Those Who Walk in Darkness

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

7)Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley is a fascinating post-9/11 parable via SF. In a world where mutants roam, serving as superheroes and supervillains, a square-off between good and evil went terribly wrong, obliterating San Francisco. The response from 'normals' is to put a death warrant out on any mutant anywhere in the US.

Our story follows a team of M-Tac police officers whose job it is to carry out that warrant.

Soledad O'Roark is a double rarity- a woman, and an African-American- serving among the elite of M-tac. She is a hero, nicknamed "Bullet" for the creative ways she's applying ballistic technology to killing metanormals.

And she is badly, badly damaged. So badly the book seems unwilling to confront how damaged she is. Let's see... completely unwilling to connect to people. Obsessed with killing metanormals to an alarming degree. Capable of severing emotional bonds at a moment's notice and pushing the pain far below the surface. Painfully trying to find herself in a community that doubts her because of her race and gender, despite anything she does.

The book builds up all these apparent societal conflicts involving metanormal life. There is the suggestion that there is a faction- dismissed as the 'politically correct' or 'soft on metanormals'- who think that America's response to San Francisco was overkill. There are comparisons drawn between anti-mutant sentiment and anti-black or anti-Jewish sentiment. There is the suggestion that there are disagreements in the metanormal community about how to move forward, different political outlooks, even different theological outlooks. There are questions raised about the difference between typical genetic difference and radical genetic difference. Ridley poses all these fascinating questions about how a society deals with a terrorist threat, and how those labeled potential terrorists rediscover their identity in the wake.

But in Those Who Walk in Darkness, none of these conflicts ever boil over. Soledad is confronted with them, but she pushes the conflicts aside, and the book lets her do it. The story is told, unflinchingly and supportively, from the point of view of people who hate mutants so much that they want to kill them all.

The result is a gripping book with a phenomenal climactic scene. The result is wonderful action scenes, deep emotional connections, and lots of scenes that resonate with real life. And the result is a book that does not resolve cleanly, and left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied in spite of that incredible climax.

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. I'll have to check this out.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

is there a sequel planned, perhaps? that suspended question is interesting.

[seekingferret.livejournal.com]

There is a sequel, What Fire Cannot Burn, which I read several years ago. As I recall, it doesn't offer much more in terms of resolution of the macro issues, though Soledad manages to patch up some of her emotional problems.