enjoyed them — like building blocks, paving the way to this pivotal place in time and space.

The decision to yet again expand The Expanse's cast of characters is slightly off-putting, initially, but the ends almost immediately justify the means: between the calculated physical and political action of Bull's chapters and Pastor Anna's nicely measured perspective on the interorganisational stand-off that informs the bulk of this book, Corey cannily counterbalances the potential problems of a story more focussed on gung-ho, know-it-all Holden — though he too is changed by the end of Abaddon's Gate.

Melba, meanwhile, makes for a neat interweaving of protagonist and antagonist. She does something truly terrible early on, outright rejecting the reader's developing affections at the outset, and falls further and further down the old rabbit hole as Abaddon's Gate goes and goes. The co-authors walk a fine line with respect to Melba, certainly, but they walk it very well. It's almost as if they do this sort of thing for a living!

In any case, these new names and faces bring an array of fresh elements to the table, helping to enliven an otherwise familiar framework. That said, what has become familiar over the course of The Expanse saga remains appealing, if inevitably less than it was once, leaving the story's original elements to steal the spotlight, which they indubitably do.

"The problem with living with miracles was that they made everything seem possible. An alien weapon had been lurking in orbit around Saturn for billions of years. It had eaten thousands of people, hijacking the mechanisms of their bodies for its own ends. It had built a wormhole gate into a kind of haunted sphere. [...] If all that was possible, everything was." (p.223)

Speaking of the story, Abaddon's Gate surprised me — pleasantly, I should stress — by closing out aspects of the overall arc begun in book one. Indeed, Corey answers enough questions that I finished this second sequel feeling like the series could very easily, and very pleasingly, end here.

It won't, of course. Certain doors are literally left open for further adventures in the supersized galaxy of The Expanse — adventures I'll happily have, because Abaddon's Gate is absolutely great. Courageous and audacious, with short chapters, smart characters, and a snappy narrative, it's leaps and bounds bigger and better than the vast majority of space opera.

And the fun is undoubtedly far from done.

***

Abaddon's Gate
by James S. A. Corey

UK & US Publication: June 2013, Orbit

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News | Not the End of Alabaster

Never mind for a moment the surprise bashing I got on her blog for being glib about Blood Oranges whilst trying to raise readers' awareness of it in some small way: Caitlin R. Kiernan has been a font of fantastic fiction my entire adult life, and I admire her work immensely.

Silk was a formative reading experience for me, and over the years, Kiernan gotten better and better. With The Drowning Girl: A Memoir in early 2012, she hit yet another new high, and though her current prose projects aren't up my alley, exactly, I can't wait for her to get back to writing the dark fantasy I desire in my heart of hearts.

In her own time, obviously. I'm not even the boss of me; I wouldn't presume to tell anyone else what they should do!

Anyway, oddly enough, I'd read a whole lot of Kiernan's work without even realising it. I speak here of The Dreaming, DC Comics' superb Sandman spin-off, which she scripted from 1996, which I bought from that point on. I've followed her work with particular interest ever since I put two and two together a few years later.

Long story short, Kiernan's return to comic books last year was a dream come true for yours truly, and I've adored Alabaster so far. I own the hardcover collection of Wolves, and I've been buying single issues of Dark Horse Presents solely to keep up to speed with the further adventures of Dancy Flammarion in Boxcar Tales.

Alas, the dream looks to be over for the moment. According to a post on Aunt Beast's blog:

"Last week I spoke with my editor at Dark Horse and told him that it was time for me to step back from both Dancy and comics for the foreseeable future. That, after almost two years of pretty heavy involvement on this project, it was time to refocus my attention on my prose work. It felt a lot like I was tendering my resignation, like quitting a job, though it doesn't truly amount to quite that. It just means that, for the time being, I'm choosing to concentrate on other projects. In a lot of ways, working in comics is far more stressful than prose publishing, and, right now, I've got to decrease the stress in my life. 

"That said, working with Dark Horse has been a marvelous experience, and I thank everyone I've worked with – Rachel, Jemiah, Daniel, Shantel, Mike, Steve, Greg, Rachelle, Augie, and Spencer – for making Alabaster: Wolves and Alabaster: Boxcar Tales happen. I'm not an easy person to work with, and you've all shown admirable patience. I especially thank the many readers and reviewers who've believed in the books. Thank you. And if you are a fan, don't be sad.  

"There will be additional Dancy material from Dark Horse, but I'm not yet at liberty to announce what it will be or when it will be released. I'll make those announcements when I'm told that I can."

I take heart in the suggestion that this is not necessarily the end, however much it sounds like one. Still, I'll miss dear Dancy in the months or years between the forthcoming conclusion of Boxcar Tales and the beginning of whatever's next.

If you haven't already read an Alabaster book, I'm sure you know what to do.

Book Review | Red Moon by Benjamin Percy

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Every teenage girl thinks she's different. When government agents kick down Claire Forrester's front door and murder her parents, Claire realises just how different she is.

Patrick Gamble was nothing special until the day he got on a plane and, hours later, stepped off it, the only passenger left alive. A hero.

Presidential candidate Chase Williams has vowed to eradicate the menace. Unknown to the electorate, however, he is becoming the very thing he has sworn to destroy.

Each of them is caught up in a war that so far has been controlled with laws and violence and drugs. But an uprising is about to leave them damaged, lost, and tied to one another for ever.

The night of the red moon is coming, when an unrecognisable world will emerge, and the battle for humanity will begin.

***

At the outset of Red Moon, Patrick Gamble, the teenage son of a single soldier, is having one of those mornings. You know:

"A what the hell morning. His father is leaving his son, is leaving his job at Anchor Steam, is leaving to fight a war, his unit activated. And Patrick is leaving his father, is leaving California, his friends, his high school, leaving behind everything that defined his life, that made him him." (p.11)

It's enough to inspire violent fantasies in the mind's eye of our protagonist, already unbalanced on the flight towards his new life in Portland, but though Patrick might feel "like punching through windows, torching a building, crashing a car into a brick wall, he has to stay relatively cool. He has to say what the hell. Because his father asked him to." (p.11) So he sucks it up. Lets his worries wash over him while he waits, as patiently as he's able, for his turn in the toilet a few aisles back.

But the man who went into the bathroom a few moments ago doesn't come out. Or rather, he doesn't emerge a man, but a monster.

"Of course he knows what the thing is. A lycan. He has heard about them his whole life, has read about them in novels, history books, newspapers, watched them in movies, television shows. But he has never seen one, not in person. Transformation is forbidden. 

"The lycan moves so quickly it is difficult for Patrick to make sense of it—to secure an image of it—except that it looks like a man, only covered in downy gray hair, like the hair of the possum. Teeth flash. Foam rips from a seat cushion like a strip of fat. Blood spatters, decorating the porthole windows, dripping from the ceiling. It is sometimes on all fours and sometimes balanced on its hind legs. Its back is hunched. Its face is marked by a pronounced blunt snout that flashes teeth as long and sharp as bony fingers, a skeleton's fist of a smile. And its hands—oversize and pouched and decorated with long nails—are greedily outstretched and slashing in the air. A woman's face tears away like a mask. Ropes of intestine are yanked out of a belly. A neck is chewed through in a terrible kiss. A little boy is snatched up and thrown against the wall, his screams silenced." (pp.13-14)

Patrick and the pilots are the only survivors. The pilots were locked up in the cockpit, unable to do anything to help, but at the very least protected. Patrick, however, had to play dead under a dead person while the lycan raged a hair's breadth away.

When the plane touches down and the terrorist is taken care of, Patrick emerges a wreck. The media immediately declare him a hero, but he doesn't feel like one. He feels... like fighting back.

In the aftermath of this ghastly attack—one of three staged simultaneously—Claire Forrester's future hangs in the balance. She's a lycan too, like so many Americans are in the milleu of Red Moon, but till now she's taken her meds. Till now she's voluntarily repressed the animal urge that rises inside her in times of stress. But when men in black storm her home and shoot her daddy dead because of long-since severed connections to pro-lycan protests, she can't help herself. She changes... escapes... takes refuge with her militant Aunt Miriam.

Miriam, however, has problems of her own. She fears her estranged husband may be one of the monsters responsible for what the President calls "a coordinated terror attack directed at the heart of America." (p.24) She can't be sure, but it's certainly true that he's fallen in with a bad lot: a cell of violent lycans who believe Miriam knows enough about their organisation to represent a real threat.

Together, then, Claire and Miriam work day and night to prepare themselves for whatever's on the way. Making the most of the bad lot they've got, they practice transforming. They learn to carry weapons with them at all times. They board up the windows and doors with two-by-fours. They have a sense that something's coming, you see. And something is. Something wicked.

Not unrelatedly, presidential candidate Chase Williams sees the lycan uprising as a powerful platform from which to ram home his campaign. He wants nothing more than to obliterate the lycan menace. If he has his way—and he very well may—everything will be different:

"With the new year, all IDs will note lycan status. The lycan no-fly will remain in effect indefinitely. A database, accessible to anyone online, will list every registered lycan, along with their addresses and photos. Antidiscrimination laws will be lifted: it will be legal for a business to deny service and employment to a lycan [...] in light of recent and repeated attacks." (p.348)

Luckily, there are other, less repulsive perspectives. As the outgoing President stresses:

"This is not the time to lash out at our lycan neighbors, who live peacefully among us and who are registered and monitored and, with the help of strictly prescribed medication, have forgone their ability to transform. Remember that to be a lycan is not to be an extremist, and I would encourage patience among the public while the government practices its due diligence in pursuing those responsible for this terrible, unforgivable catastrophe." (p.73)

At the end of the day, of course, it'll come down to the people. And what does America want more? War? Or peace?

Take a wild guess.

Red Moon is a real beast of a book: epic, ambitious, and unafraid to ruffle a few feathers—or hairs, I dare say. You have to admire Benjamin Percy's earnestness, if nothing else. But never mind how crestfallen I felt at the end of the day... at this early stage, that's hardly fair. Indeed, there are fair few reasons to recommend this long and admirably involved novel. Percy invests heavily in setting, builds out his world reasonably believably, and though I would have appreciated a more global focus from the first, eventually Red Moon does move to pastures new.

Again to his credit, Percy takes his tale to some very dark places, turning in a number of truly terrifying sequences, the first of which—let's call it Werewolves on a Plane—seems to set the scene for a potentially thoughtful and provocative novel. But it doesn't, ultimately. This, we realise, isn't that. There are several such set-pieces yet ahead, and some surprisingly graphic violence, but these fail to feed into the fiction, especially as regards the characters, in a meaningful manner. They serve solely to shock and awe, which indeed they do, at least until we see how isolated they are from the entire.

That said, the author's willingness to lay waste to the world the book begins with pleased me a great deal. All too often authors, particularly authors of successful series, appear afraid of change: they become so attached to their creations that they simply hit reset at the end of any given text, reinstating some status quo. This is not true of Red Moon. Not by a long shot. Come the conclusion, almost everything is up for grabs, and I can get behind a little unpredictability.

Sadly, that's exactly what the central characters lack. Unpredictability, spontaneousness—any real signs of life, aside some angst and a smattering of uglies being bumped. Claire and Patrick just didn't convince me. From the former's practically random changes of heart to the latter's lack of reaction to the horrific thing he's a part of in the first chapter, Red Moon's protagonists struck me as comprehensively constructed. Made to order, one imagines, for the target audience.

It's easier to buy into Percy's adult characters, most notably Miriam, but the young leads are undeniably lacklustre.

What really ruined Red Moon for me, though, was the characterisation of the lycans as every bogeyman ever. Percy alternately casts them as terrorists, sex offenders, thugs ready to rape or mug or murder anyone who offends them; meanwhile there are white pride parallels and allusions to any number of real accidents, attacks and tragedies, not least 9/11, which Red Moon essentially retcons. It's just too much.

Also not enough. But what there is, in whatever quantity it exists, is very much a mixed bag of good and bad. Red Moon begins with one of the most devastating sequences in recent memory, but by the end of the first section, it's lost almost all of this early momentum. The one-size-fits-all apocalypse Benjamin Percy presents is ultimately too interested in endearing itself to readers from this part of the market and that to wholly win over a single segment of said.

***

Red Moon
by Benjamin Percy

UK Publication: May 2013, Hodder & Stoughton
US Publication: May 2013, Grand Central Publishing

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Book Review | Black Feathers by Joseph D'Lacey

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It is the Black Dawn, a time of environmental apocalypse.

It is the Bright Day, a time generations hence, when a peace has descended across the world.

In each era, a child undertakes a perilous journey to find a dark messiah known as the Crowman. But is he our saviour... or the final incarnation of evil?

***

There can be no question that the world we live in is a very different one than that of our ancestors.

I dare say we'll debate the whys and the wherefores of this issue till we're blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is obscenely simple: our world has seen better days than these. As have we as a people—according to Joseph D'Lacey, at least. Look at "the weather, the economy, the self-serving government, the crooked legal system, the diseases and food shortages [...] If only we'd cared a little more for each other and a little less for ourselves." (p.324)

Well, if wishes were horses—why, we'd be riding gleefully into the future, wouldn't we?

And perhaps we will, one day... but not today, eh? Today, as they say, is unsustainable. Today cannot last.

So what of tomorrow? What of the world of our children, and our children's children? Tomorrow's world, I warrant, will be different again from ours, whether for better... or for worse. There are startling extrapolations of both futures in Black Feathers, the first part of a darkly fantastic duology by the man the British Fantasy Society named Best Newcomer in 2009.

Before D'Lacey looks ahead, however, he casts his eye back a ways, to the birth of a baby boy:

"A freak gust had sucked open a window. Unexpected winter breathed into the room. Snowflakes twirled in and fell to the carpet. A fleeting impression of black wings beating their way into the night was interrupted by the curtains billowing inward. [...] Louis shut his eyes, committing the scene to memory. It was sacred and extreme, both beautiful and base. A smell from the room lingered in his nostrils; the dry, almost Alpine chilld of the air and the moist scent of Sophie's sweat and blood." (pp.15-16)

So it is that Gordon Black comes into the world, causing as much fuss in his first flush as he does later in life, and accompanied—as ever—by a murder of black-feathered birds. Thus, from day one, his parents realise that there's something... different about their son; a problem which only becomes more pressing as Gordon grows older. We all fall to wondering who we really are from time to time, but some questions are not so easily answered. Some questions don't even have answers.

Yet time marches on regardless.

Fast forward to a period resembling the present day, in which Gordon approaches his adolescence, ever more aware that he doesn't fit in amongst all the other kids with, yes, their pumped-up kicks. Gordon however has other interests than new shoes. Sure, he'd like a few friends of his own, but he's more interested in a safe place to call home. Above all else, Gordon wants his family to be happy, and whole.

He should be so lucky. He really should be; that's not a lot to ask, after all. Alas, "the world is descending into chaos and there's a simple reason for it. We've abused it. We've drained it. We've mined it. We've cut down its forests. We've over-farmed its land and turned it into a desert. There's no part of the world untainted by the touch of humanity," (p.167) and Mother Earth has finally declared an endgame: the Black Dawn is coming. And unless Gordon does something about it—he's the only person in a position to, for reasons that will become clear—every living thing will be lost.

"This is the beginning of a story. A true story. One greater and more far-reaching than the story of a pale, gentle boy; it is the story of the Black Dawn and the Bright Day, the story of the world's rebirth. And she must learn it." (p.150)

She is Megan Maurice, apprentice to an old storyteller come medicine man—called a Keeper by the people of this period—and in her world, a Bright Day beckons: a time of peace, and love, and longed-for light. But the way there is shrouded in shadow. Lies and snakes and spiders lurk between the moment she submits to her master and the era of spiritual wealth ahead.

Like Gordon, Megan too has a duty. Meanwhile she is haunted by horrible dreams, as is he. And though untold generations separate them, they dream, sometimes, of one another. In this way the past and the future are entwined: a divide, and indeed an interdependence, which Joseph D'Lacey makes much of over the course of Black Feathers.

D'Lacey has been writing steadily since making waves with the publication of his wonderfully disgusting debut in early 2008. Garbage Man, Snake Eyes, The Kill Crew and Blood Fugue all followed in the mould of Meat, to a certain extent, but Black Feathers is something different, I think. Gone are the grotesque excesses of yesteryear—torture porn this is not. The latest from D'Lacey is as bleak as ever his work has been, but it's sweeter as well, and ultimately much more meaningful.

I'd go so far as to say that Black Feathers represents the maturation of his practised craft.

Which isn't to say it's perfect by any stretch. To begin with, it's pretty preachy. Given the preceding quotes, I hardly need note that if you aren't into the idea of the world as a living, breathing being, you should steer clear... but beyond that, D'Lacey sometimes comes on too strong, surfacing the green politics of the premise every time the opportunity to do so presents itself. I'm in complete agreement with the author on most of the points he makes, but even I was rolling my eyes the tenth time he iterated on the population problem.

There's also some dodgy dialogue. Some confusion at the outset as to what was happening when—and to who, too. And the convenient appearance of several peripheral perspectives took me out of the story rather than drawing me deeper into its weave.

In every other respect, however, Black Feathers is something special. Equal parts a novel of the apocalypse and a powerful coming of age tale—as much The Stand as Stand By Me, if I may—D'Lacey's latest grabbed me from the potent prologue, and let go only when the new had become old, and the story told.

No longer a boy but not yet a man, Gordon is a fascinating character from the first, and he develops a great deal before Black Feathers is over. His journey of self-discovery is punctuated by painful realisation, awful responsibility, feelings of inadequacy... and the clamouring carrion call of something called the Crowman:

"In every depiction of cataclysm, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes a tiny representation watching from afar, stood the same figure. Long dark hair hanging over his features, arms stretched wide and upwards as if in summoning, a long coat covering most of his body, and at his cuffs and ankles something like black straw or black lightning instead of fingers. Some sketches were portraits in close-up. A beak for a face, grey eyes fixed on the artist or viewer, hair like skeins of black silk and everywhere black feathers falling like snow. A few of the pictures weren't of a man at all but were merely studies of crows, some in flight, some sitting in high branches, some lying dead in the deserted streets." (p.230)

Visions of this figure assault Megan as well, and though she is certainly of secondary interest in the beginning of Black Feathers, her half of the narrative—which D'Lacey uses to illuminate elements of Gordon's desperate perspective—builds to a tremendous crescendo at the end. I look forward to finding out what's next for her in the latter volume of this duology.

In lieu of book two of The Black Dawn, let me stress that Black Feathers is perfectly satisfying on its own. Hugely approachable, and immensely readable, it represents an effective narrative with rewarding characters, rich imagery and an atmosphere so stark that you really feel the horror of it all. Of course this isn't the first time that the end of the world has meant something, but whether you buy into its author's politics or not, Black Feathers is a deftly rendered realisation of a reckoning that seems, by all accounts, almost inevitable.

***

Black Feathers
by Joseph D'Lacey

UK Publication: April 2013, Angry Robot Books
US Publication: March 2013, Angry Robot Books

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