A Broken Darkness by Premee Mohamed
I would like to thank Hanna from Rebellion for an advance copy of this novel in exchange foir a fair and honest review
Publisher – Solaris
Published – Out Now
Price – £8.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook
It’s been a year and a half since the Anomaly, when They tried to force Their way into the world from the shapeless void.
Nick Prasad is piecing his life together, and has joined the secretive Ssarati Society to help monitor threats to humanity – including his former friend Johnny.
Right on cue, the unveiling of Johnny’s latest experiment sees a fresh incursion of Them, leaving her protesting her innocence even as the two of them are thrown together to fight the darkness once more…
Cosmic Horror is an interesting strand of the horror genre the idea that our world and everything we know isn’t quite right. The shadows and the Dark are looking back at us. This is horror where our reality and sanity linked to it is. Premee Mohamed ‘s Beneath The Rising series started off as almost light-hearted adventure in Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed that as the tale of teenage scientific prodigy and her best friend turned dark and led to the death of millions while the world was perhaps only temporarily saved. Now in A Broken Darkness we find torn friendships, further betrayals, and the resumption of a new war against Them.
Once again, we return to Nick as the estranged everyman friend of Johnny who is a teenager genius solving everything from diabetes to safe forms of electrical power. But Nick has found that Johnny’s brilliance comes from a pact with extradimensional powers who viewed the Earth as a feeding ground and playground. Johnny even created their friendship, so she was not alone in the world. Her deal with the monsters allowed them to nearly take the world and now he sees his one-time best friend as a monster. WE find him now working for a secret society dedicated to saving the world spying on his friend and straight from the start seeing that the enemy has found a new way to arrive on earth by converting people into their own twisted forms. The ancient enemy is returning, and Johnny may possibly be the only person to save the world again but Nick now knows she cannot be ever fully trusted.
I really liked the betrayal of friendship that comes through Nick’s narration. A person he really enjoyed his childhood with and finding out it was all a lie. Tonally from the first book this tale is darker as Nick is someone whose innocence about the world and his best friend has been torn away. Finding out he was effectively designed to be the hero’s companion he seeks out new work and his urge to join a secret magical society shows someone lacking purpose in life. Johnny in contrast is also an interesting character to reassess – initially we saw her as addled brained, million ideas a minute wisecracking fun genius. But now while this is still true, we also see someone with their own agenda and underneath that exterior is someone keen to protect their legacy and very loathe to share what is going on. The juxtaposition of former friends to uneasy truce to work together makes a really unusual middle volume to a story.
Added to this is the horror of the world pretty much going wrong as They infiltrate, manipulate, and start to change the world to their own ends. Mohamed is really good at creating scenes of eerie weirdness and typical of the genre we get the indescribable horror being described in ways that while we can’t quite grasp what we are seeing but we get the feeling it is all bad. We see worlds of alien cities, rivers with monsters and many many tentacles to fear. The drawback is as this is a middle volume tale I feel we’re getting a lot of exposition and discussion as to how the world works and the level of mcguffin discussion can feel a bit overdone slowing the pace right down. My tastes are always perhaps more about the characters finally having out their argument rather than the pseudoscience and its implications.
This was a fun read and I love the tonal shift matching where the central duo have found themselves. The novels arc to darkness feels very effective and Mohamed is great at making scenes feel unusual, alien and creepy. Certainly a tale I look forward to reading the conclusion of.
