Gordon Black is a young man, counting the years, but he has seen quite a lot in those years, especially the few most recent years. He is living through the apocalyptic changes ravaging the land, he has experienced a rebirth and he is being hunted by one of the two remaining factions vying for power – The Ward. Gordon himself is searching for the mythical Crowman, the harbinger of change and transformation; a dark symbol of hope. The Book of The Crowman reveals Gordon’s final fate and much if it is seen by a Keeper in the future, Megan. Joseph D’Lacey brings his Black Dawn duology to a conclusion in this harrowing novel.
Perhaps a year or two has passed since we last saw Gordon Black (in Black Feathers, reviewed HERE) struggling to survive and find the Crowman; the world has crumbled even more, but Gordon’s resolve and tenacity has strengthened. He admits to killing members of the Ward to other characters, especially the one in whom he confides the most: Denise. With Denise, D’Lacey has introduced a romantic companion for Gordon in the second half of the duology; a strong woman with a daughter (Flora) and an immediate past in which she did everything she could to survive and to help prolong the life of her ailing daughter. Gordon helps her flee some men who have been lording over her, but not before her daughter passes. What Gordon gains is not only a female companion in Denise, but hope from Flora who instills to Gordon, through her absolute belief that Gordon can find the Crowman a sense of hope. Flora’s faith in Gordon helps to drive him for the remainder of the novel.
Like the previous novel, the structure of the narrative is one element which helps to elevate the story from standard post-apocalyptic fare. Megan discovering Gordon’s story, along with us as the reader, had a very strong resonance to the film depiction of Bastion reading The Neverending Story and meeting the characters of the novel. It is a similar trick D’Lacey plays and works to great effect when Megan and Gordon’s story-paths intersect, and how they intersect.
The Crowman as a figure has increased in prominence. In Black Dawn he was a whisper, a myth, but here in The Book of the Crowman, the figure is said to have been seen by other characters. He is a lightning rod, hunted by the Ward, elevated to a savoir figure by the Green Men (the rag-tag groups who oppose the structured order of the Ward). Gordon’s sole purpose is to find the Crowman by any means.
The character of Denise is the lone adult female character during the Apocalypse; Megan lives in the Post-Apocalypse world and in a transition period both in her role as a keeper and as she transitions from girl to woman. Denise is a strong character in the sense that she helps Gordon, but is moved around the story with little true control of the situations in which she finds herself. It would be too much to say she completely lacks agency, but often she is defined not by herself, but her relationship to the men she encounters. In fairness, nearly every character in the novel is defined by their relationship to Gordon.
As the story/novel draw to close, the environmental theme of a Mother Earth is still strong, but more Judeo-Christian overtones vie for control of the story. These overtones were hinted at during the lead up to the story’s climax, but the theme thundered full force during a very graphic scene at the end. The allegory and resonant nature of the closing elements go from hints to being actually played out by the characters. The graphic nature of that pivotal scene is much more in-your-face and visceral than the earlier horrors hinted at in the novel. Considering much of D’Lacey’s previous fiction is very much in the horror genre, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. For me, this shift worked in the larger context and themes I felt from of the Black Dawn, but I can see this element being a divisive point for readers.
That larger context, to me, is the power of story; how that power can push people to survive, to believe in hope. How the power of story can resonate throughout history and also obscure those things many people accept as facts. What makes it work so well here in D’Lacey’s story is how the power of story D’Lacey’s text illuminates puts into question many of the stories (and history to an extent) we have come to accept as defining ideology and how much of those histories can be simply just story, rather than events to actually have transpired.
One thing that kept itching my sensibilities as I was reading the novel is that it is a very localized novel. That is, the story takes place entirely in Britain so there isn’t too detailed an indication of whether or not the whole world is crumbling. While the feel of the story hints at such, there isn’t a global view. I can’t really place a value judgment on that strongly in the positive or negative, but it stood out more as the story progressed.
There was also seemed to be willful block-headedness about some of the characters. That in order to keep the story moving, certain characters had to ignore the obvious things, especially about themselves. Again; however, that characteristic can be seen as any person’s unwillingness to believe certain things about themselves; people who are depressed are often the last to admit to depression on the negative side; other people are humble and willfully disbelieve their own hype.
In the end, The Book of the Crowman is a novel that made me think; a novel that paired with Black Feathers, the first half of The Black Dawn, revealed a story that will sit with me for quite a while. There is powerful resonance in the story. I’m not sure how to feel about some of its parts, but the whole of it is an engaging, and at many times, fresh take on Apocalyptic fiction. Some parts and elements of story and themes D’Lacey tries to impart are tougher to swallow than others, but the Gestalt of the story is one I can strongly recommend.
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
Angry Robot Books, February 2014
Mass Market Paperback 978-0-857-66348-1 / eBook: 978-0-857-66349-8
Book 2 of The Black Dawn
http://josephdlacey.wordpress.com/
Review copy (ebook) courtesy of the publisher, Angry Robot Books
